Is Watchdogs 2 similar to GTA 5?

[dscross]

GTA 5 was fantastic in my eyes. If watchdogs 2 is similar, then ill get it. Bear in mind though, I was not hooked by Watchdogs 1 at all and, consequently, I didn't get very far into it.

How did you all find it? Be nice to get some proper impressions...

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

It's The Ubisoft Game. Have you played any Ubisoft game in the last 5-10 years? You've played this one.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I played the original Watch Dogs but not the 2nd one. To me, it was better than GTA due to the mission structure being more open by allowing a mix of stealth, hacking, and shooting. Thus, the gameplay itself was better allowing for more player creativity. Also, the controls and gunplay are far better than any of Rockstar's games. From my understanding, the tone of Watch Dogs 2 is just about a 180 from the first one. Super Bunnyhop did a review on it and his reviews are usually pretty spot-on. I probably would've played Watch Dogs 2 but I'm really tired of open world games. It took Danny O'Dwyer's review of Horizon for me to want to play it.

 

[Ninjamurai]

It's fairly similar, albeit with more of a focus on the usual Ubisoft stuff like finding all the secrets in the world & unlocking areas on the map & stuff. The driving & shooting are good, better than Watchdogs 1, and pretty much everything is improved from 1 in my opinion. The fluid online component that sneakily infiltrates your singleplayer is fun, & leads to sweet car chases & shootouts. It's not perfect, but it's well rounded enough to be worth a playthrough. If you like open world & GTA then I'd assume this would fit pretty well for you too.

 

[sXeth]

Shooting better. Mission design more open, with the hacking and stealth that actually functions giving you more approaches to GTA's endless cover shooting.

Versus modes are more interesting then GTAs if you're into that.

Production values in general are lower. The characters are actually somewhat likeable though.

Missions tend to be a lot shorter, and the campaign itself is probably shorter.

Free Roam online is a lot more limited. 4 people per lobby. Co-op missions don't really boil down to much either. Usually just a target and some enemies dumped in an arena location.

Random messing about tends to be more viable. Cops don't have ludicrous laser aim and hacking gives you options to fight back reliably.

No planes/flying vehicles in Watch_Dogs.

 

[Mcgeezaks]

Eh, not really. Even though I think the physics are worse in GTAV than in GTAIV, they are about 10 times worse in Watch Dogs 2. The game is trying really hard to appeal to edgy millennials and memers XDD It's also hard to sympathize with any of the characters since they're pretty much straight up terrorists, fighting for ''muh generation''.

 

[TrulyBritish]

Eh, not really. Even though I think the physics are worse in GTAV than in GTAIV, they are about 10 times worse in Watch Dogs 2. The game is trying really hard to appeal to edgy millennials and memers XDD It's also hard to sympathize with any of the characters since they're pretty much straight up terrorists, fighting for ''muh generation''.

Are they at least more likeable than Aiden "I'm-a-prick-to-everyone-but-my-niece-died-so-it's-ok" Pierce?
I'm currently playing through the first Watch_Dogs and I can't get over how much a dry, unlikable dick Aiden is.

 

[stroopwafel]

Eh, not really. Even though I think the physics are worse in GTAV than in GTAIV, they are about 10 times worse in Watch Dogs 2. The game is trying really hard to appeal to edgy millennials and memers XDD It's also hard to sympathize with any of the characters since they're pretty much straight up terrorists, fighting for ''muh generation''.

Are they at least more likeable than Aiden "I'm-a-prick-to-everyone-but-my-niece-died-so-it's-ok" Pierce?
I'm currently playing through the first Watch_Dogs and I can't get over how much a dry, unlikable dick Aiden is.

Man, no one likes Aiden. I personally really liked the character. He was the perfect fit for the kind of noir/cyberpunk story and theme the first game was going for. Why must every protagonist be a 'tough on the outside' sensitive crybaby with a love interest? I liked how unemotional and unaffected Aiden was. In the game Aiden does everything to protect his sister but he's not going to cry about it. I also particularly like his walk. Like the world could collapse and Aiden wouldn't give a shit. I love those kinda characters.

Anyways I played both GTA5 and WD2 extensively and they are far from the same. I know they are easy to compare considering they are both sandbox games in sunny California but the experience is totally different. In style and tone WD2 is different than WD1 but other than that it's very much a sequel. Meaning it mostly iterates and improves on the first game. The story and characters have to be taken with a grain of salt but I still really liked the cast and the story missions in particular were often outrageuously fun. It's a far cry from the noir style of WD1 but a much better fit for the setting of San Francisco. WD2 doesn't have the impressive physics engine or ballistics model of GTA5 and everything is a bit more..'brittle' but I found the gameplay far, far more engaging. The controls are also tighter in WD2 but the driving in GTA5 is far out superior. What spoiled my fun of GTA5 was mostly the cast that I absolutely hated and the scripted linearity of the missions. With WD2 I pretty much had fun beginning to end. Even the online(espescially pvp) is really fun and blends into the SP so you don't have to switch modes.

If you didn't like the gameplay of WD1 you won't like WD2. If you liked the gameplay of WD1 but not the story and characters there is a chance you like WD2. Either way you should take GTA5 out the equation since it's a totally different game.

Btw Watch Dogs 1 also had some terrific music. Whenever I forgot where I parked my car for some reason in my mind I always play this tune.

 

[Mcgeezaks]

Eh, not really. Even though I think the physics are worse in GTAV than in GTAIV, they are about 10 times worse in Watch Dogs 2. The game is trying really hard to appeal to edgy millennials and memers XDD It's also hard to sympathize with any of the characters since they're pretty much straight up terrorists, fighting for ''muh generation''.

Are they at least more likeable than Aiden "I'm-a-prick-to-everyone-but-my-niece-died-so-it's-ok" Pierce?
I'm currently playing through the first Watch_Dogs and I can't get over how much a dry, unlikable dick Aiden is.

He's a far better character than any of the characters in Watch Dogs 2, if that says anything.

 

[Trunkage]

Eh, not really. Even though I think the physics are worse in GTAV than in GTAIV, they are about 10 times worse in Watch Dogs 2. The game is trying really hard to appeal to edgy millennials and memers XDD It's also hard to sympathize with any of the characters since they're pretty much straight up terrorists, fighting for ''muh generation''.

Are they at least more likeable than Aiden "I'm-a-prick-to-everyone-but-my-niece-died-so-it's-ok" Pierce?
I'm currently playing through the first Watch_Dogs and I can't get over how much a dry, unlikable dick Aiden is.

He's a far better character than any of the characters in Watch Dogs 2, if that says anything.

Funny, I like every character in Watch Dogs 2 except the returning character. He's god aweful

 

[sXeth]

Eh, not really. Even though I think the physics are worse in GTAV than in GTAIV, they are about 10 times worse in Watch Dogs 2. The game is trying really hard to appeal to edgy millennials and memers XDD It's also hard to sympathize with any of the characters since they're pretty much straight up terrorists, fighting for ''muh generation''.

Are they at least more likeable than Aiden "I'm-a-prick-to-everyone-but-my-niece-died-so-it's-ok" Pierce?
I'm currently playing through the first Watch_Dogs and I can't get over how much a dry, unlikable dick Aiden is.

That's kinda the point of his character. Aiden's a violent, vindictive, black-and-white morality(read 'hypocritical') sociopath who's oblivious to the fact until it's too late. The game's story was blatantly put through the wringers though, so despite Aiden's arc and character being pretty well thought out it isn't conveyed particularly well. Like Altair in Assassins Creed 1.

Shame too, since there are a bunch of neat character touches, like the time when Aiden meets goth chick(Chloe?) and he gets weirdly touchy with her, which she then calls out on the phone as being deliberately intimidating to make her flub if she's full of shit. Which was the game telling you that Aiden's a naturally manipulative scumbag that may or may not be fully aware of that himself.

Yeah, in the actual story writing there's a few little nods to it. His nephew basically goes into shock after being rescued which the social worker (I think it was?) picks up that Aiden's full of s*** from. Then when you rescue the sister she outright acknowledges that he's a sociopath before they leave.

Then you have T-Bone who just doesn't seem to care. And because they had to copy inFamous hero/villain system, people in the city will cheer you as a hero for stopping the occasional mugger even as you steal millions of dollars and cards, and blow up half the city, and other actions that just are ignored by the coding.

 

[Mcgeezaks]

Eh, not really. Even though I think the physics are worse in GTAV than in GTAIV, they are about 10 times worse in Watch Dogs 2. The game is trying really hard to appeal to edgy millennials and memers XDD It's also hard to sympathize with any of the characters since they're pretty much straight up terrorists, fighting for ''muh generation''.

Are they at least more likeable than Aiden "I'm-a-prick-to-everyone-but-my-niece-died-so-it's-ok" Pierce?
I'm currently playing through the first Watch_Dogs and I can't get over how much a dry, unlikable dick Aiden is.

He's a far better character than any of the characters in Watch Dogs 2, if that says anything.

Funny, I like every character in Watch Dogs 2 except the returning character. He's god aweful

They all had cringey dialogue and would probably use terms like ''woke'' and ''lit'' unironically.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

I liked it better than GTA V, which fell short of my expectations.GTA IV was one of my favourite games of all time but V was... kind of a mess, honestly. It had moments of greatness but it was too short, sloppily written and lacking in a lot of the little details, both mechanically and otherwise, that made IV so great.

Watch_Dogs 2 is probably the first really great game Ubisoft has made since Assassin's Creed 2 and I didn't expect it from them at all. It's not entirely perfect but it blends the open ended stealth gameplay of something like Deus Ex with an open world structure in a way that's never been done before. The actual mechanics aren't all that deep but the level design is so strong that it stays interesting throughout the whole story. It has a very episodic structure to it so that its pacing resembles a television show more than a movie, there are those little self contained arcs that all consist of a few missions and loosely connect to an overarching story but they all are fun and mostly pretty humorous in their own right.

The humor is a bit hit or miss, it's all rooted in kind of a 90s style light hearted punk aesthetic that can be gratingly juvenile on occasion but it's self aware enough to never get actively annoying. There's an actual sense of comraderie between the main characters that pays off pretty well on occasion, despite them being effectively a bunch of dorky teenagers trying to hard to be hip.

I might be overselling the game a bit right now but it had a lot of moments that left me wondering just what right some random Ubisoft sequel has to be this good. The festival and the late game missions where you get to control the military robots come to mind.

 

[Chewster]

Similar-ish. They're both open world games set in California with 3rd person shooting mechanics but I too will have to agree with others that Watch_Dogs 2 is more enjoyable than Grand Theft Auto V.

It has to be said, I hate almost all the characters in both games. The kids in WD2 act like how a committee of 40-year-old men think kids these days talk (which is to say though "hip" dialogue and memes) and so they come across as almost a self-parody of what hackers are like but the game play is hella fun. Even in the first WD, despite Aiden being a miserable, dreary bastard, the core game was fun as hell. They both blend stealth, hacking and shooting fairly well and the gadgets you are given to screw around with (a small quad copter drone and an RC car thing among others IIRC) are incorporated into the game play and exploration well. The driving is a bit...arcade-y though, especially if you've gotten used to the "realistic" driving mechanics of the HD GTA games. Every time I switched between the two games I had to almost unlearn how to use cars.

The setting is also more...focused? In GTAV, you can go driving all over the massive county map but I'm at the point where huge open world games don't impress me much any more since they've become the standard. WD2 is set in San Francisco and mostly takes place within various parts of the city itself. To me, making a rollicking map that goes on forever is just another way of creating a false sense of DIY game play. If I wanted to wander all over a massive map, I could play Just Cause 3 or something. Anyway, the city is pretty unique in WD2 I feel like, and apparently takes cues from actual landmarks in the real San Francisco. The scale of GTAV is impressive but a lot of it is just empty space, so what's the point?

I haven't finished it yet because I bounce around between games a lot but what I have played of it has been great, if you can get over the incredibly cringy characters.