Jaden Howard

As a proof of concept for a cyber-drama take on Assassin’s Creed, complete with all-encompassing hacking abilities, the original Watch Dogs really worked. Where it faltered was ... almost everywhere else. The chief complaint being that its protagonist, Aiden Pearce, was a bland and unlikeable guy, someone that you never sympathised with despite his dark, guilt-ridden Max Payne-esque past. Indirectly responsible for the death of his niece and the comatose state of his sister, Aiden’s resolution was to go out for revenge. A lot of people had trouble getting on board with that. In Watch Dogs 2, developer Ubisoft Montreal not only takes the foundations of the original to build a good, fun game around its core ideas, it also births a great lead character, Marcus Holloway. He’s the most likeable Ubisoft lead since Ezio Auditore of Assassin’s Creed II, Brotherhood and Revelations. This sequel also leaves the drab, rain-slicked streets of grey Chicago behind. In its place, we get a glorious rendition of San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area; the overpriced suburbs of Palo Alto and the warm city offshoots of Oakland – it’s all beautifully replicated in one of Ubisoft’s most colourful and vibrant open worlds. The game’s greatest strength, however, is its writing. Ubisoft games have often lacked good scripts, regularly resulting in cringe-inducing one-liners, but Watch Dogs 2 frequently delivers moments of heartwarming charm and sharp comedic satire. While the original didn’t have a funny bone in its tech-savvy body, its sequel works as a humorously playful adventure, thanks in part to Marcus’ cheeky cockiness, as well as the varied personalities of his hacker mates, the group collectively known as DedSec. The organisation recruits our hero after he sneaks into the offices of tech surveillance company, Blume, to erase his personal data. He discovers that the naughty corp is harvesting information from everyone in the city, which DedSec (think Anonymous but with sex appeal) naturally dislikes. The hacktivist group then begins targeting San Francisco’s largest corporations for all kinds of cyber attacks and corporate espionage.