Remember when Ubisoft announced they were working on a movie adaptation of hacking series Watch Dogs, before it was even released? I sure didn’t! Well, allow us both to be reminded of something from over a decade ago, because the Watch Dogs film is still apparently A Thing. It’s more of A Thing now, too, because it has actual names attached rather than just a corporation’s vague “excitement” about licensing out its IP.
]]>Ubisoft's campy cybercrime-o-rama Watch Dogs 2 arrived on Game Pass this week, and it's worth a look. I've been playing Watch Dogs 2 lately myself, by coincidence, and I am enjoying its gang of goofballs who want to stick it to The Man by hacking the planet and forcing people to watch their meme videos. Good camp fun with a nice group of friends.
]]>I won't dignify the underscore that is in the official title. Watch Dogs 2 may not have an iconic cap, but you know what it does have? An iconic mask.
]]>Update: Anyone with an Ubi account can now sign up for a free copy over here.
Ubisoft's offer of Watch Dogs 2 for free if you watched today's Ubisoft Forward stream today was meant to be a tempting little sweetener, but things broke. The servers seemingly overloaded, meaning that not only were many unable to sign into their Ubi accounts and become eligible for the giveaway, some people are complaining all the failed attempts got their accounts automatically disabled. Welp. Sounds like it'll take some fixing, but Ubisoft have at least said people who couldn't log in will get the freebie.
]]>Ubisoft's big not-E3 showcase is scheduled for this Sunday, July 12th where they'll be showing off new gameplay and trailers for upcoming games. As part of the event, they're also letting you claim a free copy of Watch Dogs 2 for PC, though you'll have to be fast. You need to grab it while the show's live, meaning you'll have about a 45 minute window to make those dogs yours.
]]>Good hello. Please, grab hold and sit, for this is some Steam Charts.
]]>We've just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It's a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you'll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.
2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets.
]]>Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games. But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol' breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months.
Below is the full, hundred-strong roster, complete with links to our coverage if you want to find out more about any of the games, or simply to marvel at how much seemed to happen in the space of 52 short weeks.
]]>You can’t properly celebrate July 4th, the infamous date when Americans discovered fireworks and those really patriotic hats, on your own, which is why Ubisoft is putting out a free Watch Dogs 2 [official site] multiplayer update. On Tuesday, you’ll be able to jump in-game and fool around in a slew of 4-player party mode activities. Take a gander at the trailer below.
]]>The Steam summer sale is in full blaze. For a while it even blazed so hot that the servers went on fire and all the price stickers peeled off the games. Either that or the store just got swamped with cheapskates looking for the best bargains. Cheapskates like you! Well, don’t worry. We’ve rounded up some recommendations - both general tips and some newly added staff choices.
Here are the things you should consider owning in your endless consumeristic lust for a happiness which always seems beyond reach. You're welcome.
]]>Hannah just wanted to be a farmer. Not a male farmer. Not a female farmer. Just a farmer that didn't have to suffer NPC after NPC lumping them into one gender or the other. Hannah's hopes rose with the release of Stardew Valley, but after jumping into the farming sim they discovered it offered only male and female gender identities, with he/she pronouns to match. As someone who identifies as non-binary, Hannah couldn't help but be disappointed.
"I’ve almost come to expect little to no representation," says Hannah. "Being able to play a character that is different from myself is fun and interesting, but playing one true to myself I find is often more fun. It feels more real if you are in the world rather than just an observer playing a person in that world."
Unwilling to sit idly by, Hannah took it upon themselves to broaden Stardew Valley's gender diversity, modding the game so that NPCs referred to the protagonist with gender-neutral pronouns and replacing the gender symbols in the character creator with ungendered body-type indicators.
The response from other players was overwhelming.
]]>When they kick at your front door, how you gonna come? With your hands on your head or tapping on your phone? Think on that, as Ubisoft are hinting that the future of Watch Dogs may have an interest in (ohh-oh!) London's Brixton. The latest Watch Dogs 2 [official site] update expanded the ending cutscene with a recording of a conversation stating that hacktivist cells are bustin' out all over, see, and it shows numbers which just so happen to be map coordinates pointing at Brixton. Yeah, I'd like to see Ubi continue the wild Hackers homage in Merrye Olde Londonne Towne.
]]>Cor blimey, it's only the weekly Steam Charts! As always, these are based on the accumulated sales on Steam over the previous week, not what's doing best for itself at this exact moment in time.
A nice number one this week, but a rather old-fashioned top ten otherwise - with one unexpected aberration.
N.B. there is NO VENGABUS this week. Repeat NO VENGA BUS. It'll return when it is most needed.
]]>Decoding is a regular column about the games we love, and the tricks and traditions that make them tick.
“Oh shit, I pressed the wrong button and killed that guy.”
It happens to the best of us. You could play Watch Dogs 2 [official site] for days without firing a gun, or causing a fatal traffic accident, or beating someone to death with a billiard ball. Lead character Marcus Holloway doesn't seem like the kind of person who'd leave bodies in his wake, and the ease with which he can become a killer is jarring. Like so many of our protagonists, he walks through life with the safety off and his finger on the trigger.
Open world games, particularly those of the urban variety, have a violence problem, and it's mechanical rather than philosophical.
]]>Alec is away this week, following the Vengaboys around on tour. Or, if they're not currently touring, just visiting places they've been, taking photos and placing them inside his scrapbook alongside some brief reflections. That means it falls to me to tell you which ten games were the best selling on Steam in the past week, and there are some pleasant games inside.
]]>Ubisoft have delayed the first Watch Dogs 2 [official site] DLC release a touch, as they've been busy focusing on patches instead. That's a good reason. I like Ubi's recent decisions to fix games over rinsing players; remember they delayed The Division's expansions too. But yes, if you want to hack the planet dressed as that ol' hippy T-Bone you'll need to wait a little longer.
]]>We've already looked at Watch Dogs 2's [official site] multiplayer, which is seamlessly stitched onto the game's open world singleplayer shenanigans, and I've written about my first few hours with the game. Now, having worked my way through the story missions and as much of the surrounding city as possible, I'm here to tell you wot I think of Ubisoft's latest hack 'em up as a whole.
]]>Had a week off. (No, not a holiday, no such thing when there's a three-year-old in the house). Bit of a break from writing about games. Though I'd rebuild and resupply a little, come back fighting fit, ready for anything GAMESWORLD might throw at me next.
Anything but this.
]]>While Adam is busy hacking the planet for his final review, I’ve dropped into the multiplayer of Watch Dogs 2 [official site] to harass some of the world’s script kiddies. This is built into the singleplayer world “seamlessly”, you just select an option on your super-phone and a foe will become known to you a few hundred metres away (sometimes you’ll be warped closer to them). Now you’ve invaded their world, Dark Souls style, and have to hack them without being caught. It’s the same great game of hide and seek from the first Watch Dogs and I'm enjoying it a lot. But there’s also problems. Most significantly, why does this mode need guns?
]]>I've been playing Watch Dogs 2 [official site] for most of a day and a night, and I haven't killed anyone yet. The game's recreation of San Francisco and outlaw protagonist make Grand Theft Auto the obvious point of comparison, and while it's certainly possible to take the ultraviolence and careless crime route in your travels around the city, stealth infiltration and surveillance are much more suited to the game's toolset and mood.
Whatever else it might be, and I'll cover as much as I can below, Watch Dogs 2 is a more thoughtful, brighter alternative to Rockstar's take on the open world urban action adventure.
]]>Watch Dogs 2 [official site] is out now on PC, two weeks after our best friends in Console Town got their hands on it. The delay wasn’t surprising coming from Ubisoft, who like to make us wait before letting us clean up all the icons they’ve spilled onto a new map. They said it was to make sure the game “runs smoothly across a broad range of hardware”. Well, now we can test that theory for ourselves. You there, with the Pentium II processor, get downloading.
]]>The PC launch of Watch Dogs 2 [official site] next week might be a fortnight after its console debut but hey, at least our version of the open-world Hackers homage has extra pretties. Ubisoft have gabbed about these before and now show them off in a trailer. Sunlight light up the fog rolling across the bay really is quite something ("ray-marched volumetric fog", if you want to get technical). Of course, there's a world of difference between a good-looking trailer and a game which actually runs well.
]]>Well, this really isn't the chart I'd expected to see at this point of the year. We're in peak Silly Season, and yet last week's 10 best-selling games on Steam form a broadly unexpected bunch.
Which is exactly what I like to see.
]]>In Watch Underscore Dogs, you could watch all sorts of grim scenes by hacking into networks. You might see a recently-released convict hold a gun to his face and contemplate suicide, or a divorced single father wank to porn while his baby bawls in another room then mutter "Shoulda washed my hands" when he goes to comfort the bairn. Ha-ha-hilarious! You wacky dudes, Ubisoft. In Watch Dogs 2 [official site], you might find a 'leaked' teaser trailer for a new Ubisoft game. Well. An imaginary one, at least. Some sort of sci-fi-y spaceship doodad with a twangly cowboy tune.
]]>No one believes me when I say I adore the style of Watch Dogs 2 [official site]. They tell me the open-world crime simulator is trying far too hard to be cool, that it's nothing at all like real hacking or real hacker culture, that it barely knows what a computer even is, that the memes it blasts are woefully outdated, that it looks like it was designed for teens by a committee of dads. Yes, I absolutely agree with all of that - and adore it. Watch Dogs 2 looks like the Hackers sequel I've waited twenty years for.
The game's not out on PC until the end of the month but the launch trailer is already here. Ubi must have been hacked, yeah?
]]>Playful isn’t high on the list of adjectives I’d use to describe Aiden Pearce’s po-faced misadventures in Watch Dogs, so when I sat down to play four hours of Watch Dogs 2, my face wasn’t prepared for the amount of grinning I’d be doing. There were aches. There was embarrassing, snorting laughter. Mostly, though, there was relief.
The first game had a tone problem. It was grey and grim and stuck with a humourless, sad sack protagonist, which didn’t quite match up with a conceit as silly as a magic phone that can hack grenades and find out what type of porn people watch. Its sequel, however, seems determined to be fun.
]]>As is customary with their all-singing, all-dancing, all-icon-collecting megagames, Ubisoft have delayed the PC version of Watch Dogs 2 [official site]. While the Hackers reboot's console launch will go ahead on November 15th, the Windows release is now due on November 29th. Ubi want to polish it up so it doesn't suck on PC at launch, see. On the bright side, it does sound like they're paying attention to the bells, whistles, and sliders some demand - an uncapped framerate, field of view options, 2160p resolution support, an optional high-res texture pack, and so on.
]]>When Ubi announced Watch Dogs 2 [official site] at E3, they promised a lot more hacktivist goodness as we assumed the role of Marcus Holloway, a Dedsec member set on sticking it to The Man with the help of his smart phone and legions of social media followers.
Ubisoft's Colin Graham walked us through 20 minutes of Watch Dogs 2 gameplay this week, giving us a nice look at the game's various hacktivities, driving mechanics, and other fun features. Oh, and we got to go on a shopping trip. Here, take a look yourself!
]]>There are strange things going on with the buggy I’m driving. I’m in a field, somewhere in Ghost Recon: Wildlands’ digital Bolivia, and the vehicle is transforming while I drive it. The power, suspension, steering – everything’s changing. It’s not a bug. Next to me, the driving team at Ubisoft Reflections are fiddling with my poor ride using their vehicle editing tool, which lamentably doesn’t have a fancy name.
Reflections have been making driving games since 1995’s smashing Destruction Derby and are probably best known for the Driver series, the last of which was Driver: San Francisco, popping into existence all the way back in 2011. A dedicated driving team still exists at the studio, but now they're using their expertise in games like Watch Dogs 2 and the latest Tom Clancy romp.
]]>Ubisoft are pooping out all of their videogames news this week. Poopisoft. But then again, it’s Gamescom, so is everybody else. This time they’ve revealed details of multiplayer modes in Watch Dogs 2 [official site]. As long as your connected, they say, you’ll come across other players in the world. You can either team up with them, or do bad things to their phones while they’re not looking. It’s all kicking off in this trailer I’ve got down here. Follow me.
Watch Dogs 2 [official site] looks like a modern-day video game reboot of the seminal Hackers and I can't tell you how much I'm into that. Cocky young punks and ruffians free-running wild and listening to banging tunes while they stick it to The Man is right up my cyberstreet. It's so over-the-top and that is why I adore it. It can't be serious, can it? It can't. I adore it. Look how much fun these scamps are having in the 11-minute first gameplay trailer!
]]>Watch Dogs 2 [official site] will come out on November 15th, Ubisoft declared today, formally announcing the open-world crime simulator. It's jetting off to the sunny San Francisco Bay Area and it... looks fun? Not simply fun-to-play fun, but actually having a sense of a fun, with colours and people who look like they're having fun and no moody uncledads anywhere in sight. Here, jack into this announcement vid-o-rama:
]]>Ubisoft today announced the formal announcement of Watch Dogs 2 [official site], a sequel to their open-world crime simulator about a magical hacking telephone. They also released a trailer teasing the release of a trailer. What do we know about the announcement of Watch Dogs 2? It will be livestreamed at 6pm CEST (5pm UK time, 12pm EST, 9am PDT). What do we know about Watch Dogs 2 itself? Its hacking is also a bit silly, and its protagonist also has terrible dress sense. Observe:
]]>It was Ubisoft's turn yesterday to report to their investors, and they laid out their release plans between now and March 2017. Those plans include the arrival of four games we know about - Watch_Dogs 2, Ghost Recon: Wildlands, South Park: The Fractured But Whole, For Honor - and, perhaps more excitingly, one we do not. That new game won't be a sequel but a "new AAA IP".
]]>Watch Dogs 2 will launch before April 2017. We know because Ubisoft just said that the game would be out before the end of its current financial year as part of their third-quarter financial report. And for now, that's all we know.
]]>In news that surprises exactly no one, a sequel to Watch Dogs [official website] appears to be in the works. This comes according to some poor guy's LinkedIn page that's been sniffed out by VideoGamer.com.
Julien Risse is a senior gameplay designer at Ubisoft, whose past credits include the original Watch Dogs and its DLC Bad Blood, but the stand out oddity is his mention of an unannounced sequel for the series. He's since deleted it from his credits but it lives on forever in screencap form. Somewhere, with knuckles between teeth, Julien Risse silently screams.
]]>
