Watch Dogs 2 - Catch All

Only got about an hour and a half into the game last night, but for me it hasn't made a real good first impression. But I'm just starting and of course I may end up really liking it.

That goddam final ekart race is next to impossible- your opponents all accelerate faster than you and have higher top speeds, your only advantage is that they all suck at cornering. I played that mission on repeat for half an hour and only managed to finish out of sheer luck when the second and third place cars hit each other and spun out while passing me after I got a slight lead on the last turn.

I can't compete in the drone racing because every time I pull back on the stick the drone pitches down instead of up

Demosthenes wrote:

One story beat for a minor mission (spoilered just in case), though, kind of worries me...

Spoiler:
Many of the missions Marcus takes on are more problematic than the game cares to note. In one, you hack into a teenage girl's webcam to scare her, to "teach her a lesson" that she shouldn't stream herself online over a webcam.

DedSec's gross, victim-blaming reasoning: Running your webcam is insecure, and someone might stalk her.

That... is kind of bleh. Kind of like Aiden hacking into a million cameras inside people's houses just because he can. Will have to see how that plays out over the next couple of days once I get my copy tomorrow.

I just found this mission and in context it's not quite as bad as they make it sound:

Spoiler:

The teenager in question is related to one of the Dedsec hackers (Sitara) who is fine with her streaming but has been unproductively trying to convince her to use proper internet security while she streams since she is becoming internet famous and could potentially start attracting the attention of less benevolent hackers. You don't really "scare her straight" so much as interrupt one of her livestreams in a fairly innocuous manner so that she'll listen to Sitara's advice and run a security suite during her streams.

So is multiplayer still disabled?

Oh man! It's

Spoiler:

Aiden Pearce!

Just met a mission NPC who is trans. So far she seems to be being treated well. She works for the government and Marcus correctly addresses her as a congresswoman.

So to get the paparazzi's help with a mission, I gave him a stolen celebrity sex tape. Bleh.

Demosthenes wrote:

So to get the paparazzi's help with a mission, I gave him a stolen celebrity sex tape. Bleh.

Yeah. Disappointing.

Just offering a heads up. There's a potentially triggering unmarked side mission where you watch someone commit suicide. Very disturbing.

So, I had a questline that I'm having trouble finding the real-world parallel to. I assume we have enough people with either coding experience or knowledge of hacking lore...

One of the missions references the 52-hertz whale. Get the marine biology reference. But it ties into a series of hackable puzzles that eventually leads to an NSA recruitment drive and the characters referencing how the CIA did the same thing years ago to recruit hackers into the agency (basically through entrapment, to solve the puzzles, you had to be willing to break several different laws, so that by the end, the CIA are waiting for you and lay out your prison sentence versus your compensation for working for the CIA).

Anyone have any links on the story? Would be curious to read more about it.

Demosthenes wrote:

So, I had a questline that I'm having trouble finding the real-world parallel to. I assume we have enough people with either coding experience or knowledge of hacking lore...

One of the missions references the 52-hertz whale. Get the marine biology reference. But it ties into a series of hackable puzzles that eventually leads to an NSA recruitment drive and the characters referencing how the CIA did the same thing years ago to recruit hackers into the agency (basically through entrapment, to solve the puzzles, you had to be willing to break several different laws, so that by the end, the CIA are waiting for you and lay out your prison sentence versus your compensation for working for the CIA).

Anyone have any links on the story? Would be curious to read more about it.

I believe its a reference to this, maybe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada...

It's quite amusing at the moment to listen to gaming podcasts as they talk about this game. Invariably someone will say, "Yeah the hacking in the first game felt very basic. In Watch Dogs 2 you can do activity X." which, invariably, is something you could also do in Watch Dogs 1.

Higgledy wrote:

It's quite amusing at the moment to listen to gaming podcasts as they talk about this game. Invariably someone will say, "Yeah the hacking in the first game felt very basic. In Watch Dogs 2 you can do activity X." which, invariably, is something you could also do in Watch Dogs 1.

Yeah, the only totally new things I've found that aren't some kind of retread of an activity in the first (though with some decent polish) are the devices (your roller and quadcopter) and the skills/activities associated with them.

Demosthenes wrote:

Yeah, the only totally new things I've found that aren't some kind of retread of an activity in the first (though with some decent polish) are the devices (your roller and quadcopter) and the skills/activities associated with them.

...and I think something like the roller was introduced in the T-Bone DLC for the first game.

Higgledy wrote:

It's quite amusing at the moment to listen to gaming podcasts as they talk about this game. Invariably someone will say, "Yeah the hacking in the first game felt very basic. In Watch Dogs 2 you can do activity X." which, invariably, is something you could also do in Watch Dogs 1.

Man, it kills me when podcasts get stuff like this wrong. Just this morning I was listening to a months-old Penny Arcade podcast. First they kept calling Tom Hardy "Tom Brady", which might make them the only American male duo who doesn't know who Tom Brady is. Then they were trying to figure out the deal with Light scaling in PVP in Destiny, which has been established for a long time now (all damage is normalized except in Iron Banner and Trials of Osiris).

No doubt due to the problems with multiplayer I'm currently world bronze in hacking invasion.

Im sure it won't last.

I ordered an MSI Gtx1070 and when I did they just changed the bonus game from Gears if War to Watch Dogs 2! Much more excited for this game.

I just bought a NVIDIA code for this from Ebay for $30. Can't beat that price for a game not even release yet. I would recommend to look for those codes on there if your interested in the PC version. I'm sure lots of people are going to put it up after buying NVIDIA video cards.

Balthezor wrote:

I just bought a NVIDIA code for this from Ebay for $30. Can't beat that price for a game not even release yet.

Didn't it come out on the 15th?

groan wrote:
Balthezor wrote:

I just bought a NVIDIA code for this from Ebay for $30. Can't beat that price for a game not even release yet.

Didn't it come out on the 15th?

The console versions yes. The PC version, the 29th... I know lame..

I'm reading that the multiplayer is back on now. I'm hoping for a pre-Christmas sale on the XB1 version, ala BF1 or Titanfall 2 for $36.

The multiplayer is crazy fun... when it works. It's still a bit spotty. I'll have several events pop up back to back, then nothing for an hour, not even when I manually search for matches. My favorite game mode, Bounty Hunter, is even worse since your opponents are limited to people who opt-in or those with a 4+ Wanted level.

I'm joining the hacking evolution, got Watch Dogs 2 this past Friday (£32 from Tesco) & have played through Marcus' initiation with Deadsec (the tutorial level) & I like the vibe.

The hacktective mode is pretty nifty to better able to get to cameras littered around buildings/areas, or any hackable device that can be used to distract/KO/kill enemies, plus it drowns out sound to an extent which for certain gang hangouts & their awful choice of music is welcome.

The parkour feels great but there has been a few instances of dodgy animation, it's especially troublesome with ascending or descending rocks or mountains. One of the Scout site's I went to had a bunch of cronies that spotted me towards the outskirts of the area, it was a location high up in the mountains. I decided to bail over the railings then leg it down this huge cliff face that should have been too vertical to keep upright but I ended up doing this Skyrim type glide down this massive rock face. There have been other times when it easily looks like you can parkour over something but it doesn't let you. A jump button would have been great, that can be a feature for Watch Dogs 3

Got a code for Watch Dogs 2 but I have no interest in playing it. PM me if you want it and will actually play it.

[and it's gone]

What system is that on?

still waiting for my key from my retailer. I want to load it up so i can play tonight!

I seriously can't get enough of bounty hunter. It's so much fun, especially when it starts pulling in multiple players to both attack and defend.

Word of advice for pvp in general: most players apparently haven't realized how awesome and overpowered the stun grenade launcher is, and no one expects you to roll up with one.

I had no intention of getting this, but got it as part of the Samsung SSD deal. I haven't redeemed my code yet. How is the game as a purely single player game? Are the moment to moment activities fun? Repetitive? Is there a story and is it decent? I'm kinda an Assassin's Creed hater and since this is UBI...