J.T. Posted November 27, 2017 Share Posted November 27, 2017 JT PLAYS WATCH DOGS 2 LONG AFTER EVERYONE ELSE HAS (EPISODE 5): The Cyberdriver mission is a wrap. The Key Data infiltration tutorial part was pretty simple: short circuit a panel to take out one guard and then zap the other one with my taser after he unwisely decided to investigate the mysterious force that remotely opened the access door to the restricted area. The next mission was some sort of racecourse checkpoint tutorial that has reinforced my opinion that autonomous cars are of the devil. I thought my wardrobe was going to consist of DedSec gear, but I will probably wear the Cyberdriver leather jacket and baseball cap in a future escapade. I successfully completed my first DedSec event. I had to remotely access the computer of a Prime 8 information broker and nab his info. I did not expect Prime 8 to send a squad of fixers as back up nor did I expect them to start a gunfight out in the open. I refrained from returning fire because I did not want the fucking cops to start shooting at me instead of the fixers once they arrived on site. SFPD has a horrible response time, but they eventually showed up and held off the fixers long enough for me to finish the download and escape with the data and my ass. Now it's time to see whaddap with Bobo Dakes. Since Marcus is a Hip-Hop head, I should probably buy the Bobo Dakes sweatshirt from the urban clothing outfitter. Uptown Anthem by Naughty By Nature is on this soundtrack. I would like to hug the magnificent French Canadian bastard that came up with the set list and licensed the tunes for this game. My brother gifted me the Story Mission DLC (a $25 value) as a belated birthday present. I kinda wish he'd have just given me cash or a gift card I could've put towards Destiny 2 but hey, it's the thought that counts. The important thing is that Marcus will eventually get to meet Jordi Chin without me having paid for it with my own money. Now that I have figured out how to turn off seamless multiplayer, I can take more time to explore the city at my leisure without random dudes waltzing into my game and causing havoc.. I'll flip that toggle switch back on back on after I've leveled up Marcus's hacking abilities a bit more. It finally dawned on me to use the RC Jumper while inside of DedSec HQ to see if I could get to the hidden items. I unlocked a special paint job for my vehicles by piloting the Jumper through a vent in the floor. I cannot access the second vent because it requires an access key. I know the location of the key, but my jumper does not have enough spring to get to the vent. I'll have to scare up the cash to print myself a quad-drone to get to that access key. I used the my Remote Control hacking skill to take over the controls of a stationary robo forklift behind DedSec HQ and use it to move a palate out of the way in order to get to a hidden clothing item, It was the Oakland baseball cap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew POE! Posted November 27, 2017 Share Posted November 27, 2017 I'm trying to decide if it's worth $34 to get the Gold Edition on PSN since the season pass won't go on sale. And I 100%er Watch_Dogs already so I know what to expect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted November 27, 2017 Share Posted November 27, 2017 1 hour ago, Andrew POE! said: And I 100%er Watch_Dogs already so I know what to expect. Not really. It's a low bar to hurdle, but Watch Dogs 2 is 10000000000% better than the original game. Marcus is a much more likeable protagonist, the world mechanics are a bit more refined, vehicles handle a little better. There is improvement all around but to be fair, that is total relative. I did not platinum Watch Dogs because I avoided the multiplayer stuff like the plague. I am actually surprised that there are still people participating in Watch Dogs 2 co-op. I think the players that jump into my game are just thankful to find someone else online that is slugging through. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted November 28, 2017 Share Posted November 28, 2017 JT PLAYS WATCH DOGS 2 LONG AFTER EVERYONE ELSE HAS (EPISODE 6): Didn't get a chance to play much today. Errands and shit and I am on I found my second side mission out in the wild. I discovered a hacked pay phone (who uses those things anymore?) near Japantown that was being used as a comm line sniffer. Someone was hacking into the phone system and gleaning personal information about DedSec members. I ran around town to tag the hacked phones and hit up some ScoutX locations along the way. The bread crumbs led to a router situated on the balcony of a town house near Lombardy Street (the game takes place in pseudo San Fran with actual monuments and landmarks from the real city) God, the hacking puzzles are a lot harder when they are spliced to the side of a building. I kept using the old button config from muscle memory and ducked for cover when I should've been moving the pipes around. It took two tries to solve the puzzle (I need to get better and faster at those things) and now I "officially" have had my first run in with Prime_Eight as part of a storyline. Their plan is to glean accurate personal data on DedSec members and then out them to law enforcement via cTOS 2.0.. My next mission will be to access the data access entry node that Prime_Eight has accessed and swap out the DedSec data for info on Prime-Eight members. The second mission of this story arc was an old school Home Invasion mini game from the first game. Nice to see that it made it into this game without being terribly creepy... at least not yet.... The next part of the mission has me rolling out to some remote area on the map near Oakland. I decided to quit there so that I could run to the bank and do a couple of things for my boo since I am on swing shift. I have taken to raiding some of the restricted areas around town for the money drops and Research Points. I'm trying to scrounge up for a quadcopter to complete my gadget vehicle arsenal. I was able to dump my silly DedSec pistol for a proper P-9mm and a SMG-11 that I got from some gang bangers. It looks like there are at least three major street gangs operating in the sandbox. So far I have run afoul of the Auntie Shu Boys (Chinese Triad), the Tezcas (Generic Hispanic hoods), and the Sons of Ragnarok (1%er biker gang). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted November 29, 2017 Share Posted November 29, 2017 JT PLAYS WATCH DOGS 2 LONG AFTER EVERYONE ELSE HAS (EPISODE 7): Started a new game. I fucked up and got myself stuck in a mission I could not complete at my shitty skill level without major frustration... I rage quit and started over again. I wasn't that far in, so no big deal. If you have Baby Boomer age parents, do not play this game around them. They will ask you make Marcus listen to So Very Hard To Go by Tower of Power on his headphones until your ears bleed. Knocked out the Cyberdriver main story mission in record time. Posted the video of my infiltration of the movie studio to the Xbox Live Friends Wall. I made this part of the mission that look simple. Had more trouble with the steal the car part than I did with the previous game. The infiltration piece was almost trivial once I remembered to use the phone distraction hack proactively, but somehow my GTA V wheelman skills abandoned me for twenty minutes and the car's horrible handling did not help. Eventually I created a perfect storm of timing and city disruption hacks that gave me the time and opportunity to locate an alley to hide in and finally evade the cops. Stealing the Key Data (Engine Override) part for the final part of the mission was also not as easy as it was in my previous game. I set up a prox shock trap but only one guard fell for it, so I had to stalk and thwomp the other two guards and then snag the data. The last part with the checkpoints and the car chase was relatively simple. I was smart and invested in the Vehicle Takedown skill so my autonomous Pseudo-KITT left SFPD behind it in a wake of malfunctioning traffic lights and bursting steam pipes. So yeah, the mysterious jogger that Marcus met at the DedSec party in the opening cutscene is my primary antagonist. I will eventually wear the clothing rewards from Cyberdriver, but I'll probably never use the car. Only a dumbass would drive that thing around the city following an epic car chase. The only reason that no one from DedSec is in jail right now is because our little stunt earned the Cyberdriver movie tons of free publicity and made an otherwise awful movie a box office sensation. I unlocked the achievement for hijacking a bus. You don't get it if you take over the bus remotely and then commandeer the vehicle after the driver leaves. You have to get onboard and pitch the driver out on his ass. Not easy since mass transit vehicles do not stop to pick you up as a passenger. Marcus can only ride on the iconic San Francisco trolley cars and they are pretty useless as far as getting around the city quickly goes. I also unlocked the rare achievement for buying a t-shirt at the Nudle Park vending machine. I wish I had done it sooner. You can literally unlock the achievement seconds after your game officially starts by using Fast Travel to get to Nudle Park (the stadium for whatever sports teams rep Frisco in the Ubisoft-verse) and then spending five bucks to purchase a fucking t-shirt. If you pinch the item in the dumpster in the opening mission, you'll start off with about five grand, so you will have cash to spend early on. If you are a member of Ubi Club, you'll begin your Walk of Shame towards a clothing store to complete your second game objective (purchase a pair of pants) with a cool $30K in your bank account.. In addition to Cyberdriver, I also completed the A High Price To Pay side mission. I am an idiot. I totally mind farted on the fact that this storyline is a direct parody of the news story about how Martin Shkreli tried to troll Kanye West into selling all of the Life Of Pablo tracks to Shkreli for ten million dollars. I am so conditioned to look for ways to sneak into someplace that I was totally surprised when there was no Restricted Area at Bobo's crib and I was able to simply hop over a wall to crash Bobo's pool party (no security, thank goodness), remotely access his phone, and take a selfie with a stripper before bailing out.. The second part of the mission was a simple Home Invasion dealie. Upload computer virus, prank call the pharma-billionaire douchebag, and revel in the warm glow of poetic justice after socially engineering the shitdick in donating two million dollars to Leukemia research.. Grrr. Fucking grinding out the ScoutX achievement is going to be a pain in the ass. Some of the city attractions I have to get photos of are people as well as places and they are not around 24-7. I had to return to the same spot in Japantown where I took a selfie with the Ukiyo-E mural of the Golden Gate Bridge painted on the side of a restaurant to get a picture of the Kawaii Dancing Girl. She's only around during the lunchtime hours. Speaking of pictures and achievements, for some insane reason there is an achievement for getting a picture of someone puking. I know this because I JUST MISSED getting a snapshot of some poor homeless sot vomiting his guts out while I was running through an alley on my way to get a picture of the Recycle Your E-Mails mural for ScoutX. Just as I got my phone ready, he stopped barfing and got salty with me for having my camera pointed at him. No harm, no foul, bro. I left before shit got heated. He's lucky I didn't whip out the Thunderball and knock his punk ass out cold. I am going to take a bit of time to scrape together enough cash to have a quadcopter printed. I know from the mission I botched in the previous game that I will need one sooner, not later. I'll definitely need one to access the wireless cTOS routers around town that give me extra Research Points. Looks like I will be unlocking the achievements for the various racing activities very shortly since that seem to be the path to quick cash. I went back to re-acquire the Ice Cube so that I could use it as my Hacker Batmobile and I stumbled upon another Key Data location. I looked at my Ability Tree and noticed in the ability description text that I'm not really stealing the skills per se. I'm taking part in mini-mission that reward me by unlocking nodes on my Ability Tree. In this case, I had to disrupt a narcotics sale by between the Sons of Ragnarok and the Russian Mob and my reward was getting access to a skill on my Marksmanship branch that will make me a better sniper! Fuck yeah! That shit will come in handy later on since one of the DLC weapons is a scoped air rifle that fires taser darts. Ubisoft loves its unrealistic non-lethal weapon options. I killed a member of the Sons of Ragnarok during a brief shootout before I made my escape. My first human casualty of the game. Dude rushed the garage just after I got my hands on his unconscious buddy's pump shotgun. I never intentionally harm an innocent citizen, police officers, or rent-a-cops,, but I've got a thing for killing members of biker gangs and other violent criminal types. My GTA V feud with The Lost has found its way to San Francisco. I have to hand it to Ubisoft. The fake citizens of San Francisco are far more interesting than the fake citizens of Los Santos. Apparently one of the employees at Hook Motion Picture Studios is an adulterous bastard. The video I posted after the movie studio heist cuts off right before a lady walked over to a rather expensive looking sport car and started smashing it with a baseball bat. Someone called the cops on her and she had the nerve to look surprised when they arrested her. I was laughing so hard that I completely forgot to take a picture of the aftermath with my phone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Sweetser Posted November 30, 2017 Share Posted November 30, 2017 You're making me want to go through WD2 again, JT. You're absolutely correct - a million times better than the original. I spent way too much time getting Marcus' look just right, and I loved the characters, especially Wrench and his LED emoji shades. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted November 30, 2017 Share Posted November 30, 2017 JT PLAYS WATCH DOGS 2 LONG AFTER EVERYONE ELSE HAS (EPISODE 8): After doxing the rich pharma-douche, I wandered around Silicon Valley on foot for a bit. I managed to collect two custom paint jobs for the Quadcopter and one for the RC Jumper. I am finally starting to figure out the nuances of when to use the Jumper. There was a custom paint job located on the top of a covered patio. Figuring out that I should use the paint scaffolding to get to the top of the nearby house was a no brainer, but I could not parkour my way across the gap from the roof of the house to the roof of the patio. Then it dawned on me to let the RC Jumper shoot the chasm for me. BINGO~! Ubisoft obviously wants me to get arrested. The other custom paint job I found in Silicon Valley was under the deck of a really nice house. In order to get to it, I had to shoot the propane tank beside the deck and blow off enough of the deck skirt so that my RC Jumper could travel under the deck. After the explosion, I immediately had to run down and hack some bystander's phone to prevent her from calling the cops on me. I've collected enough money bags from the random restricted areas around town to get a Quadcopter printed! But first. I had the good fortune to notice that someone had one of those tiny smart cars (the Merangue?) parked in their driveway, so I stole it and drove it around long enough to unlock the rare achievement for traveling 4 KMs in game in one of those microscopic vehicles.. My travels took me in the direction of an orange blip which means side quest! Sitara may have some competition for Marcus's affections. I ran into a sista hacker named Kalie who wrote a cTOS exploit for ATM machines and wants me to test out the code. So now the Bottom Dollar side mission is in my queue and hopefully it will net me some more cash. The first ATM hack was pretty simple and the alimony dodging douchebag whose bank account I fucked with definitely deserved it. I couldn't grab the research point at the ATM location though because I need to upgrade my RC Jumper to have extra spring. I'm happy that the developers had the wisdom to update your map app so that you don't have to re-discover hidden stuff. If only they'd do that for GTA's collectables. I spent nearly four hours on a Saturday fucking killing pigeons in GTA 4. The next ATM hack is on the campus of Stanford University in this game world and that is where I had to tap out in order to make the three hour commute to get to work today. I should be gaming tomorrow morning before heading back to swing shift so I will update the game log with whatever I get accomplished before Saturday. I probably won't get a chance to play again until Sunday, but I have to work on Sunday night so there will be another update over the weekend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted December 1, 2017 Share Posted December 1, 2017 JT PLAYS WATCH DOGS 2 LONG AFTER EVERYONE ELSE HAS (EPISODE 9): The second ATM hack at Stanford nearly went south quickly, but I remembered I had those little shock thingies that roll on the ground like marbles. I zapped one guard with my gadget and then tased his buddy when he came to investigate. The victim of my next ATM prank was another asshole, so I helped him donate $200 to charity and then flagged him for fraudulent banking activity. Following that mission, I fast traveled back to DedSec HQ and crafted myself a Quadcopter. I have no idea how I have lived for so long without this gadget. Oh, and I got the last bit of cash for the quadcopter via yet another restricted zone money bag raid. The bag was in an alley with three members of the Sons of Ragnarok guarding it. I waited until all three of them were huddled around a junction box and then I blew it and zapped all of them unconscious. Simple. They may have been pissed off when the regained their senses, but at least I left them alive. I had to find a way to a high ledge on top of a building to get to the third cTOS ATM relay and there was also a Key Data puzzle to solve that took a good bit of time. Good thing for me that I had just printed out my quadcopter because it was essential in solving the puzzle. I did not have the heart to mess with the female Korean college student's bank account, so I gave her two hundred bucks paid off her tuition for a month. Fourth ATM Prank victim was an investment banker. He was also a bit of a dick so I also had him make a donation to charity and flagged him for bank fraud. Fifth ATM Prank victim was a punker. I knew he was my boy when his response to having his identity verified by the cTOS ATM was "Go ahead, evil corporation. Scan away." I financed his dreams of anarchy with five thousand shares of Nudle stock. Sixth ATM Prank victim was a Chinese-American housewife. I had the bank give her two hundred bucks when she mentioned something about needing donations for sports equipment at the school where her kids were, but when I dropped another grand on her she got greedy and kept it for herself. In retrospect, it might've been better to have been an asshole to her. Last ATM Prank victim was some arrogant homeboy local television celebrity fucktard. He reminded me of Taye Diggs in a not so good way, so I zeroed out his account and he lost his shit. The side mission ended with Wrench and Sitara giving Marcus shit about maybe being interested in Kalie for more than her coding skills, but apparently Drunk Marcus bombed epically with Kalie during the outdoor DedSec party in the opening cutscene of the game.. Too bad, but I suppose there's always Sitara. I found another unique vehicle that I will probably never drive. The Flip Wagon is some flower power surfer van that is neither hacker nor gangsta enough for me to drive. I'm now plugging away at a side mission called Paint Job (Plot = I am in Sitara's wheelhouse finding new and interesting places in the city to tag with DedSec graffiti.) so that I can travel through the map unlocking collectible info for my map and hone my urban exploration skills. I can sniff a treasure box from miles away in a classical RPG, but the whole concept of vertical exploration is pretty alien to me. I am shit at finding ways to climb to the top of stuff in sandbox games, so this set of missions will help me get better at figuring out which way is up.. I finally petted ten dogs and unlocked another achievement. I have no idea why that took so long. I also got an achievement for hacking a robot. I saw it patrolling the grounds at Nudle's corporate HQ in Silicon Valley. Some asshole in an expensive sports car nearly ran me over while I was crossing the street to get to one of my graffiti sites, so I hacked his ride and drove it into the ocean with him still behind the wheel. That felt really good. A crowd of random citizens began to form and they all started taking pictures with their phones. . As a black man playing a black man in a video game. I really appreciate the AI of the cops in Watch Dogs 2. If I don't make any obvious moves to break the law, the cops do not target me and that is how it should be in real life.. Case in point. A Money Bag icon flashed on my map so I went to go investigate. I did not really notice that it was a restricted area and suddenly the Auntie Shu Boys that were partying on the roof started shooting at me. I hauled ass and found a place to hide and did not draw any of my guns. Someone called the law and then the cops showed up. The Auntie Shu gangbangers gave zero fucks and killed the cops that responded to the call. That's when SWAT showed up and murdered every gangbanger in sight. They even gunned down the Auntie Shu gangbanger's Rottweiler guard dog. Not only did I get free money, one item for the Auntie Shu outfit (I really need to fid that Tezcas shirt in that image above to wear with my Oakland cap), and a shotgun upgrade, I learned once again to respect the cops in this game. SPFD does not fuck around.. Just as I was about to quit for the day and head off to work, I ran across another woman scorned taking a baseball bat to her man's vehicle. This time, the dude showed up and confronted here. There was a brief argument and then the guy hit her. NOT COOL, UBISOFT~! I don't condone what the chick did, but I was raised not to hit women no matter what. The guy had his back to me so I fucking tased him and the girl ran off. Poetic Justice was served. It took me a while to figure out that DedSec has safehouses all over the city. I wish that Ubisoft had been a little more creative with the character designs. Most of them just wear a t-shirt with the words JOIN US! stenciled in over an insignia that looks like a bomb. Ugh. Nearly all of the achievement guide videos on YouTube on how to get the Smooth Felon achievement involve killing random citizens on purpose in order to get your wanted level up. I think I will just make another attempt when the DedSec Event with the armored car shows up again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted December 3, 2017 Share Posted December 3, 2017 JT PLAYS WATCH DOGS 2 LONG AFTER EVERYONE ELSE HAS (EPISODE 10): Put in a bit of urban chicanery after being frustrated with trying to beat the Weekend APEX Challenge in Mass Effect: Andromeda. That glitchy map can go fuck itself. Finished the third tier of the Paint Job mission tree. I'm having to get really creative on finding ways to get to my graffiti sites.. At one point I had to hack a construction crane to get to the top of a building so that I could parkour the rest of the way. The fourth tier of Paint Job looks fucking crazy. I have no idea how I am going to get to the top of some of these buildings. I may resort to riding around the city in a fucking cherry picker. Bought myself some more clothing. I got the only pair of jeans from the biker shop as well as a new beanie, a fresh pair of white kicks, and Iraq's t-shirt and bubble vest from the urban clothing store. I also found a couple of t-shirts in the wild. Can't remember off the top of my head what they are. Slowly beginning to mark the locations for Key Research Points, money, and other collectables on my map so that I can go back and get them later. I finally did one of the Driver SF (their version of Uber) missions and drove Daredevil Liv around the city doing stunt jumps for her podcast. I probably should've used a Performance Car instead of the Ice Cube drifter, because I probably missed a golden opportunity to unlock the achievement for making a 140 meter jump in a car. Found a couple more ScoutX locations and I now have the DAAAYUM~! gesture to use in my selfies. I now have a little over $100K in the bank, but that doesn't really mean anything because items are very expensive. Eventually I am going to have to burn some cash on some decent firearms (preferably one with flash suppressors) in the event that one of these missions requires me to use something a bit stronger than a stun gun.. It figures that the only weapons that have flash suppressors in this game are DedSec guns. I hate DedSec guns. I've obtained my third unique vehicle for my Car On Demand app; a nice Jeep Wrangler looking dealie called the Mountain King. It even has DedSec livery on it. Waitasec. It's not just any old Jeep Wrangler. IT IS A JURASSIC PARK EASTER EGG~!! It has the same paint job as one of the Park Ranger vehicles and IT MAKES A VELOCIRAPTOR NOISE WHEN YOU HONK THE HORN~!!!! I've never been to San Fran, but on Friday when I was pulling out onto the road to take the Flip Wagon (the VW looking surfer van) our for a spin after stumbling across it while fleeing the Auntie Shu Boys, I felt a bit of deja vu. After doing a bit of research, I discovered that the in-game location of the Flip Wagon corresponds to the real life location of the Tanner residence from the television show, Full House. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted December 5, 2017 Share Posted December 5, 2017 JT PLAYS WATCH DOGS 2 LONG AFTER EVERYONE ELSE HAS (EPISODE 11): I got quite a bit done in between yesterday's Zatoichi double feature and Monday Night Football. First order of business was to finish up Paint Job. I FUCKING GRAFITTI TAGGED THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE~!! I was not up there in real life but Holy Fuck, 4K Ultra High-Def will still mess with your senses. As the great Hercuile Poirot once said, "I myself am not afraid of heights, but I was still... quite dizzy..." Elation turned to depression because the fog rolled in just as I was about to get a photo for ScoutX. I could barely see the bridge and I know that I am probably not going to climb to the top of that fucking thing ever again in this playthrough. It took FOREVER to get to the top. I found two DedSec livery paint jobs for the non-unique vehicles I can order through the Cars-On-Demand phone app while wandering around the city... Just in time not to use them since I almost exclusively drive the Ice Cube or the Mountain King around the city.... I hit up the Driver SF app to make some extra cash. It was comical. My first fare was some anti ridesharing douche that had me take him into what turned out to be a fucking Bratva ambush at the docks. I managed to get out of Dodge with my life. No five star rating or a tip for me over that bullshit.. And then immediately after nearly getting clipped, I drove back to the docks because I remembered that is where another one of the unique cars is located. I am now the proud owner of the Wrecker muscle car. It looks like an 1984 El Camino, so I will probably drive it as much as the Ice Cube. On the way to pick up the first Driver SF fare, I found a mission intel person and hacked her phone. Something about all of her bills skyrocketing all at once. Time to investigate. So, the name of the side mission is Ripcode (A play on words! A ZIP Code and were people are getting ripped off, get it? Yes, I do, Ubisoft...) This simple mission was made even more complex thanks to the fucking 560s and Tezcas gang war going on. The premise of the mission is that someone is testing an algorithm that gradually increases the prices of utilities and rent in a target zone to the point where the cost of living is so prohibitive that it forces poor people to move out of their neighborhoods in prep for the inevitable gentrification. Luckily enough, there is a system glitch which causes the rate hikes to occur so far out of scale that it cannot go unnoticed. That activity draws the attention of suspicious residents and ultimately this is where gets DedSec involved. I would call if sci-fi if there wasn't evidence of blatant gentrification going on all over the world. Kudos to Ubisoft for wearing their political sentiments on their sleeve. Mission accomplished after I found some text files on the target cTOS boxes to upload to DedSec's servers for eventual release to the public. In the course of completing Ripcode, I finally KTFOed my thirtieth victim with the Thunderball. Achievement Unlocked! He was some 560s gang member douchebag responding to a reinforcement call from his homies who had the misfortune to get too close to my hidey hole where I was waiting for enough gang members to kill each other so I could move along to the next cTOS box I had to hack. I found enough Research Points in the wild to buy the Suspect APB ability from the Social Engineering tree. I initially did it just to unlock the Feeding Frenzy rare achievement (aka dox and swat the guy in the donut costume outside of the pastry shop in Haight-Ashbury), but then it dawned on me. Why infiltrate Restricted Areas held by gang members by myself? Why not use my powers for good and swat one of the gangbangers? Then I can grab the money at my leisure after the shooting stops? WORKS LIKE A CHARM~!! If the above wasn't a big enough hint, yes, I unlocked the Feeding Frenzy rare achievement. My second Driver SF fare was in the area of the Great Oakland Gang War so I decided to pick the guy up after I finished with Ripcode. I drove the guy around in search of his stolen car... which was blown up by someone trying to kill him..... which forced a police chase. Mother Fucker only gave me a three star rating for getting his ass home safe. It was around this time that it dawned on me that I had been fucking around quite a bit. Time to handle a couple of chapters in the Main Storyline, I guess. I chsoe HAUM Sweet HAUM because Wrench is fucking awesome. The creators of the HAUM smart home operating system have challenged DedSec to crack their code and naturally we're down for anything, so here we go. The first mission was an RC Jumper tutorial, but I am already a wizard with that thing thanks to free roam and trial / error. My mission was to infiltrate HAUM's distribution center out on the water. Camera recon showed me that the most optimal infiltration point was a small jetty so it was time to take a swim. I KOed one guard and made my way to the roof near a building where my target was: a lone security guard with the access key I needed to hack the electric locks on the van I needed to steal. So yeah, this is theft and we have switched gears from being a social justice warrior in Ripcode and transitioned to the Grand Larceny anti-hero portion of the game. Anyway, my quadcopter was able to remotely hack the guard's phone and steal the key.... but then I notice the FREE RESEARCH POINTS AND MONEY BAG that are also in that building. I don't want to chance anyone seeing my RC Jumper, so I went in myself to grab the extra goodies. No one saw me..... Until I got to the van, but I was able to KTFO the guard before he sounded the alarm. I then commandeered the van for a nearly clean getaway, but I got spotted by an attentive Umeni security guard while boldly trying to make my escape via the front gate. (Duh, JT. You go through a sentry point every morning when you go to work... There is always armed security there, dummy). The ensuing car chase was not that bad. One hacked traffic light held up the pursuing security guards long enough for me to vanish. Next up is yet another break-in, but this time it is a smart home PROTECTED BY A FUCKING LASER ALARM DEFENSE GRID~?? AND IT IS PATROLLED BY FUCKING ROBOTS~!!! Thankfully, there were some vents at the rear of the house where I could send in my RC Jumper and I had already bought the Robot Hacking ability earlier in the gaming session (it is the node in the Remote CTRL ability tree that leads to the hacks I need to improve performance for the quadcopter and the jumper) , but I can only imagine how frustrating that mission could be if you were underpowered for it. Anyway, my little buddy was able to access the smart house's main server and insert the Zero Day program that Josh wrote... but nothing happened... so now I have to break into HAUM's corporate HQ and get my hands on larger chunk of the code that runs HAUM... That will have to wait until after I invest in the Security Override ability since there is a good bet that the same laser security grid system that was installed at the smart house is probably installed at HAUM's HQ as well and I need to be able to take care of those countermeasures. Always set yourself up for success. During the smart house hack, I blundered into the hook for another side mission. It looks like Sitara's cousin, Cindy, hosts a livestream (Holy fuck, her online tag name is DanceBoo01... Jesus...) that is very popular with online perverts since she is an underaged teen. Sitara wants to teach her a lesson on the perils of having a high digital footprint. Here begineth the teaching. Sitara's aunt must've married a white guy. Cindy's last name (Baumbach) is decidedly not Indian. Cindy's family is wealthy enough to live in one of the mother fucking Painted Ladies, so I'd say they're doing just fine... I am not sure if Ubisoft is making a legit point about online security here or if they are just making fun of female Twitch streamers. I went for the not quite so cruel ending because I am not as mean spirted as the developers probably want me to be. She deserved to get the shit scared out of her, though. The song she chose to dance to is unbearable beyond words. Sitara's question to Marcus at the end of the side mission asking whether or not he thought that DedSec was cool was quite hilarious. Our not so secret base of operations is located underneath a pen and paper role playing game store so my immediate answer would be, "Maybe a little cool in a nerd kind of way, but not very cool in the strictest definition." Marcus Halloway.. CHAMPIONSHIP E-KART DRIVER~!!! What started off as "Fuck, let me unlock this fucking E-Kart upgrade achievement while I'm thinking about it,'" turned out to be a lot of fun. There is even a story line involved! Marcus is basically playing hacker guardian angel to the Engineering department of a small college. I almost won the very first race, but I blew it in the final turn and came in second. So after that, I broke into a Blume receiving area to steal a battery upgrade. I came in FIRST in the second race after cheating my ass off and using Engine Override to give myself regular speed boosts. Emboldened by the victory, I went to that lab of the company that built the car for Cyberdriver (can't remember the name) and liberated more technology for our E-Kart. I nearly fucked up and lost the championship race, but a timely engine boost got me across the Finish Line first! So now I have the E-Kart available for my Car-On-Demand app and I have unlocked E-Kart Races all over the city. It should speak for itself but yeah, I unlocked the achievement for getting all of the E-Kart upgrades. Another epic fail at an attempt to unlock the achievement for successfully evading a Five Star Felony Rating in the course of doing the Armored Car Robbery / DedSec Event. I was on the run constantly for about forty-five minutes (I even had to change batteries in my controller) but no matter where I went, the cops would always find me because of the fucking SWAT spotter chopper. The chase ended I screwed myself by setting prox trigger over a steam pipe that a speeding Police Van tripped too early, resulting in my getaway car being taken out along with it and I got gunned down in the street trying to make it to another getaway vehicle.. If I am going to stick to my principles and go for a No Innocents Intentionally Harmed run at this achievement and complete this DedSec Event, I'm going to need the Disable Police Helicopter ability. I forgot to add that the fucking car chase turned into a fucking boat chase and then back into a car chase and I STILL wasn't able to shake the law for more than a few seconds. The goddamn Police Helicopters in this game and their ability to find you anywhere is fucking insane. Last up for the evening was breezing through the side mission that caused me to rage quit during my last playthrough. Doing the last part of The Name Game side mission is a lot easier when you have a quadcopter. I was able to got the Trickster route for the final part of the side mission and hacked the server and the radio tower without even setting foot inside the Restricted Area. I love my gadgets! I used the Phone Distraction hack to give my RC Jumper the precious seconds it needed to get to the Physical Hack undetected and also grab the Key Data package that was available, and then I sent in the drone to hack the radio tower. On the drive back to HQ for a wardrobe change, I heard on the news that authorities were acting on the info I leaked about Prime-Eight. Fuck those guys. Next up for me is to locate the Key Data node I need to access the Security Override ability and then scrape up enough free Research Points to unlock it and then I'll see what's what with the servers HAUM's HQ. Nearly forgot. While I was doing Ripcode, I stumbled across this Privacy Invasion bit while avoiding the raging gang war. If you act fast enough, you can save the guy. If you stare at the video feed like a dumbass like you did during the Privacy Invasions in the first Watch Dogs game or if you don't act quickly, the poor sap will die. The fan in his garage shorted out when I tried to switch it on, so I panicked and started honking the car horn and thankfully got his neighbor's attention. The neighbor eventually shows up after a bit of grumbling, but quickly realizes what is going on and tries to save the suicide victim. The neighbor even has the common decency and presence of mind to bring a crowbar with him ahead of time (He probably brought it with the intention of smashing dude's car for waking him up with the car horn). The garage door does not work properly when you access it (the suicide victim jams the mechanism because he does not want to be saved), but the neighbor will pry it the rest of the way open with his crowbar after you access the garage door controller and lift the door up as much as you can. I was emotionally spent after this. I kept on playing after getting some ice cream in order find a way to end my gaming session o a much higher note. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted December 6, 2017 Share Posted December 6, 2017 Didn't get to play much last night thanks to Smackdown and shopping for my daughter's birthday present. She turns 15 on December 12th, but we're celebrating this weekend and my ex is throwing her a party next weekend. My kid graduated from Monster High DVDs to fucking metallic bracelets from Lokai. Jeez. I hate to see what she asks for when she's in her Senior Year of High School. Anyway, I FINALLY EVADED A FIVE STAR FELONY~!!!!! I cracked the code on the DedSec Event / Armored Car Robbery.... kinda.... Long story short, I went for it, got the perfect storm of auto takedowns and cutting through alleyways to give myself enough time to find a place to hide. I totally forgot that sometimes the worst thing you can do in Watch Dogs when you are trying to shake pursuers is to keep driving. If you stay on the road, you will be spotted because cop cars will always somehow manage to spawn in front of you. When the opportunity presents itself, abandon your car and get to a place where you can lay low until the timer runs down. Preferably someplace with a roof or something that blocks visuals from the air. You don't want to get spotted by the police helicopter that is likely loitering close to your position. There is no skill to ditching a five star felony ranking. It is pure luck and timing. I am not sure if I did it without harming innocents because I blew up at least three stream pipes in the street trying to get away. I can say that I did not kill anyone with my firearms, though. I was a little bummed after the gamer rush wore off. . Twenty minutes of constant evasion and I get a fifteen point achievement and it's not even a rare one? I got a ten point rare achievement for buying an ugly pair of shoes for fuck's sake. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted December 7, 2017 Share Posted December 7, 2017 JT PLAYS WATCH DOGS 2 LONG AFTER EVERYONE ELSE HAS (EPISODE 12): I backtracked and completed the first mission for False Profits. Grinding away follower count to get more Research Points and I think that mission tree leads me to the Key Data I need to learn how to disable laser security systems for the next mission of Haum Sweet Haum. Sitara trying to explain the concept of what a cornhole is to Josh was hilarious. Josh being autistic and questioning why Sitara use the word cornhole as a verb rather than a noun in her sentence was even more hilarious. Ubisoft is hip to my tricks. The computer I needed to hack for the access key is deliberately placed in the blind spot of the cameras inside the New Dawn Temple..... You can't hack it through camera feeds, but it is within line of sight of the interior vents if you send in your Jumper. After that, use the hydraulic construction lift to get to the second floor of the temple. You still have to infiltrate the building yourself, because there is a guard at the desktop you need to crack that does not move. He will see your RC vehicle if you send it and you can't use your drone because it cannot perform physical hacks. The gods of gaming were kind, because I tased the guy at the desktop and only had to KO one curious asshole who came to help his buddy. I found another Research Point under the Bay Bridge and thankfully enough, game physics are in effect. I jumped off of a very high ledge into the San Francisco Bay; a leap that would normally kill a real life human being. Why? So I could hijack a boat for the Bad Boys achievement..... which I successfully unlocked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted December 8, 2017 Share Posted December 8, 2017 JT PLAYS WATCH DOGS 2 LONG AFTER EVERYONE ELSE HAS (EPISODE 13): False Profits is a wrap. 40 more points added to my Gamerscore. I'll consolidate the details here in case someone is dumb and follows my footsteps in the Ghost / Trickster tradition. Guns just seem to make things more complicated than they should be in some of these missions. As I said in the previous post, the first mission is pretty easy. Your objecfive here is to hack the server on the upper floor of the temple to get some good inside dirt on New Dawn, but the access key you will need to gain entry to the server is on the lower floor. The temple is designed so that there is a blind spot and you cannot hack the access point with a camera. The easiest way is to sneak your RC Jumper into through the vents and use nethack to make sure you're going in the right direction. Your Jumper should have a good enough vantage point to remote hack the target laptop. Then sneak your Jumper through the vents back outside and retrieve it. After that you should notice a hydraulic lift that you can control. Hack it and use it to get the balcony of the second floor. There could be as many as two additional guards on that floor in addition to the guy watching the server. He doesn't move and he will most likely spot your Jumper even if you try to use Phone Distraction, so the course of action that worked for me was to KO the fucker, jack into the server myself, and then quietly ambush any guards that came to investigate the condition of their fallen comrade. After a few seconds, your data virus will make its run and you can get out of dodge fairly easily. After that, Marcus disguises himself as a member of New Dawn and goes to socially engineer his action movie idol, Jimmy Siska, into dropping dime on New Dawn's activities in the city and he finds out about the cult's re-education center on the outskirts of the city. Marcus then calls in a favor from, Miranda Comay, a Councilwoman for the City of Oakland who was outed as transgender. New Dawn tried to discredit Miranda by posting photos of her surgeries online when she was transitioning from male to female. Ubisoft handled their transgender character much better than Bioware did. Anyway, this mission was a little harder because there are quite a few guards in a very tight space and your OCD will go into overdrive because there is Key Data (SECURITY SYSTEM OVERRIDE~!!!) and a Money Bag to nab in addition to getting the objective done of liberating the data from the building in the middle of the compound (yet another physical hack). The gates of the compound are locked, but you should be able to remotely hack the access key by going to the opposite side of the compound. Now for the mission. If you go in the direction of the Key Data and Money Bag, you will notice that there is a section of the security fence that is missing. How convenient! There are two guards nearby, so patience is key. You will have to KO at least one of the guards and then get the money and Key Data and go back out the way you came in. After that, RUN around to the opposite side of the compound and remote hack the access key. If you are lucky, the security guards will find the guy you knocked out and the camp will go on alert. This is a good thing because EVERYONE will go to the other side of the re-education center, leaving you to unlock the security gate closest to your target objective and pretty much stroll in at your leisure. But WAIT~! Since you took the time to camera scout the area and noticed the green silhouette of a friendly person not too far away from your objective, you'll want to go and investigate that first. There, you will find Jimmy Siska tied to a chair and being mentally conditioned via sensory overload techniques. It's a no-brainer that freeing him is the right thing to do. After that, the guards should unfortunately have gone back to their original sentry positions, but no worries because you're already inside the camp. Sneak back over to the target building and tase the guard, but be careful not to alert any nearby assholes who may come to help out. There is no timer on this physical hack so once you jack in, you're done. Sneak out as quickly as you can and it's checkmate. The final mission of this storyline has Marcus sneaking into the New Dawn Temple proper. As usual, you'll scout the grounds through the cameras and notice that there are two other items of interest in addition to the hacking objectives: a custom New Dawn paint job for your vehicles and a Money Bag. You should be able to sneak around and get the paint job yourself without running into any guards, and you should also be able to scout the perimeter and remote hack the access key from a safe distance away so that you are able to unlock the doors to the Temple. The Money Bag will be a bit of a challenge because it is locked inside of a garage by a Closed Circuit Box.... which is also located inside of the garage. Sounds like a job for your RC Jumper! There is a vent in a security office above the garage that the Jumper can access, but you will have to avoid detection. Use the Phone Distraction hack to buy yourself a couple of seconds if your gadget is discovered. Once your Jumper is though the vent, follow the air ducts and your gadget will eventually land inside the garage. Open the CC Box and that will unlock the garage. Have the Jumper grab the Money Bag and exit through the garage doors. No one should detect it, but use caution anyway. Here is where it gets tricky. You can do this part without a quadcopter, but it is a lot easier if you have one. Trust me. Send in your drone to hack open one of the doors to the temple and fly it inside the building. It is somewhat harder for guards to detect the drone since it is flying over their heads, but watch your altitude anyway. On the soundstage inside the Temple is an access point you can hack remotely with the quadcopter and that will start a Network Access puzzle. I've noticed that the game likes to stretch these puzzles along the sides of structures like buildings and bridges, so using the drone to flip the network toggles around is a lot easier than doing it on foot. Depending on your position in relation to your drone, you may encounter signal loss when trying to solve the Network Access puzzle. If that happens, fly your drone back in range and then back out to keep toggling. After you solve the puzzle, that will unlock a secret elevator at the pulpit. LEAVE YOUR QUADCOPTER INSIDE THE TEMPLE. NO ONE WILL SPOT IT THERE. Remember those Garage Doors you unlocked? That is your infiltration Point! No one should spot you as you enter the garage, but be careful anyway. At the rear of the garage is a door that you can open now that you already have the access key. There is a stairway leading up. Take it and be mindful of any guards loitering around. Off to your left-ish should be a door leading inside the Temple. There is one stationary guard that you will have to take out, so get the timing of the wanderers and make your move quickly. Once you are inside the Temple, retrieve your drone and use the elevator to travel to the SECRET AREA~! Once you're there, you'll discover that New Dawn is very much the scam that you knew it was and that the ancient Sumerian tablets detailing alien visitation (which forms the basis of the New Dawn religion) are completely fake. Tell us how you really feel about Scientology, Ubisoft! Marcus livestreams everything, Jimmy Siska releases a statement detailing his kidnapping, and the church is discredited. DedSec wins again! But not quite. The game STILL FORCES YOU TO ESCAPE THE AREA~!!!! But it's not that bad. You should be able to open one of the side doors and run to freedom. Once you are outside the gated area, do not forget to take a ScoutX photo. The New Dawn Temple is one of the landmarks and getting selfies or snapshots of SF landmarks is good for padding your follower count. Getting these missions done in one take without having to reload a checkpoint was an immense source of pride. I am a dumb purist like that. On the way back to the city, Marcus heard a story on the news via his media player that there was new evidence in the Zodiac Killer case, so I must've done enough to unlock access to that DLC in the game. I'll finish up HAUM Sweet HAUM first though, now that I've got the Security System Override ability thanks to this mission tree. Defeating laser beam detection technology just got a little easier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted December 11, 2017 Share Posted December 11, 2017 JT PLAYS WATCH DOGS 2 LONG AFTER EVERYONE ELSE HAS (EPISODE 14): We celebrated my daughter's birthday over the weekend. Didn't really miss the console. Was too busy making note of the boys peeping in my daughter's direction while we were at Dave & Busters. Santa is not the only one making a list. Got back to the 804 crib last night and played for a bit before the Steelers game. Unlocked the Leaks & Secrets achievement for completing Operation: Ubisecret aka the Privacy Invasion mission where you get to watch Ubi's in game product placement. Yay or something. Took care of another Driver SF mission and bought a four runner and a crotch rocket for my Car On Demand app. I've got to purchase 23 more vehicles to unlock another achievement so they may as well be ones I may actually use. Also took care of another side mission called Infected Bytes where my Profiler was infected by a virus (the Zombi2) so I had to run around town tracking down the person who had Device Zero so that I could stop the transmission and clean any infected machines on the network. I am sure we'll run into this HaDoCk guy again since he is supposed to be a old school hacker legend like T-Bone and he can't be thrilled about a bunch of kids messing with his thing. And yeah. I like the military / conventional guns better than the DedSec weapons. I think I ran across a QTE where the Tezcas were doing a drive by on the 560's and chaos followed just as I was headed to Streetflex to get a new pair of kicks. I hid in the stockroom and killed gang members with my police shotty until the cops finally arrived and I was able to make a run for it. I don't even bother with the dumb flash suppressed DedSec guns. if I want to keep it quiet, I'll just go non-lethal and either tase dudes or mug them with the Thunderball. I re-discovered the Mountain King and the Wrecker again, so I think I have five out of the seven unique vehicles in the game available on my Car On Demand app. I will probably cheat to find the other two when I'm gaming tonight after work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted December 12, 2017 Share Posted December 12, 2017 JT PLAYS WATCH DOGS 2 LONG AFTER EVERYONE ELSE HAS (EPISODE 15): Okay, now we're getting somewhere. I have now unlocked six of the seven unique vehicles. I only use three of them regularly. I completed two more Driver SF missions and have an Amateur ranking. I'd have done a bit more, but, I got goat roped into a series of side adventures all surrounding Marcus's discovery of a plot hatched by the NSA and some sort of PMO to capture HaDocK aka the mysterious old school hacker legend he crossed paths with during the whole Zombi2 virus thing. At first the PMO and the NSA were competing with one another but after a while, the two organizations were cooperating with each other and pooling resources. The story was interesting, but I'm pretty much using these side missions to experiment with my abilities and refine my gameplay. I prefer not to use my guns, but not if I'm up against heavily armed criminals like gang members. There was a slight twinge of regret when I tried used my Gang Attack power as a distraction, only to have the Bratva totally wipe out the Umeni security guards that were patrolling a data collection center I had to raid. At least the cops showed up to splat the thugs I conjured. I shoulda just sent in the Jumper and used the Phone Distraction hack to avoid detection. I definitely prefer to use the RC Jumper and the Quadcopter rather than go in myself. Now that I have the Quadcopter fitted with a Proximity Scanner (an ability you have to research), I can use the drone to scout and tag enemies in areas where there aren't very many stationary cameras to hack and use for surveillance. The conclusions to the side missions in the mega arc usually involved a Privacy Invasion event following some sort of infiltration. Most of the enemies were security guards, but there were also some robots in play. Perfect opportunity to test my Robot hack. Marcus can either get them to play music, turn themselves off, or unshackle their Friend Or Foe programming. I usually just power them down long enough to give me or my Jumper time enough to get across their patrol route. The finale to the mission arc had Marcus going to a NSA safe house and infecting the servers with a virus to destroy the tracking software that NSA was using to triangulate HaDocK's location. It was refreshing to see the NSA section chief smash his equipment with a thrown chair once he saw that HaDocK was off the grid. He sent Sitara a complimentary e-mail so hopefully he and DedSec are square following the Zombi2 virus misunderstanding and maybe he will help me out in a future mission. God, the side mission, Whistleblower, was nearly soul destroying. The drug company, Pharmington's, got word about one of their employees about to leak documents to the news about some of their shady dealings and decided to smear the guy by fabricating evidence about the poor bastard having an affair. I had to talk the guy off of a fucking ledge by hacking his phone and laptop and getting him in touch with his attorney to let him know that DedSec had uploaded some incendiary company e-mails to the web that exonerated him and also confirmed that the compromising photos of him were bulltshit. This makes two near suicides that I have thwarted. I'm now working on a side mission that involves the Auntie Shu Boys, the Bratva, human trafficking, and AIDEN PEARCE~! So this will turn out to be my first callback to the original game once the mission is done. I stopped playing for the night after finding a phone to hack inside of a shipping container.... where Aiden had hidden the bodies of the criminals he'd killed... Not something you want to see up close through the camera of your quadcopter. The message on the phone said that the Auntie Shu Boys were planning some sort of ambush, so that seemed a good enough place to quit for the night and leave on a cliffhanger note. I am dumb. I need to get better at using Nethack when I am on the street. Some of the Research Points I thought I couldn't reach earlier in the game were perfectly accessible if I had bothered to go into Nethack mode and notice that I had access to nearby construction crane that could easily get me to the top of a really high building. Oh, well. Better learned late than not at all, I suppose.. I collected enough of the loose Research Points via construction crane to enable Enhanced Spring for my RC Jumper. I was able to get to a couple more Research Points and Money Bags after that, but some other spots clearly require my Jumper to have both Enhanced Spring and Speed Boost so that it is able to cover more distance. Case in point, there is a Research Pont near Stanford University that requires me to access a CC Box (Physical Hack) and the building is too high for me to use a hydraulic lift to get to the top,. However I can get to the top of a nearby building under my own power. If my jumper gets a good head of steam (Speed Boost) it will be able to jump the chasm in between buildings and make it to the CC Box. It is painfully obvious that if I try to parkour my way across, I will fall to my death. Okay, so that is two successful Armored Car robberies and the second Five Star Felony I have evaded without having the Disable Helicopter hack. Confidence is building slowly. I lucked out and came across an alley that had blockers I could raise and they kept the police vans away long enough for me to find a good hidey hole. I had to KO a couple of SWAT cops that got a bit too curious. I think I need three more DedSec Event completions to unlock another achievement. There has to be an event with a different objective. Something not quite as life threatening.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted December 13, 2017 Share Posted December 13, 2017 JT PLAYS WATCH DOGS 2 LONG AFTER EVERYONE ELSE HAS (EPISODE 16): The side mission,, Shadows, is a wrap and Aiden Pearce is once again on the loose handing out street justice. So there is at least one callback to the original game that you don't have to pay to experience. I didn't mess around with the Bratva. I used the Gang War ability to call in some 560's to thin the herd, and then I went in heavy and took out the surviving droogs with my combat shotty. I unlocked a 20 point achievement for completing the mission and got some bonus clothing added to Marcus's wardrobe. I will probably never put Aiden's nasty trenchcoat on Marcus. His baseball cap, on the other hand, compliments the Fox mask splendidly.. Got through the third mission of HAUM Sweet HAUM. Having the power to disable laser beam security was not quite as helpful as I hoped it would be. I infiltrated the restricted zone at HAUM's data retrieval center with my Jumper and got to the target computer without being seen. After activating the system, I triggered a network puzzle and then to my horror, the shit hit the fan when an alarm sounded and a proximity timer turned on. *sigh* I had to hustle to upload zone to make sure the data transfer went through and naturally every Umeni security guard on site was alerted. I had to KO three guards to buy myself enough time to finish the upload to DedSec. During my escape, I noticed a couple of window washer lifts on the sides of the building I had raided and I just shook my head. I rushed in and didn't use all of the assets available to me. I probably could've avoided 99% of the physical encounters if I'd have just gotten to high ground and sent in my drone. I still accomplished the mission, but it was a bit messier than it should've been .I may replay the mission when I get home from work if it is still available to see if I can complete it with 100% cyberninja awesomeness.. I do enjoy the fact that this game makes me think of mission success with far different parameters than most sandbox games I've played. I actually considered it to be a partial failure if I have to resort to violence or am discovered before I accomplish my goal. That doesn't mean that wanton murder is not a legit means to an end if a player is so inclined to be super aggressive. The only saving grace of the messy mission was that I was able to get the Money Bag in the lobby. Free money is always welcomed. Speaking of money, I have bought six cars from Auto Elite. Nineteen or something more to go for an achievement. I haven't found the last of the unique vehicles, yet. I will probably do that today to get it out of the way and satisfy the nagging OCD voice in the back of my head. I completed some side mission that was a direct reference to Cicada 3301. The network puzzle I had to solve was pretty complex. Also completed another side mission where I had to dox / swat a douchebag DedSec follower who was dox / swatting other people. The guy was griefing other players while playing an FPS on his computer when I started the Privacy Invasion event. First you have to dial 911 on his phone and then you have to set another phone in his room to overload so that it explodes with a pop, causing the 911 operator to think that she just heard the sound of gunfire. In order to escalate the situation, you also have to hack his router which cause him to say some very unflattering things about his FPS competition (the 911 Operator will think he's taunting the police) and then you hack his computer and flash a scary picture on his monitors which causes him to scream (the 911 Operator will think someone is in trouble). The cops burst into his room just as the DedSec splash exploded onto his screens and the soothing sounds of the final movement of Beethoven's 9th played over his speakers. I was sad because I did not think to get a photo to upload to Xbox Live Community of the blubbery asshat on the floor surrounded by cops with shotguns until after I lost the video feed.. I unlocked a 10 point achievement for competing in a bike race. I barely cleared the course in enough time to get a Bronze. I clearly need to get better at racing in this game. I'll compete a drone race after I have enough research points to get the Speed Boost ability for my RC toys. I'll also do some more Driver SF missions to earn enough cash to buy the best sailboat available so hopefully I can crush one of those races. After five attempts, I finally unlocked the Jump Around achievement for making a 140 meter jump in a vehicle. I had to cheat to find the route that would give me the best opportunity to perform the stunt jump. I destroyed the engines of four motorcycles by using the Engine Override nitrous boost to give me enough speed to clear the distance. I should've taken a picture of the four burning crotch rockets in the alley where I left them. Well, shit. The last mission of HAUM Sweet HAUM was a simple infiltration. I wasn't able to re-do the second mission to test my new strategy so fuck it until another playthrough. The final cutscene had my as yet unnamed man-bun wearing nemesis sharing harsh words and a throat chop with the CEO of HAUM. Obviously this dude is connected with Blume as evident by his sweater with the company logo all over it. I am going to enjoy sending this man to prison provided I don't end up there myself on numerous counts of Breaking & Entering, Assault & Battery, Capital Murder, Grand Larceny, and numerous moving violations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted December 15, 2017 Share Posted December 15, 2017 Getting a picture of someone puking is now my unicorn. I have devoted two game sessions to trying to gimmick it and still nothing. I am also happy to see that the AI is very fair when it comes to justice. ' I had just finished a Driver SF mission and stopped in Japantown to take a couple of selfies for ScoutX. Some overweight lady started pushing the Dancing Kawaii Girl and ruined my opportunity to get a photo. Someone called the cops and the police came to arrest the fat lady for assault. Sometimes the cops get it wrong and that is where we vigilantes come in. I dropped off another Driver SF client and heard shots fired. Some poor asshole got clipped in one of the restaurants and the killer was on foot. Cops arrived, but they couldn't locate the suspect, but she showed up on my map clear as day. She started shooting at me as I approached her, so I drew my own 9mm and fired. Two quick shots to the head did the trick. Guns are no joke in this game. Even the pistols will wreck your day if you are not an armored NPC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaos Posted December 18, 2017 Share Posted December 18, 2017 I avoided the first one, but I really should pick up part 2 when it's like $10 on a flash sale. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted December 18, 2017 Share Posted December 18, 2017 4 minutes ago, Chaos said: I avoided the first one, but I really should pick up part 2 when it's like $10 on a flash sale. I'm enjoying it so far. I didn't play any WD2 over the weekend as I had lots of projects to take care of (install new curtain rod, put together some furniture, touch up paining) before we have family over for Christmas Eve Weekend. I didn't play last night because I needed to play something with a lot more murder in it to wash away the sorrow of the Steelers loss to the Pats and right now, I am whittling away at a couple of urban exploration missions in my Watch Dogs 2 playthrough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted December 21, 2017 Share Posted December 21, 2017 I think I am up to three successful armored car robberies now. I am also contemplating suicide because I was hanging around Nudle Park and heard the sound of someone retching. I fumbled for my camera and just missed getting a picture of someone barfing.. So much rage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted December 22, 2017 Share Posted December 22, 2017 JT PLAYS WATCH DOGS 2 LONG AFTER EVERYONE ELSE HAS (EPISODE 17): Okay, so let's press on a little more. Haum Intruder is a wrap. I was kinda bummed that the only thing I could do to the pedo perv's earpiece was send static through it. I wiped his kiddie porn drives and uploaded a virus to his computer. My victory was heralded by Beethoven's Ode To Joy. It was bittersweet. Torment is one thing, but I wish I could've ratted out this clown to the cops. Scheidenfreud is also a wrap. Marcus found HAUM's CEO at the gym and DedSec decided to prank him for the lolz. This was fucking awesome. Well, the second act kicked in rather quickly. Josh found out that a botnet hosted by inVite was artificially padding DedSec's follower count. I went to investigate and walked right into a fucking trap. Mr. Man Bun is now identified as the Chief Technology Officer for Blume and yeah, he's my main adversary. A very worthy opponent and quite an asshole. I will enjoy sending him to prison. Wandering around the city doing side missions and collecting the bonus research finally paid off. The added super powers allowed me to handle the epic police presence surrounding inVite's corporate HO without too many issues, although I did take one or two bullets trying to get away. Ouch.. I had the good taste to cover my getaway by using taser traps instead of IEDs. I have yet to murder any cops myself, even though I have sent quite a few of them to their deaths since I like to clear out some Restricted Zones held by gang members by swatting the one that can call for reinforcements and then I grab the Money Bag or the Research Point container when the coast is clear.. If this were a GTA game, I'd probably have a huge police body count under my belt by now. So, what does a fugitive hacker vigilante and his black hat allies do after they experience their first major defeat? They go on vacation! A weekend at the Burning Man festival used to be on my hacker bucket list, but I am too old now to go and party with the cool kids for days on end. Thank you, Ubisoft, for giving me the next best thing. The Inception Easter Egg was pretty awesome. I made a video of it and shared it. Thank God I talked to Horatio before talking it up with Inception Bwomp Girl. That festival music was okay (Burning Desire by Hudson Mohawke) but All The Things by Dual Core is a more danceable track. I didn't take a selfie with Inception Bwomp Girl because most people in the game seem to get annoyed when I point a camera at them. The Drag Queen Bouncer near the Castro almost started a fight with me when I snapped a selfie for ScoutX. Finally got to meet some of the key players for Prime_Eight. They seem to be led by a lesbian named Lenora "Lenni" Kastner (you get her full name if you use the Profiler). No one started any shit. The Swelter Skelter festival is neutral ground, just like holy spots are in Highlander. The Jabberwock Puzzle challenge was kinda tricky. IT'S A T-BONE SIGHTING~! AND HE IS DRESSED LIKE A STEAMPUNK ROB ZOMBIE~! And, we have to leave the festival because he banged some tattooed babe that just happened to be an old lady for the Sons of Ragnarok who was about to get married to her dude that morning. Okay, so now Raymond "T-Bone" Kenny is our resident hacker mentor. Time to get some get back from Blume, I guess. Wow, so Aiden Pierce is relegated to a cameo in a cutscene, T-Bone is a full on NPC in the main storyline, and you don't get the Jordi Chin callback if you don't pay for the DLC, which apparently quite a few people did just so that he'd be in their games. Talk about a vote of no confidence for your former main character.. Hey, the Zodiac Killer mission is unlocked! I'll be tackling that and this other side mission before I move on with the main story. God, it's been two days wandering around Jack London Square and I have yet to snap a photo of anyone barfing. However, I've intercepted a lot of text conversations discussing someone or something called the Shuffler and apparently there are some missing kids involved. I'm guessing this will turn out to be an ongoing meta mystery to solve like the one with Edgar Noone aka the Fingerpaint Killer from the first game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted January 3, 2018 Share Posted January 3, 2018 JT PLAYS WATCH DOGS 2 LONG AFTER EVERYONE ELSE HAS (EPISODE 18): The Zodiac Killer DLC was pretty underwhelming. There was the obligatory Ted Cruz reference, but the ending was pretty anti-climactic. No murder to thwart or hostage to save. Oh, well. at least the side mission didn't take too long to complete and the extra XP always comes in handy. The Ordinate Academy side mission was more of the same. Lots of running around to far flung corners of the map, but XP is always welcomed and I ran across another Key Data item to collect. T-Bone was good enough to sum up the Watch Dogs DLC mission that I did not buy. RIP Default. Next up is Limp Nudle; another part of the main mission. I'll do that tonight. I've finally collected all of the unique vehicles. I had to cheat to find the Rainbow Missile. I was kinda hoping that the unique motorcycle would be a little more... impressive. Now I know why the unique performance car is called the Dangerzone. Any serious collision with another car will cause it to burst into flames and possibly explode. It is the love child that sprung from the union of a Ferarri and a Fort Pinto. I failed one of the Driver SF (Uber) missions after I bailed from my burning car and the vehicle exploded and killed my passenger. Oh, and I found my unicorn and finally got a picture of someone puking! I am pretty good at sailboat races. I really suck at drone races, though. I have a shit ton of money. I haven't even bothered going after the remaining money bags on the map, even though there are some custom clothing items from the street gangs in them. I'm more interested in finding all of the custom paint jobs for my stun gun, jumper, and quadcopter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted January 5, 2018 Share Posted January 5, 2018 JT PLAYS WATCH DOGS 2 LONG AFTER EVERYONE ELSE HAS (EPISODE 19): Snow days are a blessing from God. I've started to tackle more of the DLC content now. The Limp Nudle side mission is number one and the best. Anyone clueless about the plight of the professional anomaly that is the African-American IT Specialist needs to play this fucking game. I also enjoyed the $911 side mission chain. All of the missions in the game involve setting up ambushes similar to the mission in the first game where Aiden uses the Profiler to create a VR map and then booby traps the area in prep for a Black Viceroys drug buy. Being able to create and execute a plan was very appealing to the OCD parts of my brain. Normally I try not to kill any SFPD, but the cops in this mission tree are corrupt, so that was my excuse to use lethal means when necessary. The last mission calls for improvisation so you have to find a balance between being patient and then going in full tilt. The final mission had a satisfying ending, but I did regret spending my points in such a way that I did not have the Blackout hack handy. It would've made my final push and retreat a bit easier. The Automata side mission can eat a bag of dicks. The various infiltrations were pretty challenging, but the payoff was fucking stupid. You spend the first part of the smart car theft fighting with the AI to get control of the car. Meanwhile, SFPD is blasting and PITing the shit out of your car that is apparently made of eggshells. Survival means using your Vehicle Control hacks to keep the cop cars at bay until you solve a Network puzzle (while the fucking camera is moving all over the place) and engage the manual drive. Most likely you will fail at least once before getting the hang of what you need to do. The Moscow Gambit side mission was more my speed. Take down an Eastern European porno king supported by the Russian Mafia. Why? Because they are making parody vids of DedSec propaganda bulletins and Sitara won't stand for it. You know it's a video game when you fuck with the Bratva and get little reprisal. If this were real life, we'd all be fertilizing several landfills right now. Don't play this mission series around your kids or older parents because yes, one of your tasks it to infiltrate an adult film studio while they are filming. Digital boobs are everywhere. My first real gunfight went down in the last mission of Moscow Gambit. It was very cathartic. The Hacker War main mission is also a wrap. Lenni is a kick ass adversary and I love her angle as a bio-hacker. The blacklight tattoo she has on her face and the biometric diodes she has implanted in her forearms to access her phone and computer equipment all fucking rule. I have over a million dollars in cash. I barely spend a dime. This game needs better money sinks as the only big ticket items to buy are cars and a decent sailboat, and you can get away without buying any cars if you constantly steal the ones out in the city or rely on the unique vehicles you find out in the world. I don't purchase out any expensive guns from the 3D printer because I use stealth and chicanery to accomplish my goals and enemies drop firearms when you take them out.. Right now, I am armed with the 1911 pistol (which is really a Kimber Warrior, not a Colt 1911) and the SVD-M sniper rifle I acquired during the last mission of Moscow Gambit. I didn't buy any flash suppressed guns because 1) the only flash suppressed guns in the games are DedSec and they look stupid and 2) I can still neutralize enemies with stealth by either using the stun gun or sneak thwomping them with the Thunderball or 3) I can use my Social Engineering hacks to SWAT my enemies or bring in a rival gang to shoot everyone to pieces and then saunter to the goal at my leisure after the gunfire stops. The only reason I have so much money is because I locate the big money bags on the map and raid those restricted zones to in order to get my hands on more items from the gang outfit sets. I nearly have all of the items from the 560 and Tezcas. I'm missing a couple of Bratva items and I will probably never wear any of the Sons of Ragnarok gear since I don't like looking like I frequent the Blue Oyster. I completed yet another Armored Car heist / DedSec Event. I am beginning to suspect that the One Of The Crew achievement for completing 5 DedSec events is either bugged, or you have to get them done cooperatively with another online player. The more vids I watch about the PVP achievements (hacker invasion, bounty hunting, blah blah blah), the less inspired I feel the need to do them, especially since I am probably the only person in North America playing a fresh game. I will probably try to knock out a few of the two player co-op DedSec Events to make sure I get the One Of The Crew achievement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted January 9, 2018 Share Posted January 9, 2018 JT PLAYS WATCH DOGS 2 LONG AFTER EVERYONE ELSE HAS (EPISODE 20): Caustic Progress is a wrap. I like Lenni as a character and an adversary, so I enjoyed this mission series. The end mission definitely favors those who prefer stealth and gadgets over huge firefights and luckily I am one of those guys. I am digging the evil biotech theme from all of the missions from the Human Conditions DLC. It is definitely the one to invest in if you are late to the Watch Dogs 2 thing. The only weak link in the Human Conditions chain is the last mission of Automata which is particularly infuriating. You can skip the dumb Zodiac Killer DLC and not miss much. The No Compromise DLC was okay. The missions were fairly interesting and of course there was the novelty of digital boobs. The only mission available to me now is W4tched, so I guess the remaining DLC mission that is still locked in my DedSec app queue is the final Human Conditions DLC mission featuring the Jordi Chin cameo. I tried to do a Hacker Invasion to see how close I could get to unlocking the Troll'r achievement, but Ubisoft Games Services were down all day. If this is a permanent thing, no biggie. I wasn't really planning on doing that much multiplayer anyway, if any at all. I will still be a complete person if I don't unlock any of the multiplayer achievements. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
assfax Posted January 9, 2018 Share Posted January 9, 2018 I beat watchdogs 2 on sunday. THE GOOD Cops aren't always on yer ass all the time for silly shit. I saw helicopters like 3 times in the whole game. Badguys aren't psychic and instantly know where you are. You can do tons of shit and they don't even know whats happening. You can use a vehicle to climb higher and don't need a robolift every time you wanna get a moneybag. Like seriously, never felt hugely restricted. It's like Haunting with Polterguy combined with the idea of one of those universal remotes from a "Things you never knew existed" catalog. Whenever some asshole sideswipes me or some pedestrian starts yelling at me I can just make their car zoom off. This never got old. The part where marcus and horatio go to nudle had actual funny dialogue. When they called the dude Rob Zombie THE BAD When they called the dude Encino Man. The pipedream puzzle with the timer at fake burning man. Everytime I skipped a phone call because I was trying to hit escape to do one of the 4 other things escape does. Weird crane controls that changed depending on the camera. I wanted W to always extend the lift. Like a lot of new games it just ends with you holding a machine gun fighting 40 dudes right at the end. That happened on last of us too. Weird Sitara/Ray plotline never escalates or resolves. Doing a whole bunch of careful shit and then dying 89% through after it fucks up and having to redo a bunch of shit. Then wondering where you have to start over from. Whole lot of me just banging my fucking head on missions for an hour. Like, that Chinatown mob hideout where I gotta get in a safe? Even when I started abusing the fake apb/traitor stuff in the second half of the game I'd still get stymied. That Alcatraz bit where I gotta get the guy and then leave the island was killing my ass. The voting machine one was particularly egregious I could get the ones I could run over with the lift and the ones I could electrocute but had no idea how to destroy the other ones other than shooting them. Then my game kept crashing whenever I'd get about halfway through. Then I realized I had little EMP grenades I never even knew I had. Then there was one where I had to redo a pipedream puzzle on a radio tower because the mission glitched out and I had to rewatch that whole slow cutscene with wrench twice. Like, it didn't fail or reload it just reset the whole sequence. I thought the main badguys name was blume for 90 percent of the game. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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