


I could also do without the frequent garish, meme-laden Dedsec propaganda videos about your exploits. These people are cartoonish, but they don’t seem to know they’re in a spoof. Since they’re only loosely in cahoots with the big bad guy (an effectively menacing man-bun wearing tech bro) and the goal is to gain attention for Dedsec (there’s actually a decent reason for that), it feels almost Saints Row The Third-like in its self-aggrandizing pranks, but without the same self-awareness of the characters. In the first few missions you go after stand-ins for universally loathed pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli and the Church of Scientology by way of sabotaging a hacker-themed movie. Robot, and because of that a lot of the objectives come off as gleeful petty vandalism (with optional murder) instead of righteous vigilantism.
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This is much more brash and punk version of hacker life than the conceptually similar TV show, Mr. “Over time, the whole hacker-movie tone becomes a little obnoxious. There are still button prompts to trigger explosions that auto-eliminate pursuers like before, but I no longer felt like I was driving around in circles leading cars through traps until they were all gone. Ideally you can force them directly into a wall or oncoming traffic. Watch Dogs 2 relies a lot less on car chases than the first one does, so it’s not nearly as repetitious, but when they do happen car-on-car combat is made much more interesting and unique by the ability to hack cars and force them to stop or turn at will. Speaking of driving, the still-arcadey physics of Watch Dogs 2’s cars feel less over-the-top and more controllable than in the first game.

A lot of its humor comes through in the random bios that pop up when you hack civilians, some of whom can give you jokey snippets of phone calls or text conversations, all the while humanizing the crowds and making me less enthusiastic about trying to run them over on purpose. There's also quite a bit of satire about the San Francisco area and its culture, but nothing approaching HBO’s Silicon Valley’s wit. I’d recommend it as virtual tourism, especially if you’ve been here before and want a refresher. (Thankfully the perpetually gridlocked traffic was omitted.) It’s a fun and diverse place to explore and run amok, and it’s surreal to be in a car chase and suddenly look up and see something like Moscone Center, the Palace of Fine Arts, the Painted Ladies, Fisherman’s Wharf, or Stanford University. Watch Dogs 2’s version is super condensed, with entire neighborhoods left on the cutting room floor, but it has all the major landmarks pretty much where they should be. This is a great open world map, and I’m not just saying that because was born in the Bay Area and have lived here for almost my entire life. If anything, there may be too many hackable items scattered around, to the point where I often have trouble selecting the right one in situations where timing matters.

You can detonate an electrical box to stun someone nearby, make it go haywire to attract attention, or turn it into a mine that will detonate when someone gets close. For example, you can open a door with a hack, or you can choose to lock it so that no one can follow you for a few seconds. “Hacking in general is more flexible than in the first Watch Dogs - you usually have more than one option on every hackable item.
