Watch Dogs 2 is a sequel to the original Watch Dogs with a new protagonist who is a lot more talkative and animated than Aiden Pierce. The game looks great and there are a bunch of small improvements in gameplay compared to the first game. However, this is still an Ubisoft open world game, and as a result, can feel generic and samey. The vehicle handling is still slippery but at least it’s controllable.
Hacking is the key gimmick of the game and it’s expanded to be more than just a single button press. It’s still simplified but when you select an object, you get a few options like setting it off, attracting enemies, turning it off and setting up a proximity field that triggers whenever someone comes close. There are a lot of these hackable objects since it is set in the San Francisco Bay Area where everything is connected to the internet and made “smart”, with ctOS.
You control Marcus, an expert hacker who joins Dedsec and seeks to expose Blume. Blume is a company that harvests data from users thanks to their software. Citizens have no choice but to give this data but they don’t fully understand the dangers to their freedoms in doing so. This faction of Dedsec is formed with a group of people with various expertise.
Marcus is able to climb various objects, hack and use weapons. A lot of things are tied to the Marcus’s phone, such as hacking, viewing and accepting missions, the map and other functionality. Interestingly, the combat encounters usually give you two options, you can go in guns blazing in a huge gunfight, or you can try the stealth approach and knock the enemies out one by one. While Marcus is nimble, he doesn’t have the same versatility and climbing ability of the Assassin’s Creed games, so you’ll constantly think you may be able to climb a wall only for the game to be realistic and show that you can’t.
Marcus’s phone is a core part of the HUD. It is basically a menu with a smartphone software skin overlay. This does make going into and backing out of its menus taking one or two button presses too many though. You’ll have to click through various menus to select a particular mission, then track it on a map before backing all the way out, so it can be clunky and tedious at times.
The game feels really generic and bland in the beginning, especially if you have played the original. However, once you get into the groove of things, it can be enjoyable. The story, which doesn’t take itself too seriously but isn’t to the point of being cheesy and corny, is serviceable. The dialogue tends to try too hard to stay relevant though, but the references to various movies are quite funny to listen to.
Just like the first game, the online integration is quite unique. As you play the game, other players can randomly drop in or out. You’ll encounter friendly players who are just going about their game when they coincidentally cross paths with you. Or you’ll encounter players currently on a mission where they “hack” your information and you have to try and find them among the NPCs surrounding you. It’s not obtrusive and is done well.
Some of the combat scenarios can be tedious and annoying. All your progress is undone if you’re noticed since enemies constantly call reinforcements that immediately knows where you are. It can be frustrating when you’re forced to restart everything after painfully whittling down the enemy. The useless non-lethal environmental weapons are lame, as are Marcus’ limited repertoire. Once you get a lot more gadgets and options, this problem is solved and the game gets fun, particularly when things work according to plan.
The environmental “puzzles” are also annoying when you have to get to a specific sectioned off area that you have to physically get there to hack, so you can hack another place, to then hack another. When you cannot climb, and have to take a huge detour, it’s really annoying. This doubles for the puzzles that involve Marcus basically directing rays of light, which were already overused in the original game, let alone being used here in the sequel.
The game does constantly swap from being extremely bland and generic, to quite fun and enjoyable. The cast, having good banter and camaraderie is a plus, and helps make them a lot more bearable although the game at times tries way too hard to show this off. Nevertheless, it takes around 12 to 15 hours to complete the game, so it’s not long at all, although by this point you would have easily seen everything several times over. The ending does sort of sneak up to you, so when you get that warning that it’s the final mission, you will be surprised.
There are plenty of optional activities to do, although they’re the same kind of things you have already been doing over and over again. There’re are numerous collectibles and side missions that you can collect to your heart’s content, so the game can keep on going. Or you can cause some mayhem with all the abilities you would have gained.
Overall, Watch Dogs 2 is a solid game. At times it feels generic, and while it is true it brings very little that’s new to the open world genre, the hacking has been slightly improved upon and given more variety compared to the first game. Over the course of the story, it slowly nudges you towards favouring stealth, which is its strengths, rather than running and gunning your way through the situation.
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