Wednesday 25 January 2017

Watch Dogs 2 - Cheap Thoughts

The original Watch Dogs is often considered to be one of the most over-hyped and disappointing games in recent memory. With an interesting mechanic and promise of being able to “Hack the planet” plus with gameplay showing great graphics, it was almost universally agreed that the game did not live up to those expectations. With a generic protagonist, uninteresting story and a clear downgrade in graphics from what was promised, no one seemed to like it. As someone who played it months after the hype died down and everyone seemed to dislike it, I have to say, I was still unimpressed with what I got. If a videogame could be summed up in a colour, it would be grey. Grey the videogame.

With that being said, once the trailer for Watch Dogs 2 was released at E3, I instantly found myself excited, because with the little bit of footage we saw, we saw a game with an identity. True, most people called it obnoxious pandering to millennials that came across more as what focus groups think young audiences behave like, but regardless, at least there was an identity to be described. From that one trailer, it already seemed like Ubisoft had listened to the feedback, and that gave me hope this game would be an improvement over the original. And it was.

Watch Dogs 2 follows a group of young hackers in San Francisco trying to stick it to greedy corporations and nosey governments by…hacking things. In a lot of ways, this story shouldn’t work. There is certainly a lingering feeling of manipulation as the characters feel like they were designed to appeal to young audiences, and the story is most certainly lacking in depth or unexpected twists, yet for some reason I still found myself genuinely connected with what was happening. Maybe it’s the talented voice-actors, maybe it’s the quippy dialogue, maybe it’s because the story doesn’t take itself too seriously, or maybe it’s a mixture of all three, but I was invested. I liked this group of characters, and if anything, I’m disappointed there weren’t more character based missions, because the few that were there are the ones that stick out to me the most.

Marcus and Wrench’s friendship was highly entertaining, but it’s the level where Wrench is kidnapped and you have to save him where you really see the depth and trust between the two. None of the other characters truly get missions dedicated to them and that’s a shame, because the character driven missions were easily my favourites. This is certainly a character driven game, while the story is generic and not that engaging, by the time I finished, I was saddened because it meant I wasn’t going to get to interact with this crew anymore, and suddenly I lost most of my interest in playing. Though that shouldn’t be taken as too harshly of a criticism.

In a lot of ways, the gameplay shouldn’t be as good as I think it is. The game begins with a quick and easy tutorial level and a few cutscenes establishing the world, then within about half an hour, you’re free to roam the world and do the story missions whenever you feel like it. Hell, if you wanted, you could explore the entire world and get all the upgrades before even starting the first real mission. Now this isn’t really anything special, lots of open world games let you do this, but when I think of why it works so well in this game, one word comes into my mind, “Fun”. That’s the big improvement over Watch Dogs 1, plus a ton of open world games. This game’s main objective is for you to have a fun time, San Francisco isn’t a sandbox, it’s an entire playground with multiple toys to unlock, even if you don’t have a complex or original time, you are certainly going to have a fun time.

I also think this is why the repetitive gameplay and missions don’t bother me. The majority of the levels can be described as “Drive to this location, hack this, then either sneak out or shoot your way out”, and yes, that applies to both side-missions and main missions. If you were to look back at a lot of classic games like Super Mario Bros, Crash Bandicoot or even more modern games like Far Cry (Another Ubisoft series). A lot of them have incredibly repetitive missions, just with a few aesthetic changes or slightly different obstacle to overcome, almost every generation of gaming has this, but why doesn’t it bother us? Because it’s fun. While I’m always one for story heavy games, it can’t be denied, if there is more focus on making your audience think and pay close attention, flaws in gameplay are going to become more noticeable. Take for example the Uncharted games, the first 3 were basically adventure stories that only cared about being exciting and action packed, it’s the fourth one however where they try to give it a more intricate plot and character arcs, not a bad decision, but it certainly makes the game feel slower, and I became bored of the repetitive gameplay a lot quicker. The same can be said for Watch Dogs 1, except it has the even bigger problem that for a story heavy game, the story is not very interesting, meaning it has boring gameplay, and a boring story to boot. Watch Dogs 2 is like a firework show, it’s so fast, so bright and so dazzling, you don’t really care if it’s the same thing over and over again.

When Watch Dogs 1 came out, I couldn’t even finish it from how little I cared about what was happening and I got no more than a few hours into. Watch Dogs 2, took the same gameplay (Minus some minor but consistent annoyances), gave us entertaining characters, a more diverse colour pallet, and probably most important, some reasonable expectations with much more accurate trailers, not promising that this will be a revolutionary experience, but certainly an entertaining one. Honestly, if they make a Watch Dogs 3, I am more than happy to follow these characters around for a second time, and I’m giving this game an 8/10.

-Danny

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