Next week sees Watch Dogs 2 taking a big step forward in a number of ways, with both a free content update and the No Compromise expansion for PS4 being released into the wild. If there’s two things to take from it all, it’s that Ubisoft have heard what the game’s community have asked for and answered with a healthy dose of added multiplayer content as well as more options for those who feel that killing isn’t really in Marcus’ character.
While I feel that it’s really the multiplayer that is coming to the fore this time around, No Compromise will add a nice bundle of single player content into the mix as well. A new series of storyline missions called Moscow Gambit sees DedSec taking on devious pornographers and the Russian mob who have foolishly taken DedSec in vein. Clearly their boss deserves a humiliating paddling on camera…
There’s a bizarre and perverse sense of humour to the first part of this, as Marcus has to sneak into and hack his way through an illicit film studio. It’s a tiny bit more straight-laced, but as soon as I saw a few guys and gals in leather bondage strapping, I was chuckling to myself and thinking back to a similarly themed part of Saint Row: The Third. Of course, Saints Row never had a weird little robot with plastic tentacles all over it.
The marquee new multiplayer feature is the Showdown mode, which actually features three 2v2 game types, constantly cycling between them. That’s one of the biggest strengths of Showdown, that it can continue to roll from one mode to another, with each match a self-contained little battle. There’s no best of five rounds, just little morsels of multiplayer action a few minutes at a time. It’s also something that you can sample with a co-op buddy, or simply matchmake on your own and be partnered up with another player.
Doomload is a king of the hill-style game mode, where you need to get to and hold a particular point on the map until you’ve downloaded all the data. If an enemy player gets into the zone as well, it’ll interrupt the download, leading to a bit of cat and mouse as you try to hunt them down, or avoid being hunted. At the same time, if you have both of your team, the download will go faster, and it’ll take two of the other team to pause the download.
It’s a tricky game mode that can easily swing back and forth, with one team grabbing control and trying to set up a few remote bombs, lay booby traps, and so on. At the same time, you could maybe break out the flying drone and use it to drop bombs from up high.
The second mode is Steal the HDD, a simple out and out race to reach a checkpoint and then find the HDD in order to score. This one’s much more about getting to a location quickly and then spotting what you need to do to get to what is often quite an awkward spot. There might be an easy way up onto a roof, or you might need to try and employ a car as a makeshift climbing aid, while drones come in handy for the occasions that a HDD is placed underneath something.
Though a more vehicular mode, there are still opportunities to blend this with combat, though I more often found myself forsaking a HDD that I wouldn’t get to first, in favour of having a better starting point for the next HDD.
Finally, you can be on either side of Erase/Protect the Servers, with one duo attacking while the other defends. Three servers are dotted around an area, with the attackers needing to reach and hack each of them in person or using the drone. Spreading the servers around, it means that it starts off easier for the attackers, before the defenders can hole up around one particular point and defend it as best they can.
With the clock ticking down, this is perhaps my favourite mode. You really feel the pressure in the dying moments when you die and have to endure the torturous wait to respawn, but then there’s also the sweetness of being able to overcome a particularly stubborn and entrenched pair of defenders.
It’s that respawn time that is my least favourite thing about this game type, with a 10 second cool down preceding the brief loading screen to sprinkle salt on the wound. It would have been nice to have teammate revives to really foster team play. Similarly, it feels awkward to not let you change your loadout once you dismiss the weapon selection screen at the start of a match.
Originally a part of the No Compromise DLC, it’s great to see Ubisoft realising changing their plans to give something more to the whole community. It never helps a game to have modes split off behind a pay wall, where player counts can so easily dwindle. So, where No Compromise has had content taken away by one hand, Ubisoft have given with the other, adding new outfits themed around emergency services, some new single player time trials and further non-lethal weapons.
I’m someone who’s very much of the mind that Marcus and DedSec as a whole would take a more pacifist approach to their real world hacktivism, but non-lethal weapons in the main game were few and far between. No Compromise is, ironically, a little bit of a compromise to players like myself, with the Air Shotgun and the Taser Sniper Rifle. The latter is pretty much self explanatory, shocking people into unconsciousness, but the former is quite fun, sending a rippling air pulse that knocks people down, but can also shove cars and other objects around the world.
Neither is as overtly fun as the new free non-lethal weapon, though. The Paintball Gun is a mix between an assault rifle and, well, a paintpal gun, spattering the world with little pellets of colourful paint. It’s bound to make drawing willies in the world even more fabulous, for one thing, but it’s also pretty fun for online play. None of the non-lethal weapons have a particularly great time to kill, compared to a grenade launcher or straight up assault rifle, but hitting someone else with paintballs starts to cover their screens in colourful splashes.
Looking beyond Showdown, Ubisoft are also taking more content from the single player and opening it up for multiplayer. The motocross, eKart and drone time trials are all being turned into multiplayer races for four people, reusing the routes and tracks that already exist in the game.
Drone and eKart racing are nice additions, but motocross has to be my favourite. That’s just because in my opinion the handling is the most fun overall, even if bikes in Watch Dogs 2 could still do with an overhaul. The point to point races get to really explore the world, one of which lasts a good 15 minutes and takes you through over 150 checkpoints. It’s not just that, but the ability to tap into some of the game’s hacking, lets you mess around during a close race that ventures onto the roads, causing vehicles to veer left and right and potentially create a few problems for someone in front or close behind you. That said, you’re just as likely to mess thing up for yourself in my experience.
For those still playing Watch Dogs 2, dipping into its open world and playing its multiplayer mode, next week’s updates are fantastic news, just adding more things to do, more horrendous jumpers to wear – it’s a gloriously orange doge meme jumper this time – and more ways to play. More importantly, Ubisoft are showing they know how to make Watch Dogs 2 wag its long tail of support.
