Watch_Dogs 2

[DisturbedSwan]

Played the first 3 hours earlier and I liked it.

 

It sounds silly but immediately when I booted the game up I noticed how great the stylised hacker vibe is implemented with a fake PC boot screen, logging in with your actual online ID and once you reach the menu screen it carried on that aesthetic mixed with some retro game pixels and art, just little things like that go a long way of immersing you into the world from the get-go.

 

Once I was in the game it immediately put me into a Tutorial mission that was your initiation into Deadsec at some CTOS station set against a moody Dubstep song. Went through this mission getting used to all the different controls which took me a while, met all the Deadsec gang after getting pissed at this beach which was rather funny (love Wrench already) and woke up in Marin.

 

This is where the game left me to my own devices so after putting some clothes on at the nearest shop I set about exploring like I always do and had great fun taking selfies at some of the Landmarks using one of the apps on the in-game phone, also found a few collectibles on the way round (a few of which I was unable to get to yet) some in areas with some enemies which gave me the chance to try out the combat.

 

I agree with @Nag that the gunplay feels a bit odd, seems a bit Uncharted 1-3 really in that regard, a big shaky, imprecise and unsure of itself but it didn't really bother me too much. The cars feel a bit skittish too and a bit odd but I'm sure I'll get used to them, heavy trucks feel better and have more heft to them but the sports cars and motorbikes feel a bit floaty at times and turn on a sixpence.

 

After I'd done all I could find in Marin I swam into the Bay, nicked a boat and went over to Alcatraz for a couple more Landmark selfies then on to SF proper to Pier 39 (which looks so so similar to the real thing) and onto Dedsec HQ which was in a board game store.

 

Got to know the gang a bit more here, got the ability to upgrade stuff, some weapons at the RC car thing that was in the trailers, did one of the side missions too which seemed to unlock a million more and also had my first taste of being hacked, for some reason the guy just stood still so I battered him to death.

 

So yeah, so far so good, I always find Open-world games the hardest to get into as they throw so much at you and it gets very bewildering at times, but this hasn't been too bad, will still take me a bit more time to get used to all the systems and controls but I'm getting there.

 

Must also mention how well realised San Fran is, went there in 2012 and its just uncanny at times, they've some how managed to make it feel like SF too with the vibe and the place and such.

 

Anyway more tomorrow, seems one huge game, will try to post a few pics later too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DisturbedSwan]

Played another 11 hours of this since my last update.

 

I think at this stage it's fair to say I like it but I don't love it really. I actually really like the characters, I think they're the games biggest strength and remind me a lot of F Society's rag-tag bunch of mis-fits in Mr Robot.

 

Marcus is just a joy to spend time with really, it sounds a bit silly but he feels 'human'. There's a scene right at the beginning of the game when he's finished his initiation mission where he just gets drunk, starts throwing loads of F-Bombs, throws his phone in the sea and wakes up in some random woman's apartment in Marin the next day, and this is after pulling off this serious hack-job on Blume at one of their stations, he's blowing off Steam and that scene, to me, just showed he's flawed like everyone on the planet really, after this big mission he just pulled off he can still goof about and an act like an idiot with his friends.

 

The game is genuinely funny too, I've found myself chuckling away a lot of the time, when messing around with people's bank accounts via a hacked ATM machine or getting a live-streamer swatted live on air, all whilst watching through the camera, it's just great. Another couple of moments I'd like to share, both of which occurred during some side-missions, the first was when I picked up this Robotics professor up from somewhere, he and Marcus are chatting and then he makes a Short Circuit reference, Marcus replies something like 'oh I thought it would be a stereotype that all robotics dudes are into that movie' or something along those lines, then start laughing at one another referencing more lines until Marcus starts bringing up lines from Short Circuit 2 and the passenger just says 'we never talk about the sequel' and Marcus just awkwardly laughs it off and shouts a few lines of that movie at the passenger as he gets out, 

 

The second is the Ubisoft side-mission, Ubisoft San Francisco's HQ is fully modelled in-game (complete with Assassin's Creed movie posters!) and one of the side-missions you get is to find some hidden trailer by piecing together some hacked code from different locales, the conversation you have as soon as you pick up this mission with Sitara is just amazing, she says something like 'Ubisoft are a games journalists wet dream, what they like the most is leaks and Ubi have had plenty of those recently....Unity, Syndicate, Empire...the list goes on', it's just so great to have the fourth wall broken like that, and nice to see that a huge company like Ubisoft can take the piss out of itself from time to time. You go on this long goose-chase to find the code for this trailer and eventually some space game trailer with 'UBISOFT CONFIDENTIAL' all over it and 'E3_Conf_Video.Mov' at the bottom plays (looks a lot like No Man's Sky, just great to see stuff like that.

 

So as you can probably guess from above, I've been spending almost all my time with the side-missions and picking up research points and collectibles really, all have been pretty good but only a few standouts (as mentioned above), some can be very frustrating too as a lot have puzzle elements to get to the collectible or to turn a door on to reach where you have to go, there was one HUGE light puzzle where you had to turn on various nodes with the Drone on the Stanford University tower, took me so so long, they aren't bad but it can be very frustrating and break your rhythm not knowing how to get up to a building for 15 minutes or something.

 

Just played the one part of a story mission earlier, which tasked me with nicking a Night-Rider-esque talking car, also dabbled in the co-op missions and they seemed pretty fun but nothing jaw-dropping really.

 

So I'm having a good time with it, but it's not wowed me for the most part really, more tomorrow.

 

Few pics below:

 

 

[DisturbedSwan]

Another 7.5 hours over the last two days since my last update.

 

Decided to stop dossing about and get stuck into the story missions on Tuesday as I didn't want a huge chunk of them to do after finishing up the side-missions and other distractions. Played quite a few of them and didn't really enjoy them an awful lot, they were alright but quite boring most of the time, just reminded me of some of the AC: Syndicate missions strangely enough, just rather dull and no real ingenuity to them. There were two standout moments in racing the Night-Rider like car down a mountain at night over loads of jumps (very cool) and another which was based on the 'New Dawn' church (clearly Scientologists) which involved rescuing a celeb from an internment camp and infiltrating their church HQ to find the source of their secret tablets hidden in their basement, the latter would've been even better if I hadn't of done almost the exact same missions in GTA V a few years ago, but was nonetheless enjoyable and funny at times.

 

Tuesday left a bad taste in my mouth really and I had to really motivate myself to go back and play it again yesterday. I'm very glad I did though because I had a much better time of it, decided to continue doing the story missions but didn't stick to the 'story-only' template I set for myself on Tuesday and just wanted to have fun really whilst making sure I did at least a couple main story missions, so I did a few side-missions in San Francisco, picked up a few collectibles and tried out some of the eKart, Drone, Sailboat and Motorcycle races which I enjoyed a lot (the Sailboats surprised me how difficult they were, and god knows how you're meant to get the Gold medal time in a few of the Drone races!) whilst continuing on with the story. 

 

After being so nonplussed with the story missions on Tuesday, it couldn't of been more different today. First of all it takes a surprising twist which I really didn't see coming, which grounds all of the gang and make you feel for them more, preceded by an amazing sequence at 'Swelter Skelter' which is a parody of the 'Burning Man' festival in the US, really great stuff with some great imagery and visuals, just getting to know the gang and seeing what they're like letting their hair down and taking some choice narcotics.

 

The mission after this was fantastic too and involves going to the 'Nudle' (Google) HQ in Silicon Valley, just such a great vibe here, you can go down some of the slides they've got in the offices and the parodies of tech writers mucking about on VR headsets in the lobby, all the hipster-talk of Lingonberry juice by the employees and the mission itself which involves delving down into the depths of the building to gain information from their on-site server farm. There's also a fantastic sequence where one of your Dedsec buddies (who works for Nudle) is in trouble and you are tasked with hacking various objects around the HR room he's being grilled in to distract his manager and get him to give you an access code for a door, really cool stuff and very well realised.

 

That's pretty much where I left it after that, enjoying it a lot more now and can't wait to play more after feeling unimpressed by the early story missions previously.

 

Pics below:

 

 

[DisturbedSwan]

Played another 10 hours or so since my last update, I don't have much else to say about the game now really.

 

There's nothing more to add to my earlier posts, there's been a few more cool story missions (one involving Space which was great), the plot has taken a few unexpected turns and I've grown fond of the Dedsec gang but it hasn't really ever wowed me to be honest.

I've had a few frustrations with poor check-pointing in the story missions which has been annoying and having finished all the side-missions now, most of them are incredibly dull and repetitive, really not worth doing.

 

Sounds silly really as everyone seems to prefer this to the first game, but I don't, I prefer the first. The protagonist, set of characters and story missions are better for sure but it just lacks that sense of wonder and exploration that the first game had in spades that I so love about Ubisoft's open world games, I even miss the towers.

 

So yeah, I'll just post a few more pics:

 

 

[regemond]

I got this for Christmas off the wife. It's not something I think I'd ever have bought myself, as the first one was just a shell of a game waiting to be shined up, but hell, I (eventually) loved the Ezio trilogy of Ass Creed so thought I'd put it on my list, and it's one of the ones she got me.

 

I managed to get the time to start it up yesterday too after little to no gaming throughout the entire festive period. I'm having fun with it. Fuck if I know what's going on with the story, but I went off and started on a couple of side missions yesterday, including a set where I went through a series of races in a solar-powered go-kart.

 

Like Blakey, I'm enjoying the character interactions a lot up to now, except it was a Star Wars reference that tickled me rather than Short Circuit. Marcus and one of the guys in DedSec HQ arguing about which characters from the SW universe they saw themselves as. It just seemed to be a tongue in cheek moment and a nice little throwaway segment. If they manage to keep up the decent scripting like this I'll be entertained for most of the game I think.

 

Combat seems wayward - I'm actively avoiding getting into too many firefights, and even the ones I do have I'm choosing to use the stun gun instead of the real gun. It just feels more natural to me right now, I've only just been brought into this hacker's world, why would I be killing people already?

 

Anyway, I haven't done too many missions just yet. Stole some rapper's music to extort a pharmaceuticals guy (seriously, did they not even try to veil what that situation was referencing??) and gone on the hunt to steal DedSec their own version of KITT. I'm going to have to go off and explore a little I think, learn more about the different apps on the phone, get a few landmark pictures, steal some music, maybe see if I can find some of the collectibles Blakey mentioned (I found a single upgrade point last night, not sure what else there is to collect...)

 

I'll update again when I have a little more to talk about.

[regemond]

Another 8 hours or so played over the last few days, and ignoring the fact they've improved almost nothing over the first game, I'm really fucking enjoying it.

 

It's rough around the edges, it really is, and that does occasionally pull me out of the game world (eg, yesterday I was hitting a few Scout X locations and happened to see the police arresting someone - so far so awesome - but then once they had the dude in the car, they got stuck trying to drive through another car, even though it was them on the wrong side of the road. Also, I drove into a police car by mistake on a motorbike and didn't even get a single star. Good for gameplay, bad for believability.) especially as it's supposed to be a AAA release. Although it's a Ubisoft AAA release, so what would it be without glitches and shoddy AI?

 

I'm still getting a kick out of all the character interactions and relationships, and now they've introduced Christian Slater's Mr. Robot character (the one that looks like Rob Zombie), I'm enjoying it even more. I was surprisingly entertained when my character got a virus too, even though that managed to pull me out of the game again. Why would my screen getting dumped on by Nyan Cat affect what he can see?

 

Anyway, I've started playing around with Scout X more (easy followers), I've graffitti'd the Golden Gate Bridge and I have some woman with a stupid haircut and NFC in her arm trying to blackmail me. Those last two alone give it more of a sense of fun than the fist game ever had, and no matter how generic/disappointing the gameplay, the entertainment value and the fact it's such a bright, vibrant world compared to the first one make really it enjoyable for me. At least for the minute, before the tedium sets in.

[Hendo]

Demo is out now. I think it's a 3 hour timed demo of the full game.

[regemond]

So I gave this a bit of a break to pursue a triple-header of Zelda games before BOTW comes out, but that's never gonna happen now and I had a few hours to myself yesterday so loaded this up again.

Turns out I left it at a 'crucial' moment last time, as I stumbled across a mission where I had to blow up a few cash machines (the boring bit - being able to call the police makes the whole game MUCH easier...) and then moved on to one where I infiltrated a secret research facility before taking control of a god damn spider-drone!!

8 legs of vehicular manslaughter was in my grasp! I was blowing up cars, stomping on dumb soldier's faces, exploding conveniently placed red barrels of petrol - you name it I was doing it! Except... just, not in the real world of the game... It was all set within that research facility and ended with me blowing the place up. It was a short, 5 minute section, but it was enough to make me struggle to decide what I'm doing tonight while the wife is out - watching The Big Short, playing Zelda: TP, or throwing this back on.

Great sequence, just the kind of big brash fun I enjoy, and it instantly hooked me again. Maybe the short break from Marcus & Co. has done me good...

[regemond]

Finally finished this Sunday night, and I've got to say, I REALLY enjoyed this game.

I'm not going to argue with the criticisms, they're valid, but there was enough there for me to get a lot of enjoyment out of it. It sounds weird but it was a hell of a lot of fun NOT getting your hands dirty in this game. Whether taking the jumper for a drive to infiltrate areas or calling the police/gangs to wipe an area out, I really went out of my way to go down the patient route and not have to deal with anything too overwhelming.

Unfortunately this made the final mission incredibly difficult for me. I'd never become familiar enough with the shooting to be proficient at it, and the last two sections basically force gunplay on you. I managed it in the end, but I almost gave up at the part where you play as Wrench.

This doesn't have the same hit on my OCD nerve as the Assassin's Creed games do - really cba with all the collectibles, but it's definitely a series I can see myself looking forward to for the inevitable Watch_Dogs 3.0.

[regemond]

I ended up going back to my tried and tested tactics of staying the hell out of the restricted area and calling in wave after wave of police/gangs. Once it was empty enough I popped the last few goons and strolled through the section.

 

Walking in the front gates all guns blazing was a definite mistake,