Personal review about Watchdogs 2.
Intro
It’s about 2:30 AM, 1st January 2017, sitting in my couch, watching the credits roll from Watchdogs 2. Felt a small adrenaline rush, a huge feeling of accomplishment for finishing Ubisoft’s Watchdogs 2. The first game I “finished” in 2017. Which was one of my personal resolutions, finish more games in my collection and write about it. So, check and check. But I’m writing this, because I feel bad for this game, for Ubisoft. They really tried on this one.
Ubisoft and me, a weird relation
Ubisoft… Where do I start? So many great series, but so many cashcows. I really got into the Assassins Creed series, really loved them, but after Black Flag - which is my favorite - they only disappointed me, Unity? What a joke, that was pure horror. The one where I gave up. Far cry, such a GREAT series, really, it is. But there’s a small side note for me there too. I didn’t play the second, or the third, I went straight back to the fourth, and holy moly, my only platinum Trophy on playstation till date. WHAT A GAME. Adored it, but I won’t go into that. When I heard about Far Cry Primal, I decided to play the 3rd, since I read so many memes about it. (Insanity… remember).
So I plugged in my PS3, opened my collectors edition with its cute hula hooping girl dolly included. And popped it in. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a really good game, but my disappointment for Far Cry 4 started growing by the minute. I started figuring out how much of a copy 4 was of 3, like, literally… Every single aspect is the same. They just slapped on other skins and tweaked the story slighty and tada. There you go. That’s 2 huge disappointments in a row for jNoxx regarding Ubisoft. So when Primal came out (I missed out on the collectors edition on PS4, still looking for it by the way, so I could ‘only’ get it on The Xbone), I got my hands on the Presskit, so I could at least start playing it on my PS4, since my relationship with my Xbone is eh… I will keep that for another post.
The only thing I saw about it, is from one of my idols, called Jontron, a Youtuber, which had the opportunity to sneak peek the game and made a wonderful video about it. And yes, it got me hyped again, but to keep a long story short, I loved it, but yet another copy/paste, with even less functionality than before? UBISOFT, WHAT ARE YOU DOING, STAHP, DON’T DO THAT.
Okay, so now you know my weird relationship with Ubisoft, I want to highlight my love for Watchdogs.
When the first Watchdogs got announced, E3 2013, oh boy, was this geek excited. It was basically a GTA clone (which I could forgive and forget), with hacking as a primary objective. The video’s looked so amazing, of course, the collector that I am, I preordered the collectors edition on PS4. But when the months kept crawling by, more info got released about it, graphics kept degrading, more and more functionality seemed to be lacking in the final build. Still, I have a strong opinion about games and consoles, but I want to be sure that my opinion is backed up by facts, or at least, own experience.
So, when it finally came in the mail. Something went wrong with the order, I got the PS3 version instead of the PS4, so I had to wait with playing while I sent my CE back to get my replacement PS4 version. During that waiting time I started reading the reviews, which I shouldn’t have.. They were far from lovely, and I can’t completely disagree. Since I don’t want to go in too much details, lets stick to “It was a bust for the broader public”. Even though I slightly liked it. #rebel
Announcement Watchdogs 2
I just KNEW they would make a 2, since they had the basics for a really good game, but they just missed out in the first. When I heard about the second title, I tried to temper my expectations, but I knew they couldn’t screw this one up again. They needed this badly. So again, I tried to avoid trailers, reviews. All I knew was that they ditched Aiden Pierce, the previous antagonist, but still went for the hackers group called DedSec, which is an eye wink to Anonymous, which I like.
Launch day, I went all in, I just bought the San Fransisco edition (I love to support developers), and wanted to give it a whirl. And heck yes, they did so many things right. The intro is a full blown mission, it’s a good tutorial to learn the basic mechanics which you tried to forget from Watchdogs 1. DedSec doesn’t kid around, they want you to join them, but they have to test you. So you’re going in, guns blazing, for the kill (or dart-sleep-gun your way around your enemies, whichever you like), to hack servers of the ctOS, which is controlling the city, IoT and basically anything in the world.
The game itself
Without giving more spoilers about the story, the story in general a bit less depressing as the first, but they obviously paid attention to the community. There are a lot of side quests, one of my favorites is the one where they mimic this real life story that actually happened about a certain CEO from a medical company which is raising prices of medication for its own profit. Without further adue, they nail the side missions. I played all of them like they were progressing main stories. They add so much value to the game, further exploring your bond with other characters, and fighting along your mates from DedSec towards the final stretch.
They tuned so many things from the first, which I’d like to point out. Driving now actually feels real, but maybe a tad too easy, I don’t think I even crashed once? While in GTA I was backflipping through the air while I was crashing my bike or sports car. Shooting feels good, but you have a stun gun, so you can take a more relaxed stealthy way, you have this kind of slingshot so you can knock the life out of your enemies in tight corners, so they will “rest” dreaming of their families. I don’t think I actually had that much variety in weapons, I had 1 SMG and 1 pistol through the entire game, which didn’t even really bother me that much frankly. Since you have a lot of addons and gadgets to play around with.
They don’t reuse too much aspects of the game every. single. mission. compared to the first. Where the “hacking” was a bit too much, because kept repeating that over and over.
Basically, all the faults they had in the first, they fixed them, and added upon them so much.
You’re working your way up the chain in DedSec, with its ups and downs. Fighting against the greater good. You start off small, tuning your electric kart to the maximum so you can drift in Silicon Valley races against other nerds. In no time, you’re fighting against hordes of security officers, sneaking your way into NASA, stealing a knight-rider alike car and making it your own.
The puzzles you need to solve, improved so much, not just camera hopping “hacking” from one to another. You’re hacking actual huge cranes, to fling you onto certain buildings, so you can go flip a switch on the side of a domain, so you can run around for 1 km, and hack cars to run over security guards there as a diversion.
Hacking house or security robots so they won’t notice you, setting up sneaky traps for the guards patrolling. Fight your way into Alcatraz, graffiti the Golden gate bridge, blackmail pedophiles.
I want to write about every single thing you can do in this game, I can’t write it all down without spoiling a thing, and to be honest, I didn’t really do everything. And now that’s something I want to point out, they did SO much in this game.
Finishing the story, I still have the feeling that I barely touched 40% of the game. They tried so hard to make so much cool things, I didn’t even know where to start, if your PS4 is online, and you’re doing a mission, you suddenly get hacked by a random player online, you have to find him in the crowd, and chase him around, which is all quite cool. But Ubisoft, please, let me just play my game, I want to do some missions, hang out a bit, not do 1 gazillion things. Sailboat racing? Why would I bother when I can go shoot up NASA guys.
The verdict
With all these stories and tidbits aside, should you buy Watchdogs 2? Hell. fucking. yes. Pardon my words, but just do it, it’s quite cheap these days, since Ubisoft kind of shot themselves in the foot last years, and the sales really didn’t go well I heard. Everything looks happy and colourful, but don’t get mistaken. The story has quite the deep meaning, there are some raw bits in there, even though you’re talking to a LED-mask guy and are 3D printing drones and even weapons. This is a -good- game.
Hit me up for questions or want to say something about it or my review? Mention me on Twitter or Facebook.
T.