Recent reviews by Greasey C.I.P.D.

I'm starting to remember why I quit this game 60% through when it first came out. I gave it another chance after being reimmersed in the world through Watch_Dogs 1, but that was the last game in which the writers had any grasp of the world.

We went from seeing the implications of ctOS through the lens of one man and his goals in the (relatively) grounded setting of Chicago, to aimlessly floundering around with a cast of garish, unrelatably talented scene kids in a fantasyland where not only does Dedsec (Anonymous) have an app, but the big bad corporations neither use it to track their activity nor to put downloaders on a watch list.

The very first scene of the game involves the player character Marcus infiltrating a ctOS center to wipe his profile from the system, something the wannabe Dedsec members watching claim "has never been done before", despite the fact that all 4 of them have altered theirs to be unusable. Even if deleting your profile is supposed to be some Herculean task compared to altering it, like every hacker character in each game has done besides Clara Lille, Aiden Pearce erased T-Bone's profile in near the exact same way in the first game.

The biggest difference in these 2 games is the suspension of disbelief, the down-to-Earth feeling in the worlds. Aiden trained with expert fighters and used a collapsible baton, a weapon illegal in real life due to the fact that even an untrained wielder can easily break bones or even kill with a swing. Marcus is a hipster that starts the game knocking out security guards with a ball on a yo-yo, making his testers moan in awe, and descending into a 160 degree server farm without a moment of hesitation, and maybe half a grunt of discomfort, all while holding himself up with a perfect wallsit.

The music is completely forgettable and obnoxious, WD1's music was iconic in comparison. The driving is overly sensitive (even with that setting all the way down) and more reminiscent of GTA than the realistic need to brake in WD1. Dedsec was "expanded upon," changing from an intimidating and understated voice of truth to an ugly, pixel-animated design project that looks like it was ♥♥♥♥ out by an even edgier Shadman.

The concrete goals of "find the men who killed your niece and stop any criminals you find" changed to "♥♥♥♥ around and pretend it's saving da world cause you got a higher follower count." The best way this can be illustrated are the side missions. The first game had you track down weapon shipments, gather evidence against hidden human traffickers, hunt a serial killer, and wage open war against criminal convoys, This one has you scam a businessman out of his money cause he wanted to buy an album with the artist's consent, but "we wanna listen to that album too, dawg." If that's not a lofty enough cause for you, how about hacking a friend's sister's webcam show and humiliating her in front of her viewers? Or winning an RC GoKart event? Or driving Uber?

The game has no focus at the same time that it overqualifies its characters. Why do I care that these 20 year olds are hacking prodigies with social skills, fashion sense, fighting ability, and tactical ingenuity, if there's barely any sense of gravity or urgency? You know how this game starts? Marcus gets drunk on a beach, slurs "ayo we shouldr likee, totalyly figt the biig bad corpos! We'er hackerz, man," and drives around town in his underwear the next morning. And according to Ubisoft, this was a better way to represent the fight against corporate overreach than continuing Aiden Pearce's story, or even taking inspiration from his origin. It's really no wonder this game was more popular in the long run; it's literally just Ubisoft's attempt at GTA tomfoolery but with hacking thrown in.

Best and most addicting game in the world. I recommend starting as scout and/or spy.