Should You Play Watch Dogs 2 in 2020?

With Watch Dogs: Legion set for release later this year, is it still worth it to play Watch_Dogs 2 in 2020? Many people around the world were able to gain access to a copy of Watch Dogs 2 for free not too long ago. With E3 having been canceled due to the current circumstances, game developers and publishers have resorted to online streaming as a means of getting the word out on their new games. Ubisoft's own version of this was the Ubisoft Forward online event. To help pull in viewers, Ubisoft decided to dole out rewards to viewers on the basis of how long they'd been watching the stream, with one of the bigger rewards being a free copy of Watch Dogs 2 to be sent to your UPlay account. Due to the massive amount of users viewing the stream and trying to log into their UPlay accounts to claim the rewards, UPlay just wasn't having it. It was nearly impossible to login. 

Ubisoft made up for the issues by offering Watch Dogs 2 for free once again as a reward for registering your UPlay account on their site. Following the registration, the game would be added to your account within a few days.

In my circle of friends, I was the only one who had a passing interest in the first Watch_Dogs game. And while I did have my fair share of fun with it, I wasn't too inclined towards getting the sequel on release. I'd thought that I might get it on sale at a later date, but with the recent free giveaway by Ubisoft and with everyone stuck at home for quarantine, I've run out of excuses to not play it.

The first game was riddled with controversies during its heyday, with the biggest being the graphical downgrade on release as compared to the previous E3 demo. This was enough to muddle the huge initial excitement that the demo brought the audience. Expectations for the extent of the hacking controls were set too high by gamers, and the oversimplified, almost one-button hacking that actually takes place disappointed many players.

When it came to the hacking controls, they fell exactly into my expectations. It would be foolish to make the hacking controls overly complex when the game is meant to appeal to a wide market of gamers with various play styles and skill levels.

My main issue with the first Watch Dogs was with the main protagonist, Aiden Pierce. You'd think that you'd take control of a hacker in a game centered around hacking. Instead, you get a vigilante on a revenge path. To be fair, Aiden Pierce is a hacker, but not to the extent that you may have expected, seeing as he uses hacking tools made by others. Aiden isn't even a member of DedSec, the prominent hacker group in the Watch Dogs universe. What Aiden does excel at is the copious amounts of havoc and murder that you can reap upon the city of Chicago.

The other issue I had with the first game involved unlocking power-ups and tools. While I appreciated how exploring the open world could yield varied rewards, I was able to earn a lot of the more powerful tools very early on, which can trivialize a lot of the game's main missions.

In Watch_Dogs 2, you are put in the shoes of DedSec's newest member, Marcus Holloway, and are surrounded by zany members of the hacker group. Just the LCD mask of Wrench (one of the hackers) is enough to scream the aesthetic of the Watch Dogs universe's over-glorified hacker culture.

As for my issue with getting strong power-ups too early, that has also been addressed, as large amounts of upgrade points aren't as easy to come by without progressing through story quests; in addition, to score more powerful tools, you'll have to take the extra step of having to locate said upgrade within the city before you can even unlock it.

With these improvements along with new and welcome mechanics, Watch Dogs 2 is everything that the first game should have been. The only thing that pulls me out of the experience is seeing the idealistic and nerdy new cast commit the mass murders that Aiden Pierce was known for doing. Granted, you can always opt to go with the non-lethal approach, but the game gives you a greater number of lethal options. Having Marcus gun down a ton of police officers and gang members one minute only to see him all happy-go-lucky in the next immediate cutscene is a bit jarring, to say the least.

What I'm trying to say is that there's a lot of charm in Watch Dogs 2, so much so that I can't discuss all of the game's positives here without making this post into a thesis. It excels not only in presentation and story but also in gameplay. And while I'd argue that the first Watch Dogs is a fine game, if you had to choose one, I recommend going with Watch Dogs 2. I'm now personally excited to see what Ubisoft does with their 3rd entry in the series, Watch Dogs: Legion.

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