Watchdogs 2 | Review
The original Watchdogs, much like the original Assassin’s Creed, set the ground works for the series. A massive open world full of potential that was not exactly capitalized on. However just like the Assassin’s Creed series Watchdogs’s second outing gets pretty much everything right and delivers one of this year’s best games.
The depressing Aiden Pearce has been replaced by the much more upbeat and likable Marcus Holloway a character that doesn’t take himself as seriously and the game is all the better for it. Surrounded by a like minded group who are obsessed with taking down the overly intrusive surveillance of the government.
Watchdog’s is set in the tech powerhouse of San Francisco, while it isn’t the full city there are enough recognizable locations to make it feel like the real thing. The map is jam packed with things to do, places to visit and characters to interact with.
Game play has been tightened up, while it is still the same basic third person shooter the first game was, we have massive improvements in almost every area. The cars handle better, the gun play is better, in fact pretty much everything has been worked on to see some level of improvement.
The missions are all pretty much set in the open world and you can approach them in whatever manner you chose. The location is highlighted and after that you decide, how to get there, how to survey the area, how to get inside. While this can lead to repetition in open world games, Ubisoft have gotten a good enough balance in the mission types here to prevent everything being to samey.
The overall theme is of course hacking, you can pretty much hack everything that is electronically controlled. From steam pipes to high security compounds. You can cause car crashes or listen in to people’s phone calls. As a theme it does wear a little thin and after a few hours and you pretty much revert to only using it when it is part of the mission ark.
Multiplayer has been added with a later update so we have had less time with it than the single player campaign. Making a return is the ability to go into another player’s game and steal their data, however unlike the first this has been made much easier to identify the incoming player thanks to the drones. The other mode is essentially when you max out your wanted meter and instead of SWAT teams and armies gunning you down it is other players. A nice touch and adds a little light relief to the game but not traditional multiplayer modes, perhaps there is more to come here.
Overall: The charm and humor has been cranked up and it is to the game’s benefit, there are a lot of in jokes and cultural references that will make you chuckle, along with a long compelling story and a huge interesting city to explore. Watchdog’s is incredibly impressive, much more than a GTA clone and another leg in what should be another impressive series for Ubisoft.
Please Join us on your Social Platform of choice
