Phil Rose

Excellent game with interesting concept. Problem is the game crashes frequently (multiple times per hour). It's really frustrating. UPDATE: Dropping the review to 1 star. The game doesn't allow manual saving, and only keeps 1 save file. That means it's constantly overwriting the single save file. So there's no backup if the save file corrupts. Which is really bad, considering that the game is glitchy. So of course, 17 hours into the game, the save file corrupts, and I've got nothing. Everything is gone. Turns out it's a relatively common problem for people playing on PC. I don't care how good the gameplay is. Watch Dogs can't promise that you'll have your progress each time you start the game. That's a deal breaker. Absolutely trash game.

Fantastic game mechanics. It's like playing a much improved version of the original. It's challenging but not overwhelming. And the gameplay combined with the scenarios lead to some really tense moments. That's the good. The story and character decisions are atrocious. They torture last game's protagonist (Joel) to death in front of his adopted daughter (Ellie). Then they try to make you like the character that did it (Abby) and force you to play half the game as her. There's actually a part where you have to fight Ellie while playing as Abby. I've never hated a game more than in that scenario. More minor, but the story-line was also largely based on pushing a progressive left agenda. Women have correctly pushed for fairer representation in games. No issue with that. But this swings the pendulum all the way to other direction. The 4 major characters, including both playable characters, are women. To make it even more progressive, they are 2 lesbians, 1 trans girl, and the butchest straight woman I've ever seen. It makes me think that the atrocious story decisions were made simply to get the main male character out of the way and to start growing more progressive characters and story-lines. The next game is set up now to completely replace the Joel/Ellie father/daughter dynamic with the Abby/Lev trans story arc. Asking me to like and play as the character that tortured Joel to death is a trash move. Transparently doing it in order to push a political ideology makes it even worse, if that's possible. This game makes me question if I'll buy future ND offerings, because I assume they'll bring this mindset to other games as well.