I loved Watch Dogs 1. I loved it so much i picked it up on sale some time after retiring my physical copy, which I did after initially completing the game. I’m glad I kept playing, because there was certainly more. I also snagged the downloadable content, expanding the game significantly with a new story, new gear, and new challenges.
I played the trial for Watch Dogs 2 before receiving it as a Christmas present from my parents. I was very excited to play, although apprehensive. My trepidation comes from my familiarity with the way to play the first game. With the silenced machine gun, hacks, and intuitive traps, you could terrorize a force of people without them ever knowing where you are fighting. Playing Watch Dogs 2 for the first several hours felt like riding someone else’s bike. Someone who just isn’t built the way you are. The ergonomics don’t feel intuitive. Instead of carefully deploying traps, I found myself more often than not being surprised by enemies, and resorting to using guns even to take out low level, private security employees. I eventually realized this to be a style of playing the game, but this senseless killing over every little thing I want on the map was just not the approach to violence that the first game took, in which it is a last resort in many cases.
The Watch Dogs 2 skill tree favors three playing styles, Hacker, Ghost, and Aggressor. Individual skills purchasable by gaining “followers,” (XP,) will be labeled as favoring a mix of these styles. Since everything turns into a gunfight for me, I favor Aggressor heavily. I have played likely about twenty to thirty hours, and this is the only play style I have ever needed besides the introduction. I’m still not accustomed to the new hacking menus, so most of the hacking I do is to get away from pursuers, or control vehicles and equipment.
Aside from being a vicious mass murderer, Watch Dogs 2 has much campier, friendlier, more humorous atmosphere. Whether you’re getting photobombed while taking a selfie, or working with any of the cast of comics involved in your gang. The first game was very serious. And while this game just might not have dropped a bomb on me yet, it seems like it is all geared to be more true to the new protagonist, Marcus, aka “Retro.”
HereticDerek 