Watch Dogs: Beginner Tips

I thought I'd just put up six quick tips to help people survive ctOS Chicago in Watch Dogs.

1 - "Open your World"
Lots of your cooler and more useful skills will be locked until you complete the act one mission with this name, so unlike the Assassin's Creed series where you probably should do all the side stuff as soon as it becomes available, just power through the main story until you get to it (it's near the start) before doing any of the side missions.

2 - Silence is Golden
You can almost clear out an entire gang base if you use your silenced equipment (which mostly means the starter pistol at the beginning) and aim for the head, which always nets a kill unless you are shooting someone with a helmet. Civilians also have less chance to call the cops since they don't hear gunfire (unless you keep missing). Use focus once you've unlocked it to help steady your aim.

3 - The Destroyer of Criminal Convoys
Once you do enough criminal convoys (10 I think) you get to unlock this rifle (called "The Destroyer"). Choose those first 10 missions wisely as some are much harder than others but once this gun is in your hands none should pose a problem. One hit from a rifle disables a vehicle and since NPCs NEVER get into a car that they didn't start with it makes all the chase x person tasks much easier as you can force your prey to be on foot. A head shot from this will also kill the heavily armored guys, just aim for the goggle section. Once again, focus is your friend.

4 - Bad boys go to the beach, and sleep in their cars
The Chicago police are ridiculously aggressive, willing to kill bystanders to get to you. While unlocking your magical phone abilities to use the city infrastructure against them is certainly a good way to slow them down, an easier method is to head for the nearest marina and catch a boat since they are incredibly allergic to water and will not chase you there. The helicopters will, but your magic phone can disable them. And if they have snipers well, bullets (especially from the Destroyer) can help with that. If there are no boats nearby a good alternative is to use a blackout doohickey (or cause one the old fashioned way) then hide in your car, especially if you have the related bonus skill. I've managed to hide in the middle of a freeway, with a police cruiser right beside me. It looked at my smoking wreck of a vehicle for a bit then drove off. :P

5 - "Steal a Vehicle" contracts need Skill
The "steal a vehicle" fixer contracts were the hardest ones in the game for me, since you can't really get out of the car for longer than 20 seconds. You'll definitely want as many/all of your skills unlocked before attempting them, along with pockets full of consumable items. Being familiar with how various vehicles handle and the various short cuts and back road ramps as a player is also handy.

6 - Be Crafty
Crafting stuff is great, but since its a pain to go buy equipment or collect them it might help to know what stuff is used most (or at least, what stuff I used most). The number one item is: Jam Communications, followed by Blackout, followed by Focus pills. Frags and IEDs had some rare moments, mostly during campaign missions but I didn't really use any of the others so unless your play style widely varies from mine, save your resources! I found lures to be especially useless, but perhaps have some value to those who want a "no kill" play through (yeah, good luck with that).

That's it, hopefully it's of use to someone out there! :)

Watch Dogs

Where you play as a gun-toting wizard with a magical mobile phone.

Ubisoft has a thing for open world games, and in this one you get to explore modern day Chicago as a very flawed, hypocritical and ultimately boring murdere vigilante with a magical cell phone. This is to make up for his lack of parkour ability when compared to the other well known Ubisoft open world series: Assassin's Creed. The many nods to that game here are pretty funny.

The city is huge, and as expected there are a good number of mini-games to do and skills to unlock while exploring it. Fortunately getting around via train, car or boat is pretty easy once you get the hang of it - complete with a decent enough selection of radio music to listen to while traveling. Another thing to get a hang of is the magical phone which simply gives too much information on the many NPCs. You can turn off the profiler, but most/all the good things only happen when its up.

Doubles as a handy cultist finder!

While it is certainly an entertaining game (and possibly addictive if you like Grand Theft Auto type chaos) there are a number of things that I found annoying. First it's a soft game audio wise, I needed to turn up the volume a bit to hear anything. Also, the protagonist and most of the other characters (specifically those related to him) are morons. I guess it runs in the family? Some tasks fail because you killed the main target, despite killing all his henchmen, some civilians and possibly some police officers in the process, while others it's ok to just go on a killing spree? 

Also half the missions are working as the exact type of person the protagonist is supposed to hate (killers), but if you want total completion then... oh well? There's also one part where you run the same map three or so times (because plot device), when really if you just did the "third" time first it would have saved everyone a lot of trouble. At least the difficulty (on Realistic anyway) is good, but there's just something lacking. A likable protagonist maybe? I didn't really give a crap about him or his feelings throughout the entire game.

The game is alright for one ride but pretty much becomes "meh" soon after the first act. I give it two and a half stolen cars out of five. If you want an open world title where you actually care for the protagonist, try Assassin's Creed: Black Flag instead. Edward Kenway is awesome.

Today I Smiled: The New

Yesterday I talked about Neverwinter Online: Alliances. Truth be told I've been playing NWO less as of late due to some hectic weeks at work. On one particularly stressful day I broke my usual rule of "not buying any computer games for myself" and splurged because retail therapy is a thing. Yep I went into EB and spent $31 bucks for four bargain bin games: Assassin's Creed Rogue, Assassin's Creed Unity, Watch Dogs and Call of Juarez: the Cartel.

While that's not too bad if I say so myself, I also have been receiving a bunch of really, really old games from a neighbor who has outgrown them. More than half don't work but I don't mind. You know I'll be putting up reviews for the ones that do somewhere down the track. Also cool to learn that Ultima Online is still going strong elsewhere. ;)

All that ties in somewhat with Izlain's "How to be a cheap ass gamer" NBI post, which is a good read on it's own. Remember - there are tons of free to play games out there too!

"The New" is also a Week 1 event for the NBI 2016, for which you can join the Discord here. Given that it's already half way through June you can tell I'm quite out of sync with it this year.  Still, my best "New" moment recently has come from the Skyrim Mod "The Forgotten City" which I just played through in my adventure journal. It is so well made I can't recommend it enough. Speaking of which, adventures in Skyrim will continue tomorrow!

That must be the best quest hook ever.

Last but not least I thought I'd put up the links of the "new" folk from the NBI - give them a look see if you get the chance. Let me know if I missed any and I'll add you to the list!

A to Zeo
Cookie Cutter Monks
I'm Not Squishy
Just East of West
Pleasant Gamer (hey... I remember you from last year :P)
Shadowz Gaming Blog
Wild Core Chronicle