Watch Dogs 2 - Ubisoft's other open world IP returns

Launch trailer:

Hey, remember when we thought the internet and hackers would be a force for good in democracy?

If you have an early copy (review, streaming, or broken street date) online multiplayer is broken. Patch coming.

[quote]
During the pre-launch phase of Watch Dogs 2, we discovered an issue tied to the seamless multiplayer feature that caused the game to lag and crash periodically. In order to eliminate that issue at launch and for players to enjoy a smooth game play experience, we have decided to wait to launch the seamless multiplayer feature until the patch that fixes this issue is deployed. The patch is currently in certification by Sony and Xbox.

In the meantime, players can still play the full single-player experience without any concerns and play co-op by inviting friends through the game menu. But that does mean that the Bounty-Hunter mode and other activities that would occur with other outside players who enter your game will be unavailable until the patch is deployed on each platform.[/quote]

Some outlets are further delaying their reviews until online gets working.

Eurogamer review. Very positive. It gets their “Recommended” badge.

[quote]…Marcus and his friends come with armfuls of tech-related skills. These usefully shift the game’s dominant verb away from shooting. While there are weapons in the game (brilliantly, all of your guns must be 3D printed via one of DedSec’s headquarters) the emphasis is on using non-violent means to achieve your goals. Most missions involve breaking into buildings either by using one of your radio controlled contraptions (an RC car then, when you save up enough, an even more useful drone) to sneak through air vents in order to open doors and steal files. You can also co-opt any of the tens of thousands of CCTV cameras that watch the city and use these to hop around buildings while booby-trapping junction boxes and grates to disable guards, or stealing files. A click of the right stick drains the world of colour, showing you interactive objects and, where relevant, electrical currents which, in some cases, must be redirected in order to power crucial objects such as gates and lifts.

It’s possible to blast your way past security guards, but this approach obviously runs against the grain of the fiction, which is elegantly rigged to provide non-lethal, more creative solutions at every turn. You’ll spend most of the game sat, cross-legged by a bush outside the building you’re hacking into - a welcome change from the violent norm, albeit one that inevitably becomes repetitive in its own way by the game’s end.[/quote]

Sounds good so far. I love it when a game can give you a gaming verb besides shooting. But no mention in that review one way or another of the driving physics this time around.

Nice to see that option has been made available for WD2.

I’m sad that I have to wait until the 29th to play this.

Careful sharing those pervy pictures on the Sony network, just keep them to yourself.

Ha! I was just about to post the same thing!

Watch Dogs 2 has full frontal nudity. Not just topless women like GTAV or Mafia 3.

Sold! /jk

From what I’ve seen, it’s being reviewed more or less the same as WD1. Which actually means it’s slightly better than WD1, as that game went riding on a hype train and sites are not immune to that.

edit: I was wrong, WD2 is having an average higher by 5 points.

I think the change in tone (slightly less serious) and more non-lethal options really helped this review better.

The fact that the protagonist doesn’t go “my niece is dead and it’s not my fault; I’m a good person” every five minutes certainly helps. ;)

So if you stream you playing the game you can get banned.

The guy who posted the picture also got his ban extended from a week to a month after he told others about it (from the looks of if).

Loved how he then wrote “I’ll go back to posting pictures of corpses from Re7”. Yay “some country”. :-)

Saw the screenshot. The nudity isn’t nearly sexy enough to warrant a purchase.

I guess I’ll just have to stick with Skyrim mods.

Remember in the original Watch Dogs when you, as Aiden Pearce, would use his magic hacker phone to rob random bystanders by stealing money from their bank accounts? He’s supposed to be fighting the evil Big Brother corporation from invading people’s privacy and doing nefarious things, but on the road there he’s basically ruining people’s lives by being a petty thief. I don’t think it was intentional, but it fit in most players’ minds because Aiden was already coming across as a dour jerk.

Well, Marcus in Watch Dogs 2 does it too. But it’s even weirder here. Marcus is not a dick, at least, he’s not supposed to be. He’s likable and has a good sense of humor. But there he is, using his hacker phone to steal random people’s money. It’s a little off-putting.

Yeah, that was the main criticism in the Eurogamer review as well.

Yeah, it’s really weird how the characterization of DedSec and Marcus butts heads with the “open-world” gameplay here. I suspect it’s not something that will get dinged in a lot of reviews, because “virtual San Francisco pretty, hacking neat, open-world cool, game funny” but I’m having a hard time with the dichotomy.

Marcus is a genuinely nice guy and DedSec comes across as noble and cool, certainly their stated objectives seem good in that naive twentysomething fight the power way, but stuff like robbing random bystanders’ bank accounts and invading everyone’s privacy crashes right into that. It doesn’t help that the central conceit for progression is that you’re gathering followers to have them download DedSec malware apps to eventually take over everyone’s devices to execute a massive botnet attack.

When you consider that the bad thing they’re fighting against is wholesale invasion of privacy and data control, it’s kind of ridiculous.

I think that could easily translate into a sense of entitlement to “crowdfund” doing their Important Things. Most twentysomethings are still pretty used to spending other people’s money.

I feel like I’m playing a video game version of Mr. Robot.

They already had Mr. Robot himself playing the game pre-release.

Anyway, I am enjoying the game on Pro, but man, the controls are really wonky and twitchy.

There’s a paint can on the beach in San Francisco near the scientologist clones. It’s in a bunker in the water.

I can’t jump in it.
I can’t send the rover in the water.
I CAN send the quad in there but it won’t pick it up.

Any ideas?

Another game under-performing.

http://www.chart-track.co.uk/?i=2558&s=1111

Going by the data and math we have I believe that would put WD2 launching around 80k units. For perspective Watch Dogs 1 sold 380k in its opening. It is a colossal drop to put it mildly.