A little while ago, four of the TechStomper crew stomped the streets of near-future London for an insight into the Watch Dogs: Legion Online world. The single-player game sees you team up with any of millions of digital Londoners (like Denny Digit) to expose some truths and bring down a shady group of cyberterrorists setting DedSec up for the fall after Zero-Day.
Free Roam
Watch Dogs: Legion Online inhabits the same plane as its single-player experience; a mixture of hacking stuff and shooting faceless corpo bad lads whilst recruiting folks to your DedSec splinter group. Sending a double decker behind enemy lines using your phone is also a must (When in England, do as the English do). The online progression system, loadouts and missions themselves are quite different, however.
Given some time to explore this evolving game-mode, we all got a chance to see how far Watch Dogs as a series has come since the early days. Its newfound emphasis on fluid tactical online co-op paired with its array of impactful choices have no doubt deepened its identity and enjoyability as a whole. Well-rounded humour in lieu of the stony seriousness of WD1 and meme-machine approach of WD2 has allowed Watch Dogs: Legion Online to let its hair down and occupy a Goldilocks zone of tone.
Something to Do
Vinny Fanneran likened a few online missions to Tom Clancy’s The Division series and the team had to agree. Like The Division, a player’s choice of side gadget or main offensive weapon can either prove beneficial or leave you woefully ill-equipped for the task at hand. The available longer, multi-stage online mini-campaign (somewhat reminiscent of Grand Theft Auto V’s heists) demonstrated how unbelievably screwed players can find themselves if they pick the wrong gear for the job.
Consequences run deeper than just punishing the individual, though. There were a couple of occasions where one of us in our army of four (who will not be left anonymous: Rick Wilder) decided to recruit and use an operative whose main weapon was a paintball gun. In a heart-pumpingly pesky drone-avoidance mission, Vinny swapped out his camouflage for trip mines. The game was unforgiving in these situations and forced us to work together and stand to attention, otherwise our efforts resulted in a mission failure.
Adam Kelly spotted a street mime in his travels, whom he recruited. His human statue technique actually proved useful when we found ourselves pinned down by enemy forces. Rick later took a risk, managing to recruit an enemy general which brought many benefits to the table such as high level security access and a nifty revolver. While these examples are a testament to the game’s difficulty, on the other hand, they show that there’s a multitude of options available when attempting stages, accounting for various playstyles and (sometimes) rewarding curiosity when you veer off the beaten path.
Intrinsic Reward Wrought by ‘The Craic’
The missions allow you to push yourself if you want to up the ante. Vinny took a liking to the taser so he took it into nearly all of our gunfights. It was much tougher than just blasting lads in half but it was surprisingly doable.
As each team member’s roster of operatives grew, our strengths, weaknesses and preferences were made visible to our comrades by witnessing our choices, bringing our tiny army into a league of its own. Completing a mission in new and oftentimes counterproductive ways created a bigger dopamine wave which saw us through to our next impending defeat.
Arachnid Arcade
The TechStomper team had nothing but good things to say about Watch Dogs: Legion Online’s Spiderbot arena. It reminded us of those classic, simple multiplayer games played with friends back in the good old days of wired controllers and split-screening on your old 1.5inch radioactive TV. While it does remind us of bygone times, that isn’t to say that there isn’t anything new or exciting about this game mode, in fact the opposite is true.
Gameplay is fast, intense, competitive and rewarding. There’s no better feeling than bearing down on your enemies with a powerup, promoting your firepower to god status (until it runs out). Defensive tactics are reduced to fighter-pilot like evasive manoeuvres. Thanks in part to the intuitive control scheme, such agility is achievable with some practice.
The option of switching between primary and secondary weapons allows you to conserve your powerups if you choose to, so there are tactical elements outside of evasion and maximising your special weapons.
At present, only Deathmatch is available. But more game modes are to come if the display of the ‘Type: Deathmatch’ during matchmaking is anything to go by. It will be interesting to see how this game mode develops, the seeds of something great have undoubtedly been sown in Spiderbot Arena.
To sum up, Ubisoft’s continual investment of time and energy into Watch Dogs: Legion Online and the series seems to paying off. During the live event our team witnessed a side to Watch Dogs and tactical online cooperative play we simply hadn’t encountered before. Though reminiscent of The Division in some areas, its online personality has aged comfortably into something which can easily stand up on its own. And with new developments like Spiderbot Arena on the cards, we’re interested to see just how far it can go.
Watch Dogs: Legion Online begins on 9th March 2021… Until then, check out our launchday review of Watch Dogs: Legion’s single-player mode. If you want to learn more about WatchDogs Legion Online, head on over to Ubisoft’s dedicated page for Watch Dogs: Legion.