Watchdogs Legion

[PZ]

Well, because the price of the DVD was too hard to resist, I installed and began playing today (first gaming session in a long time).

Graphics are very good and the attention to detail excellent. The scene is London, and I do not know if it accurate but homeless tents, grocery carts fires in barrels, etc are in the shadier areas of town.

So far the game suits me quite well. However, that is the typical way a game plays for me - starts fine, then come the races and other timed events, and finally some kind of ridiculous boss mission. I'll see I guess. In the meantime, I'm enjoying playing as different characters. You recruit anyone you like off the street and they give you some kind of mission. I did my first recruit of a construction worker who needed me to expunge his loan records. After completed he is in my list, and I can play as him any time. You sometimes need to recruit for a specific main mission, which is the reason I ended up with a construction worker.

You can switch to the others at will, and each has a special set of talents and/or types of equipment. My construction worker has a heavy lift construction drone which I used to steal a server from a rooftop.

If you are playing as someone and are shot beyond repair you do not actually die, but are taken into custody, and you need to choose one of your other recruits.

I must say that it is a really fun way to play, especially if you choose recruits with talents you like. That way you can play your strongest character in any mission (unless the mission specified a talent you don't have, and then you need to recruit one).

Also nice is an auto-drive feature - when you hop into a car you can engage auto-drive and just watch the scenery as your driver takes you to your way point (following the law of course)

The game plays fine without any lag or stutter but I suspect it is taxing my PS4 to the limit because the fan runs on high speed the entire time I played.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Nice, hopefully the game stays interesting for you all the way through!

[PZ]

Thanks D_B; I hope so too else it will end up in my pile of unfinished games. Kind f reminds me of a bottle of wine - sometimes very good on the first day, but soured by the next. 

[nex]

Hope you'll enjoy the game PZ, the time events putting me off, "I hate timed events"   

[PZ]

Same here nex. I've completely stopped a game or two when encountering a stupid timed event. For example some of the airplane "races" in Just Cause. Although I did not stop playing the game, I did not play any of the air races after the first one was so lame. 

I just hope they made this game more for the old gamer rather than the kids.

[PZ]

I'm solidly in the game now, and have three recruits including the character I started as and a couple of others. I have been playing as the construction worker because one of his specialties is summoning a construction drone.

Typical UBI*bleep* style the map is grayed out but all areas are available, so after summoning up a drone I flew over the city enjoying the sights while the map was being revealed onto my next destination, which was a dilapidated arena (football or baseball maybe). It was fun,  I was able to enjoy the scenery and revealed new areas of the city to explore.

When I arrived at the destination I thought I would need to go in guns blazin' to clear the guards on multiple levels to get to my destination, which was to download data. While that was certainly an option, I landed my construction drone on the roof, hopped off and hacked a news drone flying over the arena. Using that machine I scouted the area and found the office which was my goal - all doors were locked and you needed to unlock the circuit box to electronically open the door. It seemed that it was nearly impossible, so I looked around and discovered a spiderbot which I hacked and made my way through the ducts into the office where I was able to hack the computer and get my data. The really fun part of it for me was that I was physically on the roof while my drones and spiderbot (and hacked security cameras of course) were employed to achieve the goal. Talk about a great open world feel. One of the exciting things: if I left one device like a drone or spiderbot, it was still there when I returned even after using other things! I completed the mission entirely from the roof and it was one of the best open world experiences I have had in just about any game.

A side benefit of that mission was that I targeted one of the guard captains to be a recruit! He is now in the list, and I will be able to do things to curry favor from him until he becomes part of my gang. Once he is, I'll be able to play as him - the advantage: he is wearing a uniform that will allow me to go into areas controlled by his group of thugs.

Before I started the game I thought the recruit thing not terribly interesting, but you have so many choices (anyone) with just about any kind of ability you might need. I never thought I would be able to recruit enemy thugs into my gang!

So now I can go into an area, scope it out and decide who I can play as to give me the best advantage to gain the most out of the experience.

Very cool game so far, and I am looking forward to more fun.

[Art Blade]

nice read, and I see why it's a good game for you. I'm glad you finally found something that lasts long enough that you even write about it

[PZ]

Thanks AB 

I only played the last Sniper Elite for a total of about 2-4 hours then put it aside. This is the first time I have been this excited in quite some time.

[Art Blade]

don't forget that you're excited about the game.

(like, please keep playing)

[PZ]

I will, especially now that I have created a way to play in my
off-time" during the day. 

[PZ]

This morning I finished the recruiting of an enemy guard captain I tagged for recruiting at a facility I invaded. Later on, my first task in her recruitment was to check her schedule with my advanced profiler and discovered that she attended a workout gym between 9:00 and 10:00 am so there I went. It was too early so I received the prompt to wait until 9:00, which was only a couple of minutes away. She appeared walking down the sidewalk and I initiated a conversation. She told me how disillusioned she was with her faction, and that they were planning to send out a shipment of weapons. She finished by telling me if I destroyed the shipment she would do anything I asked. Off I went to do her bidding.

The building/garage was infested with her brethren on all levels, which I could see because I was observing from high in the air perched on my construction drone. Again I had the choice of running and gunning or something more stealthy - I chose the latter.  Using my optik I found a lethal explosive pillar, which is normally used to incapacitate guards - I did not activate it.

One hack you can do is to move a vehicle forward/reverse/right/left (even vehicles being driven) so I hacked the van and moved it forward. The guards were pissed and ran around looking for the perpetrator but I was high in the air and this time they did not look up!

I raced the van forward and ran smack dab into the explosive pillar which did it's job and destroyed the van. I could now play as my faction recruit. She carries an AK-47 and of course has the uniform that allows me to get into all of their faction buildings. However, I cannot run or get too close to one of the enemy guards or they will be alerted. I tried playing as her in the next mission and it worked like a charm. This ability to play as anyone is really cool, and now that I understand how it works, it gets better with each mission. For example, if I get to a place where I need to have specific skills else suffer injury and capture, I can find someone to recruit that will help me in my endeavor. Because I always play on easy, there is usually someone to recruit walking the nearby streets, and it only takes a side mission before I return to the original mission.

On an aside, you can set the game to allow your character to die permanently rather than suffer the indignity of capture. I of course do not want my character to die.

The game is becoming more difficult, but the open world nature of the game is impressive. It seems like the nature of the open world becomes increasingly more "open" as time progresses with gaming technology.

[Art Blade]

sounds good and I can tell you're enjoying it I think games like yours and mine (CP2077) learned from other games and sto.. er, got inspired by, all the good stuff out there and implemented those things. Like a mixture of various games regarding mechanics but different story and location. I can think of worse that that

[PZ]

Quite true. I like how games are being refined which shows that game developers actually CAN learn from their and other's mistakes 

Us gamers are the ones that reap the gaming rewards.

[Dweller_Benthos]

That does sound pretty cool, and one of the things that intrigued me about the game, being able to use all those resources to get the job done.

There's too many good sounding games right now, and not enough time!

[PZ]

I entirely agree D_B. Too much to do and so little time during the holiday season. I still need to chop firewood for the rest of winter, and have not started yet.

I know several of you gents dislike UBI*bleep* for a variety of reasons, but this game is fun for me.