Watch Dogs 2 Review: Hack Your Heart Out

Watch Dogs kicked off with the mysterious Aiden Pearce. Respectfully I enjoyed his character for the simple fact you never knew anything about him other than his determination on retribution for the death of his niece. But the developers listening to its audience changed directions and offered a new spin taking us to San Francisco, home of DedSec.

You play as protagonist Marcus Holloway, a street smart hacker with nothing to lose and everything to gain with a bit of time and a couple clicks on his cell phone or laptop. With ctOS 2.0 and even higher level of security threats about DedSec looks to recruit Marcus through an impossible test that he of course makes look too easy.

In joining DedSec Marcus immediately opens the eyes of Sitara, Wrench, Josh and Horaito into making an even bigger movement by taking the fight to ctOS, Blume and other industries in digital warfare. With plenty of success in the process, they unfortunately open other challenges from groups and hackers along the way looking to hurt and destroy the movement.

Just as Aiden’s role in the original Watch Dogs the world is again at your fingertips. But in this installment there are truly no limits as to what Marcus can do, even utilizing a RC car and drone to help reach inaccessible areas, hacking your way through and creating new key entries.

In Watch Dogs 2 being challenged by other hackivists make the missions worthwhile. Perfect example is Marcus managing to work his way inside a hackers bunker only to find it rigged with explosives and a puzzle needing decryption. While the puzzle was simple enough the hacker had access to reset everything you’ve completed. And it only gets better.

There’s a highly noticeable problem however with Marcus, his character doesn’t entirely match his gameplay. Through cutscenes Holloway is a go-getter to the movement believing in what Sitara created and wanting to take it all to the next level; and by far being one of the greatest hackers in DedSec. But as to how he manages to work his way through certain missions’ guns blazing, you never see that side of him throughout character development, only gameplay.

Things you do see quite often is the ability to hack nearby vehicles, change street lights and cause a massive collision, hack nearby civilians for various reasons including making a bit of cash and more. Watch Dogs two intrigues most with the option of hacking the police into believing a civilian of your choosing to be a person of interest (for theft, kidnapping, you name it). You can also setup gang rivals and provoke gang members to execute a person of interest as well.

Most gamers will truly love the open world environment in Watch Dogs 2 as you can travel throughout this massive environment in many ways including bikes, cars, trucks and buses. The open environment is also what makes hacking unique as you can control cameras blocks away and manipulate people completely unnoticed and untraceable.

In addition to the story there are plenty of side missions you can complete which earn you fans, ultimately unlocking XP to enhance your hacking abilities. You can also choose multiplayer missions which involves taking down other hackers, both individually and as a group. You can also at any time visit certain shops, for clothes and more; plus interact in drone races and more.