First few hours of Watch Dogs 2
I've managed to tear myself away from Civ VI for long enough to kick off Watch Dogs 2. Despite the luke-warm reception to the first one - which I also played though - Ubisoft thankfully pushed forward with a second and really delivered!
We've swapped gray Chicago for vibrant San Francisco where we play Marcus, an Oakland native, but newbie to the San Fran Dedsec crew. In his initiation - the first campaign - he’s on task to delete his profile from the core server farm of ctOS that tracks everyone, essentially making himself disappear. It’s a challenging tutorial that blends stealth and non-lethal takedowns to achieve the goal of reaching and hacking the central console. Satisfyingly Splinter Cell-esq.
From here you get let out into the wild with the first stop half the city away, giving you a chance to take in sunny (or foggy) San Francisco sights. If you’ve ever been lucky enough to visit, you’ll definitely be tempted to retrace old footsteps. After driving around for a while, attempting to find some jumps and trying to hug the seals on Pier 39 (you can’t unfortunately), I ceded to the call of my new HQ.
Once you succumb to the inevitable and meet your fellow Dedsec-mates, it quickly begins to fills the open world with bigger personalities. The team gels well and retain their distinct individualities that build into the new Dedsec stylizing Ubisoft has created for the game.
Ubisoft has built on the Disrupt engine used in the first game with expanded hacking elements to ultimately give it a lot more variety and push more strategic play over the guns-blazing approach. You can go all shotgun-crazy if you want, but you'll quickly fill with holes unless you embrace the advantages of the hackable environment. To get in and get out with limited detection is to survive.
In fact, during my first mission to a film studio, my hacking skills were a little too noobish so I failed at the stealth route half way in. This immediately lead to me getting shot at, and retaliating in kind. Whereas, in other games the license to kill is somehow justified as part of the plot, here it feels out of place with very little ‘punishment’ for such permanent actions. When the goal is merely "popularity", I feel I shouldn’t be able to kill people just out to work their day job. The crew is also not your usual ‘mercenaries’, they’re anti-establishment artists, nerds, introverts, techies, hackers, DIYers; young people doing it for daily kicks and the cool of net-cred, with only the overarching justification of fighting for the little people and taking down Orwellian ctOS 2.0. They definitely don’t have military experience, so having Marcus run around with a sniper rifle stands at odds to the story and characters. Thankfully, you can still choose to avoid the GTA route and arm yourself with non-lethal takedowns only. It’s also more challenging, which is a bonus.
All that said, any sense of realism really is in the backseat. If you commit crimes people will call the the police to chase you, but once out of sight will swiftly assume you vanished into the fog. And donning a pink top, bright plastic booties and slim-fit jeans makes you in no way less mobile or stealthy than if you don all camo attire.
And, for once, I have enjoyed dressing an in-game character. Normally I wouldn’t care, instead saving my money for important mission-critical items, but after the first mission you’re left pant-less so it’s a necessary discovery. There’s a large variety of clothes that aren’t too expensive, and hacking money is easy to come by when you’re out, so, yea, it’s been fun to discover what all the shops have to offer, then usually dress Marcus as silly as possible.
The drive of missions is pulling off high profile pranks and hacks to gain net-cred and new followers for your app. Followers mean prizes CPU time, to ultimately take on ctOS 2.0. The setup and missions are truly fun, with enough tongue in cheek, satire and social commentary to keep it lighter than the underlying fight against Evil Corp.
In typical open-world fashion there’s also a ton of side-missions to do. I’ve sought out the local sites for selfies with the Scouting app (say that five times), done several races – of which I’ve so far discovered the electric karts and motocross – and, also, Uber-esq pickups that have a twist to race others, get air-time from jumps, etc – each has its own crazy goal rather than just playing taxi driver.
Where I found the original Watch Dogs online integration into single-player was so rough and invasive I turned it off, Watch Dogs 2 is very smoothly done with short, intense missions that certainly add to the experience. I’ve stumbled into hacking challenges a few times, where I’ve either been hacked and had to find someone before the timer runs out, or, have to hack someone and hide. It’s a sudden spark of intensity that really works. I’ve also done a co-op mission too to rescue someone from gang members, and it was certainly fun.
I’ve been having more fun with the side missions than actually advancing the plot, and as such my completion rate is still stick at 0% after over 7 hours of gameplay. Building up my hacking repertoire and skills is not only necessary, it’s fun to discover what pranks and chaos you can inflict on the unsuspecting public.
The PC version is, of course, the preferred option and Ubisoft has teamed up with Nvidia to (not only give away free copies with ASUS’ GeForce GTX 1070s and 1080s) turn up the visual sexiness with new four letter acronyms (HFTS, PCSS, HBAO+, TXAA etc), and, oh my, it really does look good! Check Nvidia’s detailed overview of each graphics tweak, with helpful interactive comparisons. The IQ upgrade is a heavy tax on the graphics card so you’ll need that 1070 or 1080 and fast/at least quad-cored CPU to enable all the features at high resolutions, but having said that even without the extra-extras the game still looks great with some SMAA + Very High or Ultra settings.
