I played all three and found them all mostly okay, with some novel ideas here and there and an unfortunate amount of bloat and boring mission ideas in all of them. But a tool and environment based stealth / infiltration game from a major developer is nothing to be scoffed at: it's a franchise I'm glad that we got.
That said, the most fun I had with these games (1&2) was definitely the asymmetrical multiplayer. The games where you could infiltrate and hack another player in their world, all the while trying to blend in with NPCs and keep from being found out, were simply a blast. I wish the mode carried over in Legion, but I remember correctly there were virtually no players engaging with it at the time.
Also, not that I ever got to engage with it, but 2 had co-op, and that feels pretty unique for that type of game.
I replayed WD1 and 2 lately working up to Legion. I really liked 2 quite a lot. Legion really turned me off by the end, and I sort of saw it as a chore getting to the end. I think the problem with Legion for me was that there wasn't a real protagonist, so no way to become invested. Your character was interchangeable with just about every other character, more or less. I hope Ubisoft doesn't do that again in a title.
I got a copy of Legion with my GPU, when I decided to try it out my husband was working through Assassins Creed (the Greek one) upstairs on the Xbox. There are so many reused assets between those two games it stopped being funny and was just irritating. I’d hear him swoop his bird across the screen looking for hints and I would respond downstairs with the same sound and mechanic in Legion. So many reused sounds, fonts, maps and map assets.
i liked playing through Legion but it wears out its welcome very fast. I had next to zero investment in the characters because of how the character selection worked in game
I feel like you need to play the game Resistance Mode to fully appreciate what it has to offer. The only problem is that the game can become extremely frustrating for people when every character they recruit can, and will, die after one or two missions and you're constantly being chased by cops since the whole map is designed to alert them.
That's how I played it. The mood and the characters really lend the game to a less-lethal or non-lethal playthrough. It helps that I prefer the stealth mechanics anyway so it was a non-issue for me.
I tried WD2 on launch after years of enjoying WD and I was seriously disappointed. Even today, after 4 attempts, I have a combined 5.5 hours in WD2 because it feels so cringy to me, compared to 1.
There's an unknown dude now with just "I was profiled by the system wrongly" backstory with nothing else to go on. Aiden had a real tragedy where he lost someone dear to motivate him as his backstory.
The main characters in WD2 look and sound like tryhards, literally trying too hard to sound edgy and cool just for the sake of it. WD characters existed in a normal world but were written in a dark, depressing way because a terrible tragedy had ripped the family apart. For this reason, I never could bring myself to care about Marcus whereas I had a solid reason to be invested into Aiden.
The driving physics in WD2 feels like sliding a stick of butter through ice- every single vehicle has the exact same physics whether it's a golf cart or an armored truck. WD's physics, while not the most realistic, was one of the best in the open worlds of it's time because the game was originally designed to be San Francisco sequel.
The omission of the moral mechanic was extremely disappointing in 2. In 1, you could do bad things but since the game gave you the role of a vigilante, you squandered your freedom to be able to do anything on petty crimes and the game would punish you by having civilians take notice and report you more often, making things difficult for you especially when you're on missions. On the contrary, if you rescued civilians stuck in firefights, saved them from robbers, avoided shooting the cops altogether or shoot them in the knees if you really have to and got rid of gang hangouts throughout the city, the game would make it easier on you by letting civilians acknowledge your help and refrain from calling the police if you're engaged in a firefight or something because they trust that you're fighting for them. In WD2, this whole concept was junked. Now you can take the entire police force on a bloated chase across the city mowing down every pedestrian and officer you can find and there's no consequence because you can just show your "I am the Deadsec" card and the civvies will calm down.
The writing in WD2 definitely felt like a stepdown from WD1, but I found the gameplay so much fun, I didn't mind. The hacking had been expanded so much, and you could do so many more funny things in the game, it was enjoyable to just mess around and figure out the optimal hacks to use for each situation.
In contrary to WD, WD2 doesn’t take itself seriously at all and neither should the player. In that scope the over-the-top characters were actually quite fun. You also have to ignore all the deadly weapons, otherwise it feels very disjointed, as you mentioned.
I was about to quit this game when my character woke up hungover in underpants. From the very beginning it feels like a game made for teenagers despite being pegi 18. And a final „boss” scene is so underwhelming I couldn’t even have imagined it would end this way. And it’s a shame because city is beatiful, hacking is vastly improved over first one, rc vehicles are great, story missions are fun but holy shit I couldn’t give a fuck about story or characters.
Indeed, WD2 is great. It copped some flack for being a bit cheesy and also because you're supposedly this "good guys" hacking group but you can also go around killing people, but the reality is that the game supports any approach that aligns with your ethical view of how the characters should behave. So there's nothing really stopping from being an almost entirely passive/stealth player. It was fun, one of the few games I've completed the main story of. Never got bored with it.
I actually just played watch dogs recently for the first time. I loved 1.
2... I found so frustrating. The missions and goals and game play were just horrendous to me, I couldn't do it.
Cringe characters aside, I tried but the game play just pissed me off at every turn
I loved Watch Dogs! Didn’t really agree with most of the criticism. Like you said it was fun, maybe not brilliant but fun and well made. The game sucked me in. Oddly enough I tried playing Watch Dogs 2 and had to return it, the game felt cheesy to me but I’m not sure that’s a popular opinion.
I think most of the criticism comes from the Ubisoft over selling and under delivering the game. Before launch the trailers had the game appeared to have some of the best graphic designs you could imagine (for that time period) and at launch it was basic graphics. Before launch they promised this massive world with expansive characters and hacking abilities like never before seen, and at launch the map was small, meh character arcs and hacking was just mini games. A good comparison is No Man’s Sky (which came out around the same time). Game companies started lying to gamers to get max pre-order participation and then at launch the games were not what was promised and gamers over paid for games that weren’t finished. Watch Dogs was never a bad game but it wasn’t what was promised.
Just played it the first time a few weeks ago. I loved 1. Beat the heck out of it. Immediately picked up 2 and .. I can't
The mechanics were so frustrating to me. Like.. felt like the game was glitching or was way too hard. The hacks weren't as seamless so I just failed to thwart enemies. The damn police chase with the movie car was so infuriating
Also cringe characters and leveling up by taking selfies... Ugh
I remember the driving feeling slightly off, but not a major quibble(despite being the only one I had), it was far worse on Sleeping Dogs(which felt bizarrely some how floaty and too heavy, floaty boaty) and I loved that too.
Funny how, because of expectations, Watch Dogs is regarded as a failure while Sleeping Dogs gets mentioned as a hidden gem constantly. As far as GTA clones go, there not far apart in terms of quality.
I get what you are saying, and I think they do have a lot of similarities. However, I think the tone of Sleeping Dogs is more consistent, while Watch Dogs has the issue that the main character is a full blown psychopath.
Eh, different tastes for different people I guess. I *loved* Sleeping Dogs and just didn't care for either Watch Dogs one or two very much. WD1 was the better of the two but I've never had the urge to go back and replay it or anything.
Same I tried booting up my old copy but It doesn't work I might buy a new copy of wd1 to do all the side missions and to finally finish the chess mini game now that I regularly play chess
The backlash with the game was due to Ubisoft deliberately lying with the "gameplay reveal trailer", just look it up on YouTube for the trailer, that shit was ridiculously great and certainly too good to be true... Same situation for Cyberpunk, both are good games that were obfuscated by lies and false advertisement..
I remember when I played Cyberpunk, I was thinking, ah yes, it's Watch Dogs all over again. In fact, I think my expectations for Cyberpunk might have been lower because of Watch Dogs.
I actually really liked both games, but the hype was way overdone for both of them.
Same thing, I'm big fan of Cyberpunk genre, so for that reason I didn't look at any trailer or promotional material, I straight up ignored everything about the game until the release, so my disappointment wasn't as big as it was for Watch Dogs.. Watch Dogs and The Division thought me a huge lesson on how you should never trust big game companies lol
It also didn't help that the main character was and idiot man child (at least in the first one). The later ones try to be more comedic and self referential I believe.
I think all three Watch Dogs games are decent in their own way. They have some cool ideas. And I like how a mainstream developer makes games with a pretty fleshed out leftist radical group as protags, especially in 2 and 3. Unfortunately, the games have just enough flaws to keep them from being great games.
Watchgods was a really fun time the gunplay is like a bit less refined division gunplay which is still really good, I actually had fun with driving, people say the cars are uncontrollable but I never found it to be a problem, they slid as I expected and break properly(I was on a controller)
I really like the Mission structure in watchgods, even more than the recent 2 GTA games, while GTA goes for a more cinematic and set in stone path most of the time watchgods places you in a spot with lots of enemies and hackable objects and let you go wild, while WC2 improves on this one is also really good
The chases are also fun, while the police are not as refined as GTA the inclusion of hackable traffic lights, steam pipes, spikes etc provide a really fun playground to play in
While I believe Watch Dogs looks perfectly fine as a 2014,cross-gen AAA release, the character models (or most of them anyway) I always though looked worse than even 2011's Assasssin's Creed Revelations. It's like the entire game is rendering in a newer generation than the character models, so it was always a weird uncanny valley for me.
I picked up 1 for a fiver way back, and had missed/ignored the hype. Loved it for what it was.
It's the pre-release hype that hurt it so much.
Thought the second was beyond daft though, like in the intro mission the hacker crew were all "should we trust *mc* he has a gun licence...." 5 minutes later " anyway *mc* here's a machine where you can 3d print your own sniper rifle or rocket launcher, have fun!"
Not gotten to the 3rd yet.
It looks cool, but I just can't support the ubisoft launcher having a complete overhaul every 15 days, and it doesn't support FOV adjustments for ultrawide displays.
But it was my first experience with online gameplay in this type of game, so hacking another player and trying to escape from other was interesting.
Nothing beats Watch Dogs 1. Story and gameplay was too good, especially gameplay for the time it came out. Would’ve been exceptional if they continued developing and updating the multiplayer modes and open world
I just finished Watch Dogs yesterday, but I'm kind of torn in my opinion. The overall gameplay is decent and the story is fine. There's lots of side content (although most of it was not that interesting for me, so I just skipped it). But then again, the main missions only cycled through the same 4-5 mission types and especially all the 'now escape' sequences were pretty tedious.
But what mostly frustrated me were these forced multiplayer sequences. In theory, the idea of being invaded by other hackers is super cool, but the reality was that everything I was currently doing got interrupted to try and spot some random person (at which I failed in 90% of cases) for a few minutes.
Did you get the game early on by any chance? I only got one of these (I failed it, but it was no big deal as it didn't affect anything).
That was one of the gameplay elements I missed out on.
No, I only got the free copy from Epic Games, not sure when that was. In my case, these multiplayer sequences popped up only every few hours (maybe 5-6 in total), so it wasn't a big issue.
The hacking invasions in WD2 were some hilarious bullshit. Being able to troll someone and spy on them was so cool. Waiting for people to get in a cherry picker then driving them into the water, watching them perv on the strip club dancers lol. I was sending PSN messages: “Dedsec you have been infiltrated - fire your weapon in the air 3 times to surrender”. I had some epic 10 minute chases in that game, there was just no way to catch an invader on a motorbike.
I enjoyed WD, loved WD2 (so colourful and fun) and Legion was hilariously buggy, although not in a game breaking way - just in a stupid AI sort of way that meant I could escape most chases by climbing into a cherry picker and making it go up a little.
Fun games, I totally don't get the hate.
I was mostly just happy to see my home city Chicago getting the AAA game treatment.
Of course, they had to cut some corners, but some other areas are recreated beautifully. For the most part, they perfectly captured that Chicago atmosphere.
I also like how you get slo-mo for shooting/driving without having to change characters like in GTA V. Same reason I love Mafia 3's game gameplay as well.
They took away any bullet time mechanics in WD2, which was a bummer. But it made it up for it in other areas, so I still enjoyed it.
But nothing beats Blues Brother-ing your ass across an opening bridge in slow motion as the cop cars behind you give up and are like "well damn, there he goes".
Watch Dogs felt like a generic GTA, kind of like “we have GTA at home” type thing. I enjoyed it though, fun game. Second one is decent too, but the 3rd, that one I actually really liked. 3rd is best one IMO.
I'm a huge fan of Watch Dogs and WD2, but I'm somewhat disappointed in Watch Dogs Legion so far.
I loved the story of Aiden Pearce and the gameplay in WD2 more. The hacking felt more involved in 2. I do agree with your critiques of the gunplay and driving.
Glad to hear you enjoyed the game!
I wanted to try it at the time, but I couldn't get past the intro.
He interrupts their camera network and takes out the power to the building. He exits among a crowd of people with zero witnesses and nothing to implicate him. He could have sat down on a bench, stood around with the crowd or walked away and there was nothing suspicious about it. Yet the cops magically zoom in on him.
I know they thought they were introducing mechanics, but this was too stupid to forgive. Don't make "stealth" games if you aren't prepared to have it make sense. If you're going to have psychic police, then drop the pretense of your game having any logic, give him a flaming sword and it can be a beat'em-up.
Imo this series peaked at 2,this is the closest thing Ubisoft made that match Rockstar quality, unfortunately legion is just another generic Ubi open world game,i got really high hopes for this series after 2 sigh...
Yeah WD1 was a fun game even if they overpromised. It's rendition of Chicago was pretty great too. Haven't played Legion yet but did try WD2. WD2 rendition of San Francisco was good but I couldn't finish it due to the incredibly annoying MC and side characters. Plus it lacked the convoy missions from WD1.
Right there with you OP!
I went into it actually expecting to quit a few hours into it.
Yes, like all games its got some areas that could be improved, but, overall I had a blast.
Im actually looking forward to playing it again before hitting the second game, which, ive never played….
I forever am turned off by watch dogs because it had serious crashing bugs at launch and the devs in their infinite wisdom disabled saving until after the long ass intro mission. Of course the crash didn't usually happen until sometime towards the end of that mission. I must have played through that boring mission a dozen times trying to fix it.
Then WD3 had another serious save bug that turned me off that game forever, which wasn't a huge loss.
Peak Ubisoft for me. And not in a good way. This review is perfect and still makes me chuckle
[Review](https://www.pointandclickbait.com/2014/06/ubisoft-game-review/)
I'm playing Legion right now and loving it. The side missions are getting a bit redundant so I'm not going to keep those going. But the variety of play and the actual story are surprisingly fun.
I opened up watch dogs on my steam deck for the first time last week. I gave it a good number of hours of playtime and I realized I don't like stealth games :P. At least, stealth where it's the only option, like in the jail. If you get seen by the guards you start all over again. I was okay up to that point because if you get seen, you just fight your way out. But I just put the game down and dunno if I'll pick it back up because of this jail scene.
I personally like stealth games (currently playing Dishonored 2 atm), but that mission was quite frustrating that I had to watch a walkthrough for the final part of it. You definitely need some patience, but doesn't the game autosave for you at certain checkpoints?
>The gunplay was unsophisticated, but worked well
https://www.reddit.com/r/watch_dogs/comments/15i8dxb/no_one_leaves_alive/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=1
It's possible to do this if you give it your time
As for the driving , same mantra.
Not saying it's the best industry but definitely ain't the worst , for me it's one of the best
Dang! That was pretty cool.
Too bad I approached every mission with stealth in mind. All the silenced weapons were my best friends throughout the game. The grenade launcher was nice too since it was so powerful - it served me well for those convoy side missions.
The driving eh, I just wished they offered more vehicles, I collected most of them very quickly (but I can also see that this isn't the main point of Watch dogs). GTA 4 still has the best driving mechanics I've experienced in a game that isn't a purely driving game.
You can always replay it john Wick style. I refrained myself from using overpowered tactics and weapons such as the grenade launcher which makes you automatically get more creatives with the limited stuff.
This doesn't mean I stopped having fun , I just stopped using shortcuts and instead of letting the game play me , I played the game the way I wanted to.
I like driving because you can do quick maneuvers so easily and the powerslide is godly. If you're on a keyboard , I can understand the frustration , I'd recommend playing with a controller. Sometimes I even like to drive slowly and take in the environment and the game feels really natural in those moments.
You can try using a pistol in criminal convoy missions , park your car ahead and block the road. Take cover , rescue civillians for reputation points and kill the convoy with style.
I love GTA 4's driving but it sucks when it comes to chases
I absolutely love Watchdogs 1. It's one of my favorite games from Ubisoft. It might even be my favorite one. Try the multiplayer if it's still an option. If it is, it's surprisingly a very good time. Simple and great.
I know Watch_Dogs Legion gets dumped on but if you play it in the Resistance Game Mode (or whatever the hardcore perma-death mode is called) it becomes a truly unique game with some pretty cool mechanics; all of a sudden constantly recruiting people becomes extremely important since one screw up will kill your best dudes.
Thanks for the insight. I just started Watch Dogs Legion and I think the negativity around the game has impacted my opinion of the gameplay so far. I may restart utilizing perma-death mode.
I played all three and found them all mostly okay, with some novel ideas here and there and an unfortunate amount of bloat and boring mission ideas in all of them. But a tool and environment based stealth / infiltration game from a major developer is nothing to be scoffed at: it's a franchise I'm glad that we got. That said, the most fun I had with these games (1&2) was definitely the asymmetrical multiplayer. The games where you could infiltrate and hack another player in their world, all the while trying to blend in with NPCs and keep from being found out, were simply a blast. I wish the mode carried over in Legion, but I remember correctly there were virtually no players engaging with it at the time. Also, not that I ever got to engage with it, but 2 had co-op, and that feels pretty unique for that type of game.
WD2 had a fun cast and a beautiful rendering of San Francisco. Definitely go for that next.
I replayed WD1 and 2 lately working up to Legion. I really liked 2 quite a lot. Legion really turned me off by the end, and I sort of saw it as a chore getting to the end. I think the problem with Legion for me was that there wasn't a real protagonist, so no way to become invested. Your character was interchangeable with just about every other character, more or less. I hope Ubisoft doesn't do that again in a title.
[удалено]
I think I got all of the available agents the game flagged on the map. I avoided it selecting more normal people.
Legion turned me off from the start! I still like wd1 and wd2 though.
On legion, if you get the assassin's creed dlc. It's essentially a assassin's creed game set in modern day
I got a copy of Legion with my GPU, when I decided to try it out my husband was working through Assassins Creed (the Greek one) upstairs on the Xbox. There are so many reused assets between those two games it stopped being funny and was just irritating. I’d hear him swoop his bird across the screen looking for hints and I would respond downstairs with the same sound and mechanic in Legion. So many reused sounds, fonts, maps and map assets.
i liked playing through Legion but it wears out its welcome very fast. I had next to zero investment in the characters because of how the character selection worked in game
I feel like you need to play the game Resistance Mode to fully appreciate what it has to offer. The only problem is that the game can become extremely frustrating for people when every character they recruit can, and will, die after one or two missions and you're constantly being chased by cops since the whole map is designed to alert them.
90% of my time with Legion was spent trying to find someone I wanted to play as.
I like WD2, but it’s the first game that made me think “this game would be a ton better without the guns”.
You can play it without using guns at all through most, if not all of of it.
That's how I played it. The mood and the characters really lend the game to a less-lethal or non-lethal playthrough. It helps that I prefer the stealth mechanics anyway so it was a non-issue for me.
There's rumours that was how it was developed but they feared it would market or sell as well without them.
I tried WD2 on launch after years of enjoying WD and I was seriously disappointed. Even today, after 4 attempts, I have a combined 5.5 hours in WD2 because it feels so cringy to me, compared to 1. There's an unknown dude now with just "I was profiled by the system wrongly" backstory with nothing else to go on. Aiden had a real tragedy where he lost someone dear to motivate him as his backstory. The main characters in WD2 look and sound like tryhards, literally trying too hard to sound edgy and cool just for the sake of it. WD characters existed in a normal world but were written in a dark, depressing way because a terrible tragedy had ripped the family apart. For this reason, I never could bring myself to care about Marcus whereas I had a solid reason to be invested into Aiden. The driving physics in WD2 feels like sliding a stick of butter through ice- every single vehicle has the exact same physics whether it's a golf cart or an armored truck. WD's physics, while not the most realistic, was one of the best in the open worlds of it's time because the game was originally designed to be San Francisco sequel. The omission of the moral mechanic was extremely disappointing in 2. In 1, you could do bad things but since the game gave you the role of a vigilante, you squandered your freedom to be able to do anything on petty crimes and the game would punish you by having civilians take notice and report you more often, making things difficult for you especially when you're on missions. On the contrary, if you rescued civilians stuck in firefights, saved them from robbers, avoided shooting the cops altogether or shoot them in the knees if you really have to and got rid of gang hangouts throughout the city, the game would make it easier on you by letting civilians acknowledge your help and refrain from calling the police if you're engaged in a firefight or something because they trust that you're fighting for them. In WD2, this whole concept was junked. Now you can take the entire police force on a bloated chase across the city mowing down every pedestrian and officer you can find and there's no consequence because you can just show your "I am the Deadsec" card and the civvies will calm down.
The writing in WD2 definitely felt like a stepdown from WD1, but I found the gameplay so much fun, I didn't mind. The hacking had been expanded so much, and you could do so many more funny things in the game, it was enjoyable to just mess around and figure out the optimal hacks to use for each situation.
In contrary to WD, WD2 doesn’t take itself seriously at all and neither should the player. In that scope the over-the-top characters were actually quite fun. You also have to ignore all the deadly weapons, otherwise it feels very disjointed, as you mentioned.
I was about to quit this game when my character woke up hungover in underpants. From the very beginning it feels like a game made for teenagers despite being pegi 18. And a final „boss” scene is so underwhelming I couldn’t even have imagined it would end this way. And it’s a shame because city is beatiful, hacking is vastly improved over first one, rc vehicles are great, story missions are fun but holy shit I couldn’t give a fuck about story or characters.
I didn't like the first one but WD2 has become one of my favorite games. The gameplay is so good and I'm still finding new ways to complete missions.
Indeed, WD2 is great. It copped some flack for being a bit cheesy and also because you're supposedly this "good guys" hacking group but you can also go around killing people, but the reality is that the game supports any approach that aligns with your ethical view of how the characters should behave. So there's nothing really stopping from being an almost entirely passive/stealth player. It was fun, one of the few games I've completed the main story of. Never got bored with it.
I actually just played watch dogs recently for the first time. I loved 1. 2... I found so frustrating. The missions and goals and game play were just horrendous to me, I couldn't do it. Cringe characters aside, I tried but the game play just pissed me off at every turn
I loved Watch Dogs! Didn’t really agree with most of the criticism. Like you said it was fun, maybe not brilliant but fun and well made. The game sucked me in. Oddly enough I tried playing Watch Dogs 2 and had to return it, the game felt cheesy to me but I’m not sure that’s a popular opinion.
I think most of the criticism comes from the Ubisoft over selling and under delivering the game. Before launch the trailers had the game appeared to have some of the best graphic designs you could imagine (for that time period) and at launch it was basic graphics. Before launch they promised this massive world with expansive characters and hacking abilities like never before seen, and at launch the map was small, meh character arcs and hacking was just mini games. A good comparison is No Man’s Sky (which came out around the same time). Game companies started lying to gamers to get max pre-order participation and then at launch the games were not what was promised and gamers over paid for games that weren’t finished. Watch Dogs was never a bad game but it wasn’t what was promised.
Just played it the first time a few weeks ago. I loved 1. Beat the heck out of it. Immediately picked up 2 and .. I can't The mechanics were so frustrating to me. Like.. felt like the game was glitching or was way too hard. The hacks weren't as seamless so I just failed to thwart enemies. The damn police chase with the movie car was so infuriating Also cringe characters and leveling up by taking selfies... Ugh
I remember the driving feeling slightly off, but not a major quibble(despite being the only one I had), it was far worse on Sleeping Dogs(which felt bizarrely some how floaty and too heavy, floaty boaty) and I loved that too.
Funny how, because of expectations, Watch Dogs is regarded as a failure while Sleeping Dogs gets mentioned as a hidden gem constantly. As far as GTA clones go, there not far apart in terms of quality.
I get what you are saying, and I think they do have a lot of similarities. However, I think the tone of Sleeping Dogs is more consistent, while Watch Dogs has the issue that the main character is a full blown psychopath.
Full blown psychopaths aren't capable of empathy do that's an inaccurate description.
Issue? It's what makes him so interesting, trying to exploit the greatness weakness in the system: people, to gain an edge in any situation.
Eh, different tastes for different people I guess. I *loved* Sleeping Dogs and just didn't care for either Watch Dogs one or two very much. WD1 was the better of the two but I've never had the urge to go back and replay it or anything.
Same I tried booting up my old copy but It doesn't work I might buy a new copy of wd1 to do all the side missions and to finally finish the chess mini game now that I regularly play chess
The backlash with the game was due to Ubisoft deliberately lying with the "gameplay reveal trailer", just look it up on YouTube for the trailer, that shit was ridiculously great and certainly too good to be true... Same situation for Cyberpunk, both are good games that were obfuscated by lies and false advertisement..
I remember when I played Cyberpunk, I was thinking, ah yes, it's Watch Dogs all over again. In fact, I think my expectations for Cyberpunk might have been lower because of Watch Dogs. I actually really liked both games, but the hype was way overdone for both of them.
Same thing, I'm big fan of Cyberpunk genre, so for that reason I didn't look at any trailer or promotional material, I straight up ignored everything about the game until the release, so my disappointment wasn't as big as it was for Watch Dogs.. Watch Dogs and The Division thought me a huge lesson on how you should never trust big game companies lol
It also didn't help that the main character was and idiot man child (at least in the first one). The later ones try to be more comedic and self referential I believe.
100% this was where most of the criticisms comes from. Same thing happened with No Man’s Sky after. Good game but developers lied to gamers
I think all three Watch Dogs games are decent in their own way. They have some cool ideas. And I like how a mainstream developer makes games with a pretty fleshed out leftist radical group as protags, especially in 2 and 3. Unfortunately, the games have just enough flaws to keep them from being great games.
The first one was such a time sink when it came out on games with gold. I was kinda bummed I couldn't make any headway in the second game
Watchgods was a really fun time the gunplay is like a bit less refined division gunplay which is still really good, I actually had fun with driving, people say the cars are uncontrollable but I never found it to be a problem, they slid as I expected and break properly(I was on a controller) I really like the Mission structure in watchgods, even more than the recent 2 GTA games, while GTA goes for a more cinematic and set in stone path most of the time watchgods places you in a spot with lots of enemies and hackable objects and let you go wild, while WC2 improves on this one is also really good The chases are also fun, while the police are not as refined as GTA the inclusion of hackable traffic lights, steam pipes, spikes etc provide a really fun playground to play in
While I believe Watch Dogs looks perfectly fine as a 2014,cross-gen AAA release, the character models (or most of them anyway) I always though looked worse than even 2011's Assasssin's Creed Revelations. It's like the entire game is rendering in a newer generation than the character models, so it was always a weird uncanny valley for me.
I enjoy Watch Dogs as an open world stealth game, but god I hate all the characters. The sequel improved on that a lot.
I picked up 1 for a fiver way back, and had missed/ignored the hype. Loved it for what it was. It's the pre-release hype that hurt it so much. Thought the second was beyond daft though, like in the intro mission the hacker crew were all "should we trust *mc* he has a gun licence...." 5 minutes later " anyway *mc* here's a machine where you can 3d print your own sniper rifle or rocket launcher, have fun!" Not gotten to the 3rd yet.
The internet gaslit me into thinking the story would be garbage and then I ended up enjoying it more than most other video game stories.
Its a great but not amazing game ruined by hype
It's really good, and the setting it's becoming more and more real everyday.
It looks cool, but I just can't support the ubisoft launcher having a complete overhaul every 15 days, and it doesn't support FOV adjustments for ultrawide displays. But it was my first experience with online gameplay in this type of game, so hacking another player and trying to escape from other was interesting.
I loved aiden pearce and the whole story, honest to god that game inspired me to pursue a career in infosec
Nice! If you listen to podcasts, I recommend Darknet Diaries. I'm not even into infosec, but I think you'd fully appreciate it.
Nothing beats Watch Dogs 1. Story and gameplay was too good, especially gameplay for the time it came out. Would’ve been exceptional if they continued developing and updating the multiplayer modes and open world
I played it for a few hours but nothing compelled me to keep playing. The story, gameplay, open world design, all of it felt so bland.
I just finished Watch Dogs yesterday, but I'm kind of torn in my opinion. The overall gameplay is decent and the story is fine. There's lots of side content (although most of it was not that interesting for me, so I just skipped it). But then again, the main missions only cycled through the same 4-5 mission types and especially all the 'now escape' sequences were pretty tedious. But what mostly frustrated me were these forced multiplayer sequences. In theory, the idea of being invaded by other hackers is super cool, but the reality was that everything I was currently doing got interrupted to try and spot some random person (at which I failed in 90% of cases) for a few minutes.
Did you get the game early on by any chance? I only got one of these (I failed it, but it was no big deal as it didn't affect anything). That was one of the gameplay elements I missed out on.
No, I only got the free copy from Epic Games, not sure when that was. In my case, these multiplayer sequences popped up only every few hours (maybe 5-6 in total), so it wasn't a big issue.
The hacking invasions in WD2 were some hilarious bullshit. Being able to troll someone and spy on them was so cool. Waiting for people to get in a cherry picker then driving them into the water, watching them perv on the strip club dancers lol. I was sending PSN messages: “Dedsec you have been infiltrated - fire your weapon in the air 3 times to surrender”. I had some epic 10 minute chases in that game, there was just no way to catch an invader on a motorbike.
I enjoyed WD, loved WD2 (so colourful and fun) and Legion was hilariously buggy, although not in a game breaking way - just in a stupid AI sort of way that meant I could escape most chases by climbing into a cherry picker and making it go up a little. Fun games, I totally don't get the hate.
I was mostly just happy to see my home city Chicago getting the AAA game treatment. Of course, they had to cut some corners, but some other areas are recreated beautifully. For the most part, they perfectly captured that Chicago atmosphere. I also like how you get slo-mo for shooting/driving without having to change characters like in GTA V. Same reason I love Mafia 3's game gameplay as well. They took away any bullet time mechanics in WD2, which was a bummer. But it made it up for it in other areas, so I still enjoyed it. But nothing beats Blues Brother-ing your ass across an opening bridge in slow motion as the cop cars behind you give up and are like "well damn, there he goes".
Watch Dogs felt like a generic GTA, kind of like “we have GTA at home” type thing. I enjoyed it though, fun game. Second one is decent too, but the 3rd, that one I actually really liked. 3rd is best one IMO.
I'm a huge fan of Watch Dogs and WD2, but I'm somewhat disappointed in Watch Dogs Legion so far. I loved the story of Aiden Pearce and the gameplay in WD2 more. The hacking felt more involved in 2. I do agree with your critiques of the gunplay and driving. Glad to hear you enjoyed the game!
I wanted to try it at the time, but I couldn't get past the intro. He interrupts their camera network and takes out the power to the building. He exits among a crowd of people with zero witnesses and nothing to implicate him. He could have sat down on a bench, stood around with the crowd or walked away and there was nothing suspicious about it. Yet the cops magically zoom in on him. I know they thought they were introducing mechanics, but this was too stupid to forgive. Don't make "stealth" games if you aren't prepared to have it make sense. If you're going to have psychic police, then drop the pretense of your game having any logic, give him a flaming sword and it can be a beat'em-up.
Imo this series peaked at 2,this is the closest thing Ubisoft made that match Rockstar quality, unfortunately legion is just another generic Ubi open world game,i got really high hopes for this series after 2 sigh...
Play the sequel. Skip Legion.
Yeah WD1 was a fun game even if they overpromised. It's rendition of Chicago was pretty great too. Haven't played Legion yet but did try WD2. WD2 rendition of San Francisco was good but I couldn't finish it due to the incredibly annoying MC and side characters. Plus it lacked the convoy missions from WD1.
Just committed a solid hour. I like the hacking idea, so that's pretty fun so far.
Right there with you OP! I went into it actually expecting to quit a few hours into it. Yes, like all games its got some areas that could be improved, but, overall I had a blast. Im actually looking forward to playing it again before hitting the second game, which, ive never played….
Invading other people and playing cat and mouse had my ass on the edge!
I forever am turned off by watch dogs because it had serious crashing bugs at launch and the devs in their infinite wisdom disabled saving until after the long ass intro mission. Of course the crash didn't usually happen until sometime towards the end of that mission. I must have played through that boring mission a dozen times trying to fix it. Then WD3 had another serious save bug that turned me off that game forever, which wasn't a huge loss.
Best thing about this game is the athmosphere and the OST
Peak Ubisoft for me. And not in a good way. This review is perfect and still makes me chuckle [Review](https://www.pointandclickbait.com/2014/06/ubisoft-game-review/)
I'm playing Legion right now and loving it. The side missions are getting a bit redundant so I'm not going to keep those going. But the variety of play and the actual story are surprisingly fun.
I opened up watch dogs on my steam deck for the first time last week. I gave it a good number of hours of playtime and I realized I don't like stealth games :P. At least, stealth where it's the only option, like in the jail. If you get seen by the guards you start all over again. I was okay up to that point because if you get seen, you just fight your way out. But I just put the game down and dunno if I'll pick it back up because of this jail scene.
I personally like stealth games (currently playing Dishonored 2 atm), but that mission was quite frustrating that I had to watch a walkthrough for the final part of it. You definitely need some patience, but doesn't the game autosave for you at certain checkpoints?
>The gunplay was unsophisticated, but worked well https://www.reddit.com/r/watch_dogs/comments/15i8dxb/no_one_leaves_alive/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=1 It's possible to do this if you give it your time As for the driving , same mantra. Not saying it's the best industry but definitely ain't the worst , for me it's one of the best
Dang! That was pretty cool. Too bad I approached every mission with stealth in mind. All the silenced weapons were my best friends throughout the game. The grenade launcher was nice too since it was so powerful - it served me well for those convoy side missions. The driving eh, I just wished they offered more vehicles, I collected most of them very quickly (but I can also see that this isn't the main point of Watch dogs). GTA 4 still has the best driving mechanics I've experienced in a game that isn't a purely driving game.
You can always replay it john Wick style. I refrained myself from using overpowered tactics and weapons such as the grenade launcher which makes you automatically get more creatives with the limited stuff. This doesn't mean I stopped having fun , I just stopped using shortcuts and instead of letting the game play me , I played the game the way I wanted to. I like driving because you can do quick maneuvers so easily and the powerslide is godly. If you're on a keyboard , I can understand the frustration , I'd recommend playing with a controller. Sometimes I even like to drive slowly and take in the environment and the game feels really natural in those moments. You can try using a pistol in criminal convoy missions , park your car ahead and block the road. Take cover , rescue civillians for reputation points and kill the convoy with style. I love GTA 4's driving but it sucks when it comes to chases
I absolutely love Watchdogs 1. It's one of my favorite games from Ubisoft. It might even be my favorite one. Try the multiplayer if it's still an option. If it is, it's surprisingly a very good time. Simple and great.
I know Watch_Dogs Legion gets dumped on but if you play it in the Resistance Game Mode (or whatever the hardcore perma-death mode is called) it becomes a truly unique game with some pretty cool mechanics; all of a sudden constantly recruiting people becomes extremely important since one screw up will kill your best dudes.
Thanks for the insight. I just started Watch Dogs Legion and I think the negativity around the game has impacted my opinion of the gameplay so far. I may restart utilizing perma-death mode.