Saturday, August 02, 2014

Watch Dogs, ACIV Revisited and Walking Dead S2 Ep4 Reviews + Thoughts



Watch Dogs [PS4]

Completed the main campaign and I really enjoyed the overall game. The main story itself was meh but everything else was solid. I didn't find Aiden's motives that interesting and most of the characters were assholes. I didn't really hate anyone though but I was pretty indifferent to them. There were some good concepts and ideas for this world but the actual story wasn't very interesting at all. I'm pretty sure this is just a foundation for greater things in future sequels. I also want to point out that the VO was excellent. Everyone was great. There were a few standouts for some characters in both cutscenes and their audio logs. Really impressive stuff. 

I really enjoyed the different missions and I was pretty hooked on some side stuff. The Investigations in particular were pretty intriguing. I really liked how they all have a conclusion. The puzzle-like elements to hacking and using the cameras to explore and hack an area was great and I hope to see more elaborate versions of these missions in its sequel. It was really fun creating traps by hacking various things. It felt like I was playing a Dungeon Keeper-type game. It was one of my favorite parts of the game.

The gunplay might be one of the best in any open world game. In fact, Watch Dog's gunplay is on par with a lot of other great third-person shooters. All the guns felt different and were really fun to use. I was pretty impressed with it because gunplay in most of my favorite open-world games like GTAV and Sleeping Dogs were pretty shitty. Whoever worked on the gunplay in this game deserves an award. Driving was a bit hard to figure out until someone told me to stop trying to control the camera. Once I did that, driving became fun. The camera does a pretty good job following behind your car when you do turns etc. I also really enjoyed using motorcycles in this game. Unlike other open world games, your bikes can take a lot of damage and you don't instantly fall off them in every collision. Very good.

I loved the atmosphere of the game. I've never been to Chicago but I really liked the different areas and I enjoyed exploring the city and the suburbs. It felt alive and I was impressed that it was always full of people doing their own thing. I found myself just taking my time and absorbing in the world. All the random calls/texts/emails you hack into added a lot of humor and personality to the game. Most of the people you end up hacking have some weirdo secret or issue which was humorous. Sadly, one of the worst things about this game is the radio station music. I hated 90% of the songs they chose. I hated them so much that I ended up turning off the radio entirely. On the other hand, the original soundtrack was awesome. 

Overall, I really enjoyed the game. The gunplay, traversal, hacking, exploration etc were all solid. The main story was hit or miss but at least it wasn't complete shit. I still enjoyed various moments and certain characters that popped up. If you enjoyed Ubi's other open-world games like the Assassin's Creed series, you should definitely give this game a chance. Recommended.




ACIV: Black Flag [PS4] + Companion App [iOS]

Speaking of the AC series, I actually beat this game last year but I decided to jump back in after they had patched the UPlay bug with the PS4 version. If you didn't know, UPlay did not work at all if you had more than 100 friends. It was a pretty stupid bug that kept me from being able to redeem my UPlay rewards and also prevented me from being able to play Kenway's Fleet. I can finally check out this feature months after its release.

I have to admit, Kenway's Fleet is awesome and added a lot to the game's main gameplay. It made earning money much easier and also made capturing ships fun. You end up playing a minigame where you can battle ships and trade goods for money. I was pretty hooked on it. And guess what? You can download an iOS app that allows you to not only play Kenway's Fleet but the also allows you to check everything you unlocked including Animus database entries and  game stats. It's an awesome app and I recommend anyone playing the game to check it out asap. I hope AC: Unity has a similar app.

I also found out I had a few glitched trophies that never popped up and that motivated me to restart a new game to get them. Replaying a Memory did not work. Thankfully they weren't that far in so it only took me a couple of hours of speedrunning to get them. So if you had the same problem like me, just start on a new save and you can get back any glitched trophies. I didn't have any trouble unlocking other trophies from doing side stuff so I assume the UPlay bug had something to do with it back when it was released.

Anyway, while I was trophy hunting, I also managed to find all the Elite plans, fully upgrade the Jackdaw AND I destroyed all four Legendary ships. It was a lot of fun and I was glad I revisited the game at this time. I already enjoyed the game back when I beat it but playing it again and completing these optional objectives shows how much I still love the game. I'm pretty impressed with how much work was done for areas and locations that most players will probably never bother checking out. ACIV is still a great game.




The Walking Dead S2 Episode 4 [PS3]

Another great ep with lots of tense moments. Some pretty good dialogue and tough choices. I'm not really sure what will happen next but it's been a long journey. Looking forward to seeing how it all ends.