Watch_Dogs

Maybe not for the same reason as I wanted to kick Aiden in the balls, but... He's kind of juvenile. I appreciate Ubisoft lightening up the tone, but maybe they took it a bit far in the opposite direction.

There really oddly funny. There all young multi-ethnic 20 somethings who possess nerdy/geeky hobbies (The whole alien vs predators conversation), love of pop culture, all tech-savvy artists with constant stick it to the man attitudes. I mean I'm around the age of the main cast actually & couldn't help but chuckle sometimes at how "hip" they all are.

Its why I was happy T-bone joined as he provided that old-guy mix the group desperately needed from anyone not in their immediate age or hobby group.

I liked that Av P conversation. I hated what happened after that.

I'm going to find the sadist that thought up that bunker puzzle and I'm going to do him severe bodily harm.

True, but, at least to me anyway, a lot of that ended up feeling like an attempt to appeal to a target demographic rather than as a genuine attempt at character. Like a 40-year-old writer trying to write like a 'millenial' and be relevant and talk about what's popular without a full grasp of how those things work or why some things are so... I hate to repeat words, but popular. It seems like they occasionally got some moments (Av P being something that's not 'currently trending' but something a group of friends might discuss), but a lot of it made me cringe instead.

edited 5th Jan '17 2:07:41 AM by InkDagger

I'm playing Watch_Dogs 2 presently and am kind of torn about the game. I like the characters a great deal but it really does feel low stakes by comparison.

Blume Corporation stealing your financial data is...kind of low on my list of villainous plots to stop.

edited 25th Jan '17 5:56:26 PM by CharlesPhipps

I had the same experience. The stakes do get higher later in the game, but it still feels a bit weak given that DedSec might as well be operating like a terrorist cell at this point, having likely caused enormous death and property damage in the course of their escapades.

Plus it's okay when Aidan does it!

DedSec must stop Blume from stealing people's personal information!

Which is....what hackers do.

I guess it's wrong because they're a corporation.

:)

edited 25th Jan '17 5:56:53 PM by CharlesPhipps

But they're FREEDUM SPIRITS and Blume is OPPRESSIVE ORWELLIAN CORPORATION! Totally different!

Yeah I think a main problem in the game is a lack of tension. Most of it is just Deadsec fucking around with everyone with the only people they took seriously being Dusan, the government & those gangster lackeys. Even then their appearances were pretty sparse. We don't really face a violent criminal organization that has everyone on edge a lot like last game.

I think the game could have done better with a more physical antagonist who can challenge Marcus on equal footing & place him in danger more directly compared to Dusan's master plan schtick that only happens during the middle & end of the game.

I think it's rather telling that the game is marketed directly at "millennials" who, the focus groups say, seem to care more about TPP and net neutrality than they do about global warming, crime, economic and racial equality, etc.

"Oh, noes, The Government/Big Corps might be snooping on me when I browse hentai porn! ANARCHY!!!"

edited 26th Jan '17 6:11:21 AM by Fighteer

Yeaah.

Honestly, when I get around to the game, I'm treating it as supervillains vs supervillains and just laugh at the games attempts at morally washing the gang.

Really? Because I think the game is pretty obviously marketed at thirty-somethings born in Generation Y rather than Millennials. Why? Because they make Aliens vs. Predator jokes, Knight Ryder, Tom Cruise fanboyism, and are deeply focused on things like dealing with insurance fraud, the Church of Scientology, and other things. It could just be Ubisoft's programmers are writing about themselves but I don't get much millennial out of them other than being a bunch of Totally Radical types.

It's doubly weird, though, because they DO deal with the Zetas and a bunch of awful RL people stand-ins but it's Blume that's supposedly the big enemy. It's not even like Watch_Dogs one where the criminals are bribing CTOS' operators to let them run ragged.

edited 26th Jan '17 6:21:28 AM by CharlesPhipps

Well, some of the activities they fight to uncover are pretty reprehensible, such as manipulating social media to get a candidate elected. There's also the Bellwether program that, from the last game, we know is designed to broadcast subliminal hypnotic messages. Strangely, that particular plot angle is not explored nearly to the degree that one imagines it ought to.

Tidus making urban warfare bots, though? Hell, even Marcus geeks out over the damn things before blowing them up. And Dusan baiting out DedSec by using their hacks as a marketing tool for his more-secure OS is actually pretty brilliant. If he weren't such a dick, he'd actually have my support, as there's a fair bit of realism behind setting out honeypots so that the hacker community will find all your security flaws for you. The main problem is that he's using the actual people of San Francisco as unwitting pawns in his "live beta", causing lots of collateral damage. In RL, groups like DedSec can be useful but are generally far more destructive than they are valuable to society.

Really, the game is less Black vs. White and more Corporate Grey vs Anarchist Grey, with the Anarchist side being given a Totally Radical coat of paint so we won't notice.

Umm... I hate to break it to you, but Generation Y and Millennials are the same thing.

edited 26th Jan '17 7:16:10 AM by Fighteer

I was born in 1980.

So I'm Generation Y and am 36.

If that makes me a Millennial, I'm not sure that means the same thing as people think it means.

edited 26th Jan '17 6:23:30 AM by CharlesPhipps

Those lines cannot ever be anything other than arbitrary. Generations span 20 years, give or take, yet the gap in experiences between those on the far ends of that span is immense. It's a continuum that we slap categories on to allow us to simplify things. I'm 41, which puts me on the tail end of Gen X. My mother technically qualifies as a Baby Boomer, but she certainly doesn't think of herself that way.

edited 26th Jan '17 7:45:39 AM by Fighteer

Point taken.

In any case, I'm probably not going to give this game a very high score. It's okay but the co-op issues, the lack of urgency, and so on make it less enjoyable than the original Watch_Dogs. The companions and protagonist are better but I understood where Aiden Pierce was going and why.

The game is shallow, but fun. Pretty basic synopsis right there. Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "co-op issues".

edited 26th Jan '17 7:48:41 AM by Fighteer

So much focus in the game being in the Multiplayer which intrudes on your single-player. Some people may like it but I don't.

My game was also rather glitchy.

I found that most co-op issues that I observed were attributable to latency, given that the game appears to use a peer-to-peer model for hosting multiplayer. You can easily turn off integrated online matchmaking in the options.

edited 26th Jan '17 8:45:36 AM by Fighteer

Which I find hilarious coz like, what do you think marketing is?

Like, there's already so much stuff in marketing and business that is meant to influence you without you conscious mind's knowing.

"But Blume is using interwebs instead of spraying the air system with the smell of food!"

edited 26th Jan '17 9:07:47 AM by Ghilz

Yes, I find that hilariously ironic. People who suck up marketing pitches, which are already using expertly crafted subliminal messaging, get mad when some Designated Villain decides to use ... subliminal messaging.

"No government/corporation is going to control my opinions and attitudes," they proclaim as they gobble down McDonalds food while wearing trendy Gap clothing.

edited 26th Jan '17 9:29:55 AM by Fighteer

"Generation Y/the Millennial Generation" starts in 1983, by the way. If you were born in 1980, then you're a young Gen-X.

Personally, I've always found the Generation labeling to be rather useless. Its not exactly a useful classification. You know the range to which people were born, but... unless you add other significant qualifications in there, its not going to tell you anything.

For example, a lot of people try to classify Millenials as 'self obsessed' and 'lazy' and a bunch of other adjectives, but, while that may be true for some, its clearly untrue for vast portions of the generation and thus the use of the generational term becomes useless.

Generation wars are hilarious tho