Game Review: Watch Dogs 2
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I’m about to eat some more words, aren’t I?
Cast your mind back to September, and more importantly, this trailer.
Everyone thought this would be a massive cringe-fest. We saw a group of young adults preparing to rebel against a corrupt system, bringing it down through being cool and a few keyboard taps. A story that has been told through generations. But you want to know the weirdest thing?
The game is incredibly good.
It takes what Watch Dogs did in the first game and expands and adapts it to suit the audience. Where Watch Dogs in 2013 failed was the characters were all as interesting as plywood. They focused too heavily on trying to make Aiden Pearce, the protagonist, as edgy and as cool as possible. The result? You ended up hating him. He wasn’t funny, or relatable.
But, with Watch Dogs 2 you have a bunch of cool and funny characters to interact with. There’s Sitara, a social wizard, who manages their Internet presence. There’s Horatio, who’s deep undercover at Nudle, which is basically an allegory for Google. Josh, who is a genius when it comes to code, and a shout out for making him unapologetically autistic. It’s never said outright, but his actions and speech patterns are so perfectly represented, it’s wonderful.
Then you have Wrench, a mysterious, angry young man who simply hates the system. He’s funny, geeky, and only slightly cringe-worthy.
Then there’s Marcus, the main character, who joins this ‘rag-tag’ crew as they attempt to take down Blume, who are basically evil incarnate.
The mechanics have been vastly improved since the last game. Hacking feels cool, and you can do some impressive stuff. You can move cars with your phone, take control of cranes, use your drone or RC to gain perspective, stop traffic, blow up drains. It’s endless.
My only gripe?
Guns.
You are given a stun gun at the beginning of the game, and if you’re stealthy, you literally just need that. It does seem odd that you’re a young adult nerd hacker, but know how to fire a multitude of weapons to great effect.
Point is, the game is fantastic. I could not recommend it enough, if you want a decent open world game.