Thirith on 2/2/2017 at 11:46
Now getting into this game and really enjoying it - which is a bit of a surprise, since I disliked the first game. A lot of that is due to personality, though: of the protagonists, but also of the city. San Francisco and the Bay Area are simply much more interesting and fun to navigate, and while the characters are silly, that silliness is embraced, which I find vastly preferable to dour, self-righteous Aiden Pearce. (There are traces of self-awareness in Watch_Dogs handling of its main character, but they're too few and far between, which makes the game seem rather schizophrenic at times.)
I'm not far yet, having only done a couple of the main missions - but one thing I'm finding a bit annoying is that there are a number of activities and (at least side-)missions that, if I'm not mistaken, I simply can't do yet because I lack a certain skill. That's okay, but I spent a fair time trying to get to places without much of an indication from the game that I can't get there *yet*. I don't need a big sign saying, "Don't proceed here unless you've got skill X!", but you can hint at these things a bit more subtly. As it was, I didn't know if it was simply a case of me, the player, being blind or incompetent.
Thirith on 26/2/2017 at 09:24
The more I play this game, the more underrated I find it, at least by players at large. It's definitely shallow in the way most Ubisoft titles are, but I'm finding the characters endearingly goofy and the world is fantastic. IMO this is the Watch Dogs equivalent of Assassins Creed Syndicate: it avoids a lot of the flaws of its predecessor and is just way more fun.
PigLick on 26/2/2017 at 09:58
What gpu are you using and how does it perform? Quite interested in this but my graphics card is just under the minimum specs, which I take with a grain of salt because the Witcher 3 runs fine at medium detail on my pc.
Thirith on 26/2/2017 at 12:29
I'm playing it on PS4, I'm afraid... I also got a free copy on PC, but I haven't played much of it beyond the tutorial, and since I've got a GTX 1080 I'm not sure my reply would be of help to you.
PigLick on 26/2/2017 at 13:10
haha fair enough, guess by the time it goes on a good sale price I will have upgraded by then
SD on 26/2/2017 at 16:50
Quote Posted by Thirith
The more I play this game, the more underrated I find it, at least by players at large. It's definitely shallow in the way most Ubisoft titles are, but I'm finding the characters endearingly goofy and the world is fantastic. IMO this is the
Watch Dogs equivalent of
Assassins Creed Syndicate: it avoids a lot of the flaws of its predecessor and is just way more fun.
I've just finished the first Watch Dogs, and have been baffled by the lukewarm reception that one got too.
I don't understand gamers sometimes, I really don't.
Will definitely be picking up this one as soon as there's a decent sale.
Thirith on 26/2/2017 at 17:38
Don't take my word re: Watch_Dogs 2, then, since I was one of the people who were rather lukewarm about the first one.
SD on 26/2/2017 at 18:28
Everything I've seen suggests the sequel is an improvement over the original, whatever someone thought of the first :D
Thirith on 27/2/2017 at 08:01
What the sequel IMO does much better is tone: as I've written before, I like that they were trying to create an ambivalent character in Aiden Pearce in the first game, but to my mind they did a bad job. At best, Pearce was a dull, generically grim player character, at worst the game's story was torn between painting him as a self-centered murderous jerk and a justified vigilante power fantasy that we're unequivocally supposed to enjoy playing. Watch_Dogs 2 is much sillier, but for me that silliness works considerably better. Some players found the millennial hackers of WD2 annoying, but for me they work pretty well, because the game knows they're actually pretty silly.
The other thing I very much prefer, which is connected to the tone: I found the original game's Chicago a boring, drab environment, but San Francisco is considerably more varied, already topographically. There's a lot more verticality, which I like in an open world (it's also why San Fierro was my favourite environment in San Andreas), there's a lot more colour, there are ethnically varied quarters. Obviously it's a touristy version of SF, but for me that works very well. I'm using fast travel pretty rarely because I enjoy getting to know this space.
I don't know how you saw these things in the original, and your priorities may well be different, but these (plus lots of smaller elements) make me enjoy WD2 where the original mostly bored and annoyed me.
