Watch Dogs 2

Just finished the game. Overall, super good plot and game, but the last mission was HUGELY disappointing to me.

First off, getting to play as other characters was kind of cool, even though it was basically just a gimped version of your normal character.

The part with Wrench was absurdly stupid. It really highlights how awful the combat is in this game. It's played up as though it expects you to go in guns blazing, but if you do that more than likely you will die within 30 seconds or so. Armored enemies, EVEN with the full damage upgrades for weapons, still take multiple headshots depending on the weapon, whereas you take like 3 shots from them and you are dead. Half the time when you take cover, you just get shot through it anyway. You have no real way other than a vague notion of how much damage you've taken and how much you have left before you die, so half the time you take cover a split second too late and end up dying again. I think I ended up doing the Wrench mission like 20 times before I was able to complete it.

The Marcus part in Blume wasn't much better - again, they just give you the finger and throw a dozen or so armored guys at you at once. Sadly enough, the upgraded stun gun really shines here because pretty much no other weapon will one-shot the armored guys, even with a headshot, and the stun gun does it regardless of where you hit them.

In the end, you don't really even get anything cool other than some clothing items. Would have liked to have seen some special weapons, maybe some cool vehicles for freeplay. But nope, appears to be nothing really.

Apparently you can't ever max out on followers/research points as well, because I never did complete the whole tree and it stopped giving me research points for followers. I don't think there are enough Research Points around in the world left to max me out at this point, either.

I also don't understand how you are ever supposed to get enough cash to buy the top-end performance car, or really most of the cars/weapons in general. I think it's somewhere around $1.5 million and throughout the course of the game I think I barely got that in total, and I never even bought most of the guns or ANY other vehicles other than the Lamborghini (~$360k I think). I ended the game with around $600k, so overall I MIGHT have made 1.5 million, but I would have had to never buy anything else. And that was with a ton of hacking random people for maximum cash, and doing a large number of the racing/drone/whatever missions.

It's a shame because up until the end this was probably an 8.5/10 game for me. Now it's probably closer to a 7-7.5/10, because of the disappointing ending and essentially non-existent motivation to keep playing beyond the last story mission.

Oh, and:

Horatio's death felt pretty meaningless. He was the least-used character (you almost never even saw him until the Nudle mission) and then immediately after they throw his death at you like it's some big emotional thing. Didn't really affect me at all because he barely had a role in the plot. That whole thing felt like a fail on the part of the story writers.
 
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I can't believe how good this game is.. After sitting on it and reading reviews I caved.. Ubisoft righted a gigantic wrong.. One of my favorite games of the year so far..
 
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The less attention a Ubisoft game gets, the better it is. PC gamers would rather not talk about a Ubisoft game at all, than have to praise it instead.
AC: Syndicate was great as well... Radio silence on that one.
 
You should be able to max it out with leftover points to spare.

I really don't see how. I have at least 4-5 skills on the top end to unlock, so that is something like ~40 more research points needed, and I've done all of the orange missions and most of the random racing/whatever missions as well.

EDIT: Actually it's more like 9 locked skills, but the total is probably around the same (40-ish points required)
 
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I don't know about you guys but when I picture a hacker roaming the streets of San Francisco, he doesn't spend all of his time driving forklifts and stair-cars.
This game has way too many climbing puzzles.
 
Trying to figure out how to get the drone into various places was one of the more interesting parts of the game, IMO. :D

Sometimes you have to get pretty creative. I'm not sure what the "right" way was to do it, but for one of the research points I had to kick a propane tank down into the basement of an under-construction house in order to gain a tiny bit of height so my drone could jump up onto a wood pile to get to the point to pick it up.
 
Trying to figure out how to get the drone into various places was one of the more interesting parts of the game, IMO. :D

Sometimes you have to get pretty creative. I'm not sure what the "right" way was to do it, but for one of the research points I had to kick a propane tank down into the basement of an under-construction house in order to gain a tiny bit of height so my drone could jump up onto a wood pile to get to the point to pick it up.

Same goes for the remote control car. You want to pop for higher jump on that ASAP. Trust me.
 
Same goes for the remote control car. You want to pop for higher jump on that ASAP. Trust me.

Yeah, the car is what I meant. And the boost jump is essential, as is the speed boost.
 
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I keep seeing praise for how well optimized this is but I wonder if that has to do more with the fact more people are running higher spec cards now than when WD_1 came out.. Watch Dogs 1 ran like crap on my previous SLI 680s but then ran great when I upgraded to a 980.. Watch Dogs 2 runs respectably on my 1080 but considering you still can't max everything out at 1080p and get a solid 60fps on the top of the line consumer card tells me the same demons that plagued WD 1 are still hiding in WD 2 and just being masked by better hardware
 
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I keep seeing praise for how well optimized this is but I wonder if that has to do more with the fact more people are running higher spec cards now than when WD_1 came out.. Watch Dogs 1 ran like crap on my previous SLI 680s but then ran great when I upgraded to a 980.. Watch Dogs 2 runs respectably on my 1080 but considering you still can't max everything out at 1080p and get a solid 60fps on the top of the line consumer card tells me the same demons that plagued WD 1 are still hiding in WD 2 and just being masked by better hardware
WD1 got a lot of hate for releasing in a state not even close to the E3 demos - so a lot of hate was for the graphics, let alone how well they ran (and I think if my memory serves right it had to get quite a few patches to alleviate some bad performance). Additionally, when people began to dig, they discovered "E3" settings which were disabled (and then semi-re-enabled with mods) which fueled more discontent on the state of the PC release.

As for "welcome to the new ultra" it happens whenever new games come out and push existing hardware further. The issues are really with the average system, the median system, and where the "recommended" settings line up (or in many cases don't).

Last, performance should scale appropriately within the exposed settings, but mix in driver support (and optimization or lack thereof) as well as perceived settings, and you get a mix where a lot of times you'll see more complaints than praise.

All of that said... I was pretty underwhelmed by both the graphics and gameplay of WD1 and found myself giving up a few hours in - it just wasn't engaging in any way to keep my interest, even with the E3 settings. I'm interested in WD2 and am enjoying hearing about it, but unsure if I'll jump in anytime soon (and it seems the multiplayer is largely skippable).
 
It's almost like Unity case for me. I was running single 970 and got it barely playable on max details in FHD. Now my 980 Ti barely is able to drive over 40 FPS in high /1440p and on ultra, even with just fxaa it's about 27 FPS.

Unity was playable only after I switched to 980 Ti. Guess WD2 will be playable in 1440p with Vega/1080 ti.
 
I never had the issues with WD1 that people had, my 290 was just fine, I had the memory oc'ed as high as it could go and I had for the most part flawless performance...
 
I never had the issues with WD1 that people had, my 290 was just fine, I had the memory oc'ed as high as it could go and I had for the most part flawless performance...
I installed it a few weeks ago and it's a mess. It has more performance issues than WD2 does.
 
I installed it a few weeks ago and it's a mess. It has more performance issues than WD2 does.

It was a mess on the 970 in the day as well, I believe you had a 280x back when it came out right? I actually played it more than GTA V, for some weird reason I liked it, and haven't pulled the trigger for the 2nd one.
 
Decent looking patch just dropped today it looks like:

New Features

  • Replay Missions - We’ve added a functionality that lets you replay any mission that is part of a Main Operation. This will let you relive your favorite moments or experiment with different playstyles.
  • Hacker Level - Your new Hacker Level is now displayed as a stat in Marcus’ phone, based on followers acquired. You can see another player’s Hacker Level when you profile them, and this will allow you to compare yourself against your friends.
  • Enemy Weapons – DedSec picked up blueprints for enemy weapons and now they’re all available to print from the 3D Printer - for a fee.
  • Select Difficulty Level - The first time you start a new game, you’ll be prompted to choose a difficulty level. As a reminder, you can change the difficulty level at any time in the Game Options app.
Tweaks & Balancing

Hacking Invasions

We made so many tweaks to Hacking Invasions we gave the mode its own section here. We tried some new things with this game mode and there’s been a lot of discussion since players started playing online. After reviewing the data and feedback, we’ve concluded that there are too many opportunities for the target to accidentally discover the hacker. This takes away from rewarding the skill of both the hacker and target; therefore, updates to Hacking Invasions are primarily focused on preventing the occurrence of accidental discoveries.

Before the download is started:

* The target can no longer automatically profile the hacker or their RC.
* For the target player, in NetHack, the hacker’s RC is displayed as a neutral-colored object (instead of red).
* If the target does an action that reveals the presence of a hacker in their game the search zone is now 3 times bigger.
* To help the hacker to initiate the download while the target is moving in a vehicle, the hacker can now hold the hack button on the target for a distance up to 120m.

During the download:

* Fixed an issue where the target’s name would be visible without having a line of sight on them.
* Fixed issues in NetHack that (in some situations) allowed the target to see civilians/hacker through the walls.
* To reduce accidental detection:

- In NetHack, for the target, a small delay has been added before showing the identity of the person being targeted.

- In NetHack, for the target, the targeting angle was reduced.

  • Enemy player’s RC can no longer be profiled through walls.
  • The red targeting line displayed between the enemy and their RC only appears when the RC is profiled, instead of just by targeting it.
  • The hacker is warned when their RC is profiled: “RC WAS DETECTED: Your position has been revealed!”

  • Hacker rewards: You’ll be rewarded based on the percentage of download completed, and you’ll get extra rewards if you escape. This also means that if your target disconnects or quits, you’ll still get some reward. *** Exploit:** Fixed an exploit where the player could not be seen while in the water using the Nethack vision.

  • Bug: Fixed an issue where the media player song would still play in Nudle Map while being invaded by another player, creating an exploit that allowed you to better identify when you’re being invaded.

  • Bug: Fixed an exploit where the side activities icons would disappear from the world map if a player was being invaded.
Online

  • Leaderboard: We want to showcase your leaderboard rank more prominently. Therefore, your leaderboard rank for each multiplayer activity is now displayed at the beginning and end of each match, and also in the Multiplayer app. This is a priority feature we want to improve, so you can expect future updates.
  • Co-Op: We’ve made it easier to team up for co-op with a player that’s already in your session. Entering the vehicle of an allied player will prompt that player to team up for co-op.
  • Co-Op: We’ve added difficulty level to online operations icons on the world map.
  • You can now throw an IED on rooftops from street level. You can do this at any point, but as NPCs typically aren’t found wandering around on rooftops, this will come in especially handy in online game modes.
Other

  • Shooting Mechanics: We’ve made changes to the shooting behavior so that shooting your weapon feels more satisfying.

    o Improved weapon recoil, making for increased accuracy when firing multiple rounds.

    o The sound of each weapon firing and bullet impact has been improved.

    o Bullet tracers are more visible.

  • AI: Improved AI sniper behavior by making them move less from cover to cover, meaning they’ll shoot more often.

  • Localization: Larger fonts in Arabic and Chinese subtitles to make them more visible.

  • Gallery: Minor graphical fixes to Camera and Gallery interface that will help you take better screenshots.
Bug Fixes

  • Leaderboard rewards: If you earned a leaderboard reward in Season 1, it will be delivered to your inventory in this patch.
  • “PULL OVER NOW!”: The loudspeaker policewoman will repeat this command less frequently.
  • Wall Geometry Exploits: Players can no longer use motorcycles to pass through walls, and we’ve fixed other similar wall exploits.
  • Broken missions/halted progression: Fixed progression-breaking issues for the following missions: Power to the Sheeple, Alcatraz Showdown, Infected Bytes, Just Making a Living, Get Back in the Game, Jailbird Blues, and Kicking it Old School. If you got stuck during any of these missions, you’ll be able to proceed now without starting over.
  • Mass Sitara: Improved an issue where Sitara could be present multiple times in the Hacker Space during A Walk in the Park.
  • Bounty: Fixed a rare issue where a Bounty could go on forever if the hunted player hid in Wrench’s garage.
  • Bike Collision: Reduced the collision size on bikes so the player can drive closer to obstacles without bailing (time to find some trees and go nuts).
  • Leaderboards: Fixed the description of the divisions in the leaderboards; percentage details were wrong.
  • Invasion Rewards: Fixed an issue where you wouldn’t get the reward for neutralizing an invader without profiling them first.
  • Co-Op: Fixed an issue where a player couldn’t get into a car while playing in coop.
  • Improved performance and stability
  • Minor graphical improvements
  • Fixed multiple AI and traffic issues
  • Several improvements on the GPS pathing
  • Fixed multiple replication issues
  • Fixed numerous minor audio and text issues in localized versions of the game
  • Lots and lots of other minor bug fixes
PC-Only Updates

  • San Francisco Fog (aka “Karl”): Fixed a timer bug that was causing the iconic fog to appear less often than intended. On the days it appears, it will show up around 6PM and disappear around 2PM the next day. In a future update, we’ll adjust and randomize its appearance times, so you can enjoy it more often. If you are eager to see it, you can always make the time pass faster by taking a nap on the sofa in the HQ.

    o The fog is not turned on by default (due to high demands on your PC) and must be activated in settings.

  • Improved performance on Crossfire systems (AMD dual GPU systems)

  • Fixed various minor issues with the UI and text.

  • Fixed minor issues with the HUD in multi-monitor mode

  • Fixed various cases of reflections corruption.
 
Still no Ansel support.. Ansel is going to be one of those Nvidia features that is great in practice but will die for never having widespread implementation. Nice patch otherwise!
 
Well looks like a modder was able to change a model for the character. So a little progress in the modding community. Hope it leads to more mods of course.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=5370439&postcount=29

Further up in the thread it talks about an unpakcer and repacker working. The repacker repacks files uncompressed they said and not compressed. Wonder if not being able to compress the repacked files would affect modding in general for the game?
 
Anyone else but me notice the small white circle in the center of the screen that does not go away during most of the gameplay on a pc? I can't remove it in options and it kind of gets in the way of an immersive view when exploring around.
 
Anyone else but me notice the small white circle in the center of the screen that does not go away during most of the gameplay on a pc? I can't remove it in options and it kind of gets in the way of an immersive view when exploring around.
That's a crosshair.
 
I haven't touched this game too much after completing the main story. The invasions are alright and the co-op missions are...eh, okay. Collecting all of the Research Points to max out skills seems like a huge pain in the ass - basically you have to either use a map online and try to compare to what you have already picked up, or just drive around and scan with the drone in NetHack mode to see if you missed any. Apparently I missed 30+ because that's what I would need to max out my skills.
 
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I haven't touched this game too much after completing the main story. The invasions are alright and the co-op missions are...eh, okay. Collecting all of the Research Points to max out skills seems like a huge pain in the ass - basically you have to either use a map online and try to compare to what you have already picked up, or just drive around and scan with the drone in NetHack mode to see if you missed any. Apparently I missed 30+ because that's what I would need to max out my skills.
My two biggest complaints are lack of difficulty curve (terrible AI and Marcus' skills are overpowered) and the fact that you have to hunt down all of the side activities.
I would rather unlock a tower to view all the activities in a zone then manually drive around using Hacker-Vision to find everything.

The FINAL mission in the game felt like it had the same difficulty as the FIRST mission. Nothing ever changes or gets harder. The game actually gets EASIER as you progress as you unlock more skills. Once you max out your hacking resource and skills you can basically just use 'Distract' on everyone and walk right past.
 
My two biggest complaints are lack of difficulty curve (terrible AI and Marcus' skills are overpowered) and the fact that you have to hunt down all of the side activities.
I would rather unlock a tower to view all the activities in a zone then manually drive around using Hacker-Vision to find everything.

The FINAL mission in the game felt like it had the same difficulty as the FIRST mission. Nothing ever changes or gets harder. The game actually gets EASIER as you progress as you unlock more skills. Once you max out your hacking resource and skills you can basically just use 'Distract' on everyone and walk right past.

Well, in the final missions I'd say it gets "harder" in that they just throw a bunch of armored dudes at you. But even then if you have the fully-upgraded taser (which, you should) it's still fairly easy.

I didn't even use that Distract All ability, but you're right - the Distract and other powers are insanely OP. You can literally run 6 inches in front of a guy's face as long as they're "distracted".

The stupid thing is that they make out a couple of those missions like you're supposed to use force, but if you try to do that you get killed in about 10 seconds.
 
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Even the Wrench mission where they tell you to blow shit up, I had to use stealth otherwise die in 2 seconds. That was probably the hardest mission in the game for me.
The satellite mission and investigations were really fun though, it's weird how they put so many of the "Sneak into this restricted area and hack the computer" repetitive missions into the game but still managed to sneak in a few good ones.

I also think the RC vehicles are overpowered, especially the drone. They triviliazed so many missions in the game. It's probably better to play without using them unless in situations where the game forces you to. I'd also say lethal weapons are actually harder than the stun gun.

I might do a 2nd playthrough using guns, no RC vehicles, and no hacker vision. Might be more fun. But the AI is still going to suck.
 
Picked this up recently, performance seems... odd.

Rig in sig and at very high in an open outdoor area I'm sitting at a steady 45ish. But only seeing 80% GPU and 50% CPU usage
 
Even the Wrench mission where they tell you to blow shit up, I had to use stealth otherwise die in 2 seconds. That was probably the hardest mission in the game for me.
The satellite mission and investigations were really fun though, it's weird how they put so many of the "Sneak into this restricted area and hack the computer" repetitive missions into the game but still managed to sneak in a few good ones.

I also think the RC vehicles are overpowered, especially the drone. They triviliazed so many missions in the game. It's probably better to play without using them unless in situations where the game forces you to. I'd also say lethal weapons are actually harder than the stun gun.

I might do a 2nd playthrough using guns, no RC vehicles, and no hacker vision. Might be more fun. But the AI is still going to suck.

I had fun with this and did a surprisingly thorough playthrough. DLC and odds and ends notwitstanding I doubt I'll replay this, though.




Maverick is right: I understand the character isn't supposed to be Rambo but some of those missions get tough enough with the super commandos and all... the gunplay is *sorely* lacking in this even throwing perks add it. Marcus takes 1-2 shots and he's dead. Can't even buy or steal a bulletproof vest which is hard to believe this super hacker can't get access to it or 3D print it along with the rest of that improbable weaponry and gear he already has.

I understand the thrust of the game and I'm all for it but a little help in these areas would really (have?) put it over the top.
 
Started playing this, and I must say it is awful. Performance issues aside, the first game was rather good. A GTA done right with some character to it. This game takes everything that was good about the first and throws it away.

The main character is a complete idiot and doesn't seem life like at all. A street thug idiot who can't speak proper English, but is somehow intelligent enough to be a hacker. The controls are horrid and there is nothing you can do to fix them when re-assigning them. If that even works, but it reverts back to the originals. And then back to your custom controls. Clearly, they did not want the feature in the game and penalize you for changing controls.

Super human enemies can take 30-40 shots to the face and still live, while you die in around 4-5 shots. You can not crouch. The character decides to standup or down in the dumbest of times, getting you killed. Hacking, while nice, simple and fluid in the first game is a passive pain in the ass and takes too long to activate in WD2. Making it utterly useless, aside from those situations it is forced upon you. Which makes you wish it was never in the game in the first place. Tedious, dumb and honestly pointless.

Whereas the first game looked excellent for its time, this game looks like ass while runs like ass. You will need at least two GTX 1080s in SLI to max this game out at 1920x1080. Forget about 1440, there isn't a PC on the market that can run it unless this game scales well with i7/6/8 core CPUs. If you have an i5, forget about maxing this game out or coming close to it.

Overall I'd give it a 4/10. Horrible game. Just replay the first one, or Just Cause 3 if you want a decent open world action game.
 
IMO, hard to say that. The story wasn't superb in the first game but at least you knew what you were doing. This game is just a bunch of fetch quests strung together with no real story. Just "get followers" and "yo, fuck yo man" gibberish. The gameplay is also strikingly off. There are firearms in the game, but you can not kill anyone with them. Why implement them in the first place? It is absurd to shoot someone in their unprotected face 20-30 times with an AK just to stun them for a fraction of a second. Not to mention, cops can shoot through boats, police cars, corners and take you out with 3-4 shots. Most of the interesting hacks are gone, like the one that knocked out power on a block. The option for semi stealth gameplay was thrown out the window, so you more or less have to run around and bash people with your... yo-yo? Or whatever the main character carries. You can't even meaningfully take out enemies with hacks; their 10-15 buddies will wake them up and the environmental attacks don't recharge quick enough to get them all. Ironically you can kill civis by pressing the hack button with their phone, but can't do the same to enemies. The people you'd want to disable.

TLDR, you drive around mashing a hack button to steal cash to buy firearms that don't kill enemies while doing some fetch quests on the side. No option for gameplay aside from bashing people in. You see all there is in the game within 2 hours.
 
New patch goes live today! Lots of stuff, but I wanted to list the PC specific changes.
https://watchdogs.ubisoft.com/watchdogs/en-US/news/152-283083-16/title-update-111-patch-notes

PC-Specific Updates
• [Video Options] SMAA T2x – This patch adds new Post-Process Anti-Aliasing mode – SMAA T2x, improved version of SMAA with a temporal component. As SMAA T2x uses temporal techniques, it doesn’t work with Temporal Filtering turned on.

• [Video Options] Dynamic Particles – This patch adds a new video option that allows you to turn off dynamic particles, like leaves and effects of bullet hits.

• [Controls Options] Camera auto-centering – This patch adds two new mouse & keyboard options that allow you to turn off camera auto-centering while driving and sprinting. Some default bindings were changed: [F9] and [F10] are now used for Mock and Laugh emotes. Song Sneak action is Uponow assigned on [Backspace], and Tutorial action is assigned on [Home].

• Fixed various minor issues with flickering, multi-monitor modes, UI, text and gamepad controls.

If you continue to experience any of these or other issues, please report on the official forums or contact us directly via customer support.
 
The impression that I get from recent patches is that instead of optimizing the game, they seem to just be opting to put even lower quality detail settings as options.

Doesn't matter much to me at this point because I uninstalled it, but patch-to-patch it never felt like they really made any headway with optimization.
 
Just finished this game last week. Had a blast playing it. The multiplayer is very well done and seamlessly integrated. I usually avoid multiplayer in all games because I suck, but it was a lot of fun in this game, especially with hacking invasions. I actually am tempted to playthrough again, but I'm gonna hold out a few months for Legion. But maybe I'll crack.

Game ran very smoothly. I was especially impressed with the phone interface and how quickly and smoothly it functioned. Graphics are great, San Francisco looks nice and it's fun to run around taking pictures for the challenges. The story is entertaining enough, runs a bit too long though, there are tons of side missions left that I didn't do. Game is progressive and in your face about it, which can be annoying.

Super excited for Legion.
 
I've tried replaying a bunch of times, I even bought all the DLC a few months ago, but I always get a couple hours in and get bored.
I did 100% the game at launch though. It was fun. Just can't go back to it.

The game cheats its performance via the Temporal Filtering (upsamping). Turn that off to run native and it murders your GPU. I think I still struggled with 1080p60.
 
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