Watch Dogs 2

One of my favorite childhood games, and im glad to see it have a spike in attention. It ended up being a really freakishly accurate representation of the real world now, with companies like Flock and Palantir. F*ck Flock, f*ck Palantir, and f*ck the surveillance state.

Edited Preface: This is a game made by a staunchly anticonsumer company in Ubisoft, one who is known to lie to consumers for personal gain. They do not value you or your rights as a consumer Be aware of that before making any purchasing decision.
Worth playing but its not a 10/10 game by any means. I feel like it tried to be both safe, and outrageous in spots at the same time and it kinda damages the identity it wanted to give off to gamers. The irony for this game is storyline wise it feels more relevant to the real world then ever in ways that if the game released today reviewers would pan it for being too "on the nose." But it came out almost 10 years ago so that doesn't apply.
Some of my big Pros:
-You don't have to "kill" people necessarily. You can stealth objectives, stun them, air shot them as options.
-Hacking opportunities in the real world environment allow for fun ways to engage with car chases or enemy pursuit, or creating real general awesome chaos!
-Simply picking up a new weapon makes it accessible/purchaseable. And side objectives like grabbing money bags or skill points, once you have them even if you die you will keep them.
-This game understands how to implement set pieces. I will not go into it more due to spoilers but there is some really cool things here.
My biggest cons:
-There's no way to consistently turn off the online missions that appear on the map. You can, after each mission or event, manaully go to the map and turn the slider to "off." If you choose to do one of these endlessly populating missions, itll ask you if you don't want to do coop while searching for a partner. You hit no. After completing the mission, it will then reopen your game world to any player searching. This ignores every setting in the menu that says "don't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ do that" (of which there are MULTIPLE). The solution is to do the mission, complete it, manually drop out of the online mode. Or my earlier suggested method, or to pull the ethernet plug. As a steam user, that last one shouldn't have to be the answer.
-The ending absolutely falls flat.
-The cringe factor at times of Deadsec when they are reaching out to the general public in recorded scenes kinda undermines what they say at times regardless of how real and necessary to be taken seriously it is.
-Side antagonists/characters/factions are created, and then dropped and you have nowhere to go with your feelings. Even with the DLC missions, you end up with your hands holding nothing going "so we're not dealing with this, huh?" And that leads into my next problem of:
-the main character, feels like the game always wants to go "alright so you can take a step too far, but we'd never do that (despite explicitly or implicitly doing so). And this causes a bit of disfunction with those extra characters and factions in how they are portrayed. And it does get a bit annoying how the characters with the main, and around him, will build up contentious points and then just drop them with no warning. It is a very slapped together affair.
This is a very solid 6-7/10 game depending on how you view things. You could spend a couple afternoons and get through it and be...accepting of what you played? I was satisfied overall. But there's too many ball drops to ever guarantee any one person playing this will feel the same way. Take a chance on a deep steam sale, maybe with a friend to speed things along in the aformentioned cooperative online missions. But this is a in between game. You play this when you feel nothing else is going on. Not a priority.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don’t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☑ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☑ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☑ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding
---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☑ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☑ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond
---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{ Replayability }---
☐ One and done
☐ Maybe after a year
☐ Worth a second run
☑ Played it 20 times and still not bored
---{ Microtransactions }---
☑ None
☐ Only cosmetics
☐ Slightly pay-to-progress
☐ Pay-to-win
☐ More shops than gameplay
☐ Casino Simulator
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☑ 9
☐ 10

games good but ubisoft sucks ass i cant even launch watchdogs 1

Watch Dogs 2 is probably one of the best examples of an open world game where simply messing around with the mechanics can be more entertaining than actually following the missions. compared to the darker atmosphere of the first game, this one is much more colorful, energetic and sometimes even silly, but i think that works really well with San Francisco and the whole hacker group theme. the story itself isn’t anything incredible and i wouldn’t say the characters or villains are unforgettable, but Marcus is a much more enjoyable protagonist than i expected and DedSec has enough personality to make the campaign entertaining from beginning to end. the biggest highlight for me though is definitely the city, San Francisco looks beautiful and feels alive, and even today the graphics, animations and overall atmosphere still hold up surprisingly well.

what makes the game really fun is how much freedom you have when approaching missions. you can play it almost like a normal third person shooter, but honestly that feels like ignoring half of what makes Watch Dogs 2 interesting. hacking cameras, distracting guards with their phones, controlling vehicles remotely, calling the police or gangs on enemies and using drones to scout an entire area before entering is much more satisfying than simply walking through the front door with a gun. sometimes you can complete a large part of a mission without Marcus even entering the restricted area, just jumping between cameras and controlling the RC Jumper or drone while everyone inside has absolutely no idea what is happening. the hacking system isn’t particularly complicated, but there are so many things around the city that you can interact with that it constantly gives you opportunities to create your own little situations and cause complete chaos.

the open world is also one of the rare cases where i actually enjoyed spending time outside the main campaign. there’s a lot of optional content, but it doesn’t feel like the game is constantly forcing you to complete everything. you can drive around, find research points, take photos, participate in races, invade other players or just experiment with hacks on random people and traffic. the online invasions are especially fun because another player can suddenly appear in your world and turn an ordinary moment into a ridiculous chase across the city. driving isn’t the strongest part of the game and some vehicles feel a little strange, but having the ability to hack traffic lights, barriers and other vehicles during pursuits makes chases much more interesting than they would be in a normal open world game.

there are definitely things i didn’t like as much. the tone can sometimes become too goofy, especially when the story tries to deal with something serious immediately after a bunch of jokes, and the enemy AI can be incredibly stupid until suddenly everyone somehow knows exactly where you are. gun combat is decent but never feels as good as the hacking and stealth options, and personally i think the game becomes much less interesting when played like a traditional shooter. progression also takes some time before you unlock enough abilities to really understand how creative the sandbox can become, because once you have more gadgets and hacking options the game completely opens up and missions become much more enjoyable.

overall Watch Dogs 2 aged much better than i expected. it isn’t a game i would recommend because of an amazing story or unforgettable characters, but because of how much freedom its systems give you and how entertaining San Francisco is to explore. it’s one of those games where a simple objective can turn into complete chaos because you hacked the wrong car, called a gang on someone, attracted the police and suddenly there’s a massive shootout happening while you’re sitting safely across the street controlling everything through a drone. if you enjoy open world games where the fun comes from experimenting with mechanics and finding your own way through missions, Watch Dogs 2 is still absolutely worth playing. in some ways it even makes me miss this era of Ubisoft games, when an open world could be big without feeling like it needed 100 hours of repetitive content to justify itself.

#Nocticula #Lady Briarwood #HarleyQuinn #She'sAwesome #She'sSweet #ThankYouMyDearFriend #ForSharingYourGamesWithMe #ILoveYouuuu 🔥🎮❤️

Probably the last well made Ubisoft title, as well as the last well made Watch Dogs game.
It's my favourite Ubisoft game, period.
I've made a guide on how to fix the annoying flickering issue so you can enjoy this game completely.

Watch dogs 2 is one of the best games I’ve ever played, and definitely a game I will never forget.