Watch_Underscore_Dogs 2: vaginas and penises on display here ya'll

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Watch_Underscore_Dogs 2: vaginas and penises on display here ya'll

acksplode: May 17, 2004

They butchered San Francisco :gonk:

Part of the hype for me was seeing my neighborhood rendered in-game, but the Mission is gone, along with like half of the city. Also in-game Oakland doesn't even try to look like IRL Oakland. Sausalito is a more faithful reproduction. Not a huge deal but I'm a little disappointed.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2016 04:36

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 01:57

acksplode: May 17, 2004

Xaris posted:

That's pretty . Looks like they're just trying to pretend Oakland is all the Port area?

I was staring at Google Maps last night trying to line things up, and I have no clue wtf they're trying to do. Seems like they just designed whatever city they want/need for gameplay and skinned it to look like downtown Oakland.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2016 20:05

acksplode: May 17, 2004

ninjahedgehog posted:

And what in the unholy gently caress is that diagonal street perpendicular to Market?

I think that's supposed to be Columbus Ave. It's like they took the northeast quarter of SF and scaled it out to be the entire city.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2016 22:07

acksplode: May 17, 2004

Played for about 4 hours last night and had a pretty good time. I never played the first one so I can't compare them, but the first few missions I tried have been fun. So far it seems like a really competent, polished open world game with lots of ways to gently caress with the world around you. Basically a GTA that doesn't suck so bad. Hacking and sneaking my way through the world nonviolently is rewarding. I don't feel like there's a shooting game I'm missing out on.

I'm also coming down from my dismay at the inaccuracy of the world map -- SF from like 5th & Market to the Ferry Building and down Embarcadero to the Golden Gate bridge is crazy accurate. The area around AT&T Park is spot-on too. And then there are small chunks filling in the rest that are meant to represent the various neighborhoods. Dolores Park and the Mission Dolores, the Castro, Civic Center, Embarcadero Center, even a little bit of Bayview are all there. The effect is that I'm wandering around this largely familiar city with occasional moments of strong deja vu. Apparently the little bit of water that juts into Oakland is supposed to be Lake Merritt, I'll take a look around there tonight and see how it holds up.

The Ubisoft SF office is in the right place, and there's a mission where you can break in and steal an unreleased E3 trailer for an unannounced game. It was vague and serious-looking enough that it might be an actual tease for a new IP -- something sci-fiey that takes place in outer space. Also you can look at the salaries for various roles at Ubisoft, which must be kinda awkward for them lol.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2016 22:14

acksplode: May 17, 2004

ImpAtom posted:

There's a chat in that office where someone offers someone else a blowjob which strikes me as even more awkward to include in a game.

Jesus, I missed that entirely. Yeah probably not a great idea.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2016 22:55

acksplode: May 17, 2004

Utnayan posted:

And the game looks like something that came out of 2003 graphically.

Haha no

# ¿ Nov 16, 2016 03:07

acksplode: May 17, 2004

I thought GTA5 was a boring slog :shrug:

# ¿ Nov 16, 2016 03:39

acksplode: May 17, 2004

MrSlam posted:

How tone deaf is the game? Cause the commercials give me the vibe that it's written by a bunch of old people in a meeting trying to sound young and hip.

Like does the main character ever say, "Well as a millenial..."?

It's passable, not too awful. Political discussion around privacy and corporate control of technology are a little hamfisted, but handled okay. The game acknowledging the protagonist's blackness is kinda refreshing, and hasn't misstepped so far. Right before your group of hackers retrofits a car to be remote-controllable, the protagonist blurts out "Hackers love a challenge!" which is more stage direction than dialogue.

Transistor Rhythm posted:

It feels to me like the staff of Clickhole coming together and doing this and making a fun game out of it.

That's giving it way too much credit

# ¿ Nov 16, 2016 20:47

acksplode: May 17, 2004

Back Hack posted:

I think it falls completely on it's face personally, they're stealing people's private information and monitoring them under the guise of helping and protect them, even though that's the exact same justification the companies they go after use. At no point so far does the game acknowledge this or have them feel some form of guilt over this, yet I'm suppose to think these people are good guys?

Yeah that's fair. I'm still pretty early in the game, but all this hubris does seem like it's begging for some sort of karmic comeuppance. If the game brushes these doubts away so as to not get in the way of your hacker power fantasy, that'd be lame. But tbh I'm not expecting a solid critique of corporate capitalist technocracy from a product that is an inseparable product of that system.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2016 22:28

acksplode: May 17, 2004

Wanderer posted:

The one where you invade their base, after you rescue Jimmy?

What I ended up doing was going in on the left, KOing the two guys around the booth, using the electrical vault to KO one guy outside the temple, stun-gunned his buddy, then waited out the inevitable body discovery on the balcony inside the temple. Used cameras and careful positioning to solve the hack, then took the elevator down. It looks a lot harder than it is.

That was a fun mission to ghost. I snuck my RC car into the office above the garage, hacked the laptop that gave me the key to the church, and then took the vent there to the garage below. I unlocked the garage from the inside and then put the RC car away and walked myself through it and underneath most of the patrols on the left side. I used the distraction hack on the one guard watching the church's side entrance, then completed the mission like you said. I escaped by sneaking back to the garage, stealing a nice car, and peeling the gently caress out.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2016 20:14

acksplode: May 17, 2004

Brosnan posted:

That's what has me interested as well but uhhhh why the gently caress would you make a game about some fusion of counterculture and tech and ~gritty urbanity~ and not heavily feature the neighborhood that sits at the intersection of all those things?

Like yeah you can ditch the Richmond and Sunset and probably even most of Pac Heights or Noe or Potrero.. but Mission?

So the Mission is in there -- in fact it's where the SF Dedsec HQ is located -- but it's crammed in between Soma and Twin Peaks. It's basically the northwest chunk of the Mission condensed into a few blocks. More of an homage than a reproduction. That big green square on the southeast side of SF on that map is a slightly undersized Dolores Park.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2016 21:39

acksplode: May 17, 2004

Brosnan posted:

I live on Dolores, north of the park. Do I have a home in Watchdogs??

I don't think there's really anything identifiable as a Dolores St. 24th got vaporized too, so I'm out on the streets with ya. The good news is that there's still plenty of elevated highway to live under.

acksplode fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Nov 18, 2016

# ¿ Nov 18, 2016 01:08

acksplode: May 17, 2004

Yeah this is why I'm taking it slow and not diving into the game too deeply yet. I don't want to finish it before invasions get fixed, they sound pretty fun.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2016 21:36

acksplode: May 17, 2004

They really need to take the guns out of the next one and expand on hacking. Drop the samey stuff every other open-world game does and double-down on what makes WD2 unique. Maybe give you a pistol for emergencies, that's it. None of this grenade launcher sniper rifle nonsense.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2016 23:03

acksplode: May 17, 2004

Protagonist and friends are plenty likeable, they're a mishmash of (somewhat condescending and simplistic, yet sympathetic views of) youth and hacker culture. The game doesn't take itself too seriously, much to its benefit. This makes guns and violence feel really out of place, but it's easy (and fun!) to play nonlethally. Game is very pretty on my Pro and 1080p TV.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2016 21:05

acksplode: May 17, 2004

The aftertaste from WD1 is definitely not helping. Everyone I've talked to about WD2 voices immediate disgust because they either hated WD1 or saw all the backlash it got and tuned out.

So glad they fixed invasions though. Gonna have fun with that tonight.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2016 23:13

acksplode: May 17, 2004

Sucks that seamless multiplayer was broken at launch, but now it works and it owns. Game is 2x more fun now that I can stumble onto bounty targets between missions, or get hacked when I'm already in the middle of a shootout with cops.

# ¿ Nov 24, 2016 06:27

acksplode: May 17, 2004

UnfortunateSexFart posted:

Yeah after the latest patch it doesn't have to load to get you into someone else's game, even when you're the hacker/hunter. Pretty amazing.

I gotta say though, now that people are getting used to it, hacking invasion needs some work. They inexplicably took away the one minute prep time so hiding is really tough, apparently hacker vision exposes you right away (never been hacked myself, which is another issue), and the quadcopter makes it even tougher to find a hiding spot.

I had one failed hack where a guy made me stop no less than five times while he ran up to my escaping car. People have too much hacker juice. I feel like I only successfully hack someone when they don't really know what they're doing.

On another note, the "neutralize five fugitives in Bounty Hunt mode" trophy does require you to personally do the killing, which makes it 100x harder. But at least I've got something to keep me busy before I get platinum, which I rarely try to do. Only need that, 25 purchased cars (lame), and escape a level 5 felony. I'm sad there are no more key data puzzles, those were fun.

I don't think the prep time is necessary because the other player isn't notified until you actually start hacking. So you can position yourself however you'd like, then get line of sight and hack. But yeah the balance is all hosed up. Drone + hacker vision = clear advantage. I dunno how you can hack someone without hiding in a car or inside a structure. Making the search area larger might be an easy fix.

# ¿ Nov 24, 2016 07:33

acksplode: May 17, 2004

HatJudge posted:

I restarted that mission just so I could dress appropriately. Yeah...

That Bounty Hunter trophy is gonna be a bitch. I haven't found more than one instance. It spawned seamlessly into my game, which i thought was pretty cool. Sadly I was killed immediately by my target. With a melee attack.
Anyone else having trouble finding hunts? Hard to get good at it when there's no one around to practice with.

You can go into your phone's multiplayer app and trigger a bounty hunt (or any other online encounter) whenever. If matchmaking can find a player close enough then it'll be seamless, otherwise you might get teleported somewhere.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2016 02:23

acksplode: May 17, 2004

A good balance fix for hacking would be to make it more expensive to profile the hacker. If you had to hit L1 and spend a little meter to guess whether someone is the invader, that'd make the drone way less OP. It'd also give the invader incentive to blend in rather than just hide. Maybe make their pop-up profile look suspect in some subtle way, for fun.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2016 23:58

acksplode: May 17, 2004

blue squares posted:

One of the main reasons I play video games these days is to goof around in a fun world. How do people feel about Watch Dogs's San Francisco? Is it a fun open world to explore and goof around? Has anyone come up with creative ways to amuse themselves?

It's very pretty and full of landmarks and stuff. Lots of amazing views. So basically a good reproduction of the bay area. It's not really entertaining in the emergent chaos department. Craziest thing I've done is cause an anonymous ruckus by hacking a car into running over a pedestrian, cops showed up and arrested the wrong person, they got taken away. Maybe other people are more creative.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2016 07:27

acksplode: May 17, 2004

I've gotten stumped at a couple data points before realizing that there was a bigass crane a block away which I could use to get myself onto the roof.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2016 23:55

acksplode: May 17, 2004

MrJacobs posted:

How do you use the gestures unlocked from scout x? They dont appear in the emote wheel and I cant select them on the scout x app menu.

You can cycle through them when you're posing for a selfie.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2016 21:19

acksplode: May 17, 2004

Earwicker posted:

this is the first open world game I have played that is set in an area where I grew up (unless you count the version of SF in GTA San Andreas, but that was way more condensed and just the city)

I think they did a very good job of depicting it, though it is very much the Bay Area of 2016 with pretty much every trace of its 20th century erased, its kind of interesting how much the game is a sort of statement on how the Bay Area has changed recently, not as much through the story but the world itself

also the gameplay is p great

It was really neat to check out the Transbay Terminal in game, which is real but still under construction IRL. I wonder how true it'll be to the finished thing.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2016 01:12

acksplode: May 17, 2004

Yeah, it's the glass spaceship looking thing running between Mission and Howard from 1st to Beale.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2016 01:25

acksplode: May 17, 2004

ISIS figured out that dropping bombs from drones is OP: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/world/middleeast/isis-drone-documents.html

# ¿ Feb 1, 2017 01:55

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 01:57

acksplode: May 17, 2004

Sindai posted:

Calling in gangs/cops is definitely the best addition to the game.

They should've expanded on it and removed player guns except for the stun gun.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2017 23:01

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Watch_Underscore_Dogs 2: vaginas and penises on display here ya'll