Watch Dogs 2 Critic Reviews

The UI is wonderful. You have so much information immediately available to you. Nudle Maps always has a mini-map in the lower left corner, giving you a good look at the area. Bringing up information on people gives you a crisp, clear window. Hacking offers a menu with easily recognizable icons, so you always know what your button presses will do.

Watch Dogs 2 has created an immersive world, disturbingly close to the real one. It’s still a fictitious San Francisco, but sometimes it’s difficult to tell which bits are made up. With rich, in depth missions, colourful characters, and fun open world gameplay, this might just be the best game I’ve played this year.

It’s much better than the first in lots of ways.

What Watch Dogs 2 has done for the newly-minted Ubisoft IP, and for the hacking culture they so enthusiastically embrace, is prove above and beyond that the concept and foundation are sound. They’ve injected more fun and diversity this time around, and they’ve done so with a city backdrop that is truly alive, and is utterly inviting.

Watch Dogs 2 does a great job of demonstrating the potential perils of a too-connected world and improves upon the first game in multiple ways. This is not a guns over brains game - there is an interesting topic at play here about our society's dependence on technology and Ubisoft deserves credit for exploring this theme. The characters and narrative are leaps and bounds more engaging than the revenge tale the original game tried to paint.

Watch Dogs 2 is the perfect sequel. It takes everything that made the first game unique and original, and expands on all of it. Everything is better, from the hacking, to the story, the setting and the variety of content. Watch Dogs 2 is far from being just more of the same. An apt comparison could be the jump from the first Assassins Creed game to Assassins Creed 2. While the first was a promising yet clunky new idea, the sequel delivered on that idea and turned it into one of the most iconic series of the last decade. With Watch Dogs 2, Ubisoft is well on its way to recreating that same magic.

I was expecting Watch Dogs 2 to be more enjoyable than its predecessor, but I didn't expect it to be so well designed and full of heart. Watch Dogs 2 isn't reinventing the open-world game and fans of Ubisoft's special brand of go-places-and-pick-things-up gameplay will feel right at home, but it's one of the best examples the genre has to offer – as long as you don't want to shoot anything.

Most importantly, Watch Dogs 2 offers a sense of humor running through it that the series badly needed. You don’t need miserable family death stories in a ludicrous game about “smart cities” and cartoony hackers. You need writing that leans into the silliness, that has a laugh at its own expense, which is exactly what this game gets.

It’s a vibrant world, more upbeat and less cruel than what we usually see in the genre, and its main characters finally seem like they’re having fun as a goofy group of hackers should. Combined with improved gameplay systems, and you will also be having fun eventually. It took me a few hours to realize that Watch Dogs 2 really had turned a corner, and after a full playthrough, I went from high skeptical to undeniably impressed.

The missions are varied and intense, and the characters provide plenty of great moments. If you’re craving a game with a gorgeous, busy and unique open world, this is the game for you.

Watch Dogs 2 represents a great quality improvement over its weak predecessor. It features very polished graphics and a great story mode with personality and style.

They managed to retain that core ambition that they had the first time around, but adjusted quite well to the criticisms levied against their project. What resulted is a game that is the same at heart, but is alive with variety and a hero we could actually stand behind without question. Watch Dogs 2 is what a sequel should be in every sense. A bigger, better, bolder take on what the first entry only treads.

Ubisoft removes that painful thorn from its side with Watch Dogs 2, and they can boast they have a great sandbox franchise. Its not the fact that it creates anything really new, but that it improves every hack possibility, the main difference between Watch Dogs and the rest of sandbox games. What's more, the lighting, the vibrant colors that compose San Francisco, and the sass of this sequel are exactly what it needed. Add a seamless multiplayer that rewards co-op action and you have stumbled upon the best sandbox of the year.

Watch Dogs 2 is the game we wanted to play the first time around. It's bold, beautiful and tells a story filled with people you care about and missions that are well built, exciting and sometimes hilarious. The hacking options are extensive and enable you to have a lot of fun and be creative with the missions, despite the often serious tone of the story itself. The player choice is immense too, fully putting the player in the driving seat. If the driving itself just had more personality, Watch Dogs 2 would be perfect.

Watch Dogs 2 delivers a great story-driven experience and a cast of characters that are easy to like, but it also solves most of the problems of its predecessor.

Watch Dogs 2 improves on every aspect from the original game, San Francisco is a world I want to spend time in and Marcus is a protagonist I actually enjoyed. It’s charming and imaginative all while not taking itself too seriously. If you’re looking for a sandbox adventure to fill some of the time until Red Dead Redemption 2, then Watch Dogs 2 might fill that craving.

Ubisoft has successfully recreated what made Grand Theft Auto great, but incorporates enough original ideas to set Marcus’ journey apart and make it feel fresh.

The sincere belief in a pack mentality is just one reason why Watch Dogs 2 is such an improvement over its predecessor.

Watch Dogs 2 is such a fully realized mid-2010s time capsule that—even if the online features are unavailable down the line—it would make for an especially insightful playthrough a decade from now, personal San Francisco native bias notwithstanding.

Watch Dogs 2 is an engaging, exciting and challenging game with a clear identity. Everything that did not work in its predecessor is gone.