Legion. Hacker Wars / Overclockers.ua

Ubisoft has released the third part of the hacker Watch Dogs subtitled Legion. The developers promised revolutionary changes and development of the series, but in reality everything turned out to be completely different. True, this does not mean that the creators deceived, and the game came out according to the patterns of the French conveyor. Simply, there was no breakthrough, and Watch Dogs: Legion became the direct successor of the second part with improvements and improvements. Whether they all benefited the game and where the creators screwed up, read the review below.

The setting for Watch Dogs: Legion is London in the near future. A local cell of the hacker group DedSec is trying to save the city from terrorists, but they are framed and eliminated. The antagonist in this case is another association of hackers “Day Zero”, which makes DedSec enemies of the people.

The government turns to the private military company Albion for help to restore order in the capital. But gradually the PMC is consolidated in power and becomes the main force of the city. The remnants of DedSec are called upon to resist this madness. They begin to recruit new team members, and several global conflicts are visible on the horizon at once, and the player will have to intervene in all of them.

Watch Dogs: Legion presents the plot not as one big story, but is divided into arcs. In addition to “Day Zero” and “Albion” the gamer will face the mafia, human trafficking, cyber fraud and other evils of the capital. Therefore, there is not one boss here, and each has its own interesting story.

A feature of Watch Dogs: Legion, which was poked in almost every commercial, was the abandonment of one or more of the main characters in favor of literally any resident of London. All of them are allowed to recruit into DedSec and go through the story for them.

Ubisoft really added the ability to play for every Londoner, whether it be at least a bum, a policeman or a grandmother. They were prescribed lines, diversified their voices, appearance, and came up with a bunch of combinations of skills. True, all these people are not needed at all for the normal passage of the plot, therefore, in addition to several missions where they are asked to recruit a resident with specific skills, you can go through the game with a couple of selected characters and not bother. Plus, for each story arc, people with unique skills are given out. This also reinforces the reluctance to run around the streets in search of a special citizen. But if you want, you can do it.

According to the fan of Watch Dogs: Legion, it is easy to pass as a bum, an old woman or a street musician. True, they will have fewer skills than others, but they do everything that the more pumped members of DedSec do.

Here everyone is able to control a spider robot, drones, hack servers or computers, eliminate traps and opponents. It’s just that if you find a hacker, he will crush the network a little faster, if you recruit a military man, he will have a weapon that is far from always useful, if you play as a thief, then he will be quieter if he makes his way to a protected area, and so on.

Each recruited character has a unique appearance and immutable skills. Everyone can die irrevocably if permanent death is enabled, but this item can also be disabled.

DedSec members are allowed to change clothes at local shops, but they can’t change their hairstyle. But they give you to add a weapon or a couple of skills to ready-made slots. Not satisfied with the invisibility perk? We open and pump the desired skill, and then insert it into the hero slot. Usually, this preparation is enough to complete most of the main and side tasks. But there are special missions where they ask you to recruit specific residents or take certain perks with you.

But even here there is freedom of action, because the vast majority of quests are completed in different ways. You can go ahead, shooting everyone on the way. True, conventional weapons are hard to get, so you have to shoot from non-lethal ones (pistol, shotgun, machine gun). And this is enough to knock out the enemy and complete the mission.

You can sit nearby and entrust the matter to technology: control a spider or a drone, making their way into the territory of the task and performing hacks. And if you want to become an assassin, then please: find a character with the necessary skills or add specific skills and weapons to any other member of the group, which makes them covert agents.

In addition to story missions, there are side quests and additional activities. To pass the story, it is not necessary to free all areas of London from the influence of Albion and raise uprisings. But if you want, then taking part in activities on the map and recruiting people, it will come out by itself.

You can work as a courier delivering various packages, play football or darts, fight in closed battles, look for new masks on the map and hunt for the coolest characters to recruit them to DedSec.

For completed quests, the game gives out local currency and technology points. The first ones are spent exclusively on clothes in one of the many shops on the map. The latter are needed for pumping general perks: drone control, fast hacking, silent movement, new types of non-lethal weapons, and more.

At the same time, an in-game store was brought to Watch Dogs: Legion, but there are only cosmetic improvements and a couple of super-unique heroes, but no buns that simplify the game. Ubisoft stayed true to their rule of stuffing them wherever they could, but this time they’ve made it light.

Watch Dogs: Legion is as similar as possible to the second part. In addition to the new recruitment of residents, the gameplay is still the same game with mediocre shooting, not always convenient hand-to-hand combat and unnatural car control. Therefore, fighting here is not as interesting as hacking and silently shooting enemies, and driving cars is easy, but they are all too sensitive and not familiar with realistic physics.

For the most impatient for clumsy control, an autopilot was introduced into the game. It is enough to get into the car and press the button so that the car arrives at the place itself. And the best and most convenient way to move around the map is to quickly travel through metro stations. True, long loading screens are annoying in places.

Ubisoft has created a lively and atmospheric London of the near future. Neon and English classics harmoniously coexist with drones and robots. Futuristic cars share the road with old cars, people are busy with business, there are a lot of little things in the rooms, and life is seething on the streets.

True, the creators are very stubborn tolerance, so in London from Ubisoft, most of the inhabitants belong to different races and nationalities. And it turns out that so many ethnic minorities have been shoved in that you won’t find white people with fire during the day. Although, perhaps, I don’t know something, and this is exactly the situation in the capital of Great Britain.

One of the main drawbacks of Watch Dogs: Legion is the graphics. Apparently the game was deliberately made so terrible in order to turn on everything that was turned off on the new generation consoles and show a next-gen picture. Perhaps that is why the second part looked better, and Legion looks bad even at maximum PC settings and at the same time top-end video cards can hardly cope with the game. There are a lot of complaints on the forums about this, and also about crashes and glitches.

I had neither, but I played part of the pre-release version, and then the final version with the first day patch. But I did not notice the difference, there were no crashes, as well as fps subsidence, bugs and other things. Videos are available on the Web where objects fly in the game, cars appear out of thin air, people fall into textures, and so on. But it seems like most of the bugs have already been fixed.

There is a lot of music in the game and it is different. The local radio station has tracks for all tastes, from new school rap to rock and metalcore, but sometimes there was not enough pure English music for the atmosphere.

The voice acting and localization is complete, but in Russian, it needs to be downloaded separately and this thing weighs almost 5 GB. They translated adequately and even tried to convey dialects and accents, but in this case the original, of course, would be better. The voices are normal and fit most of the villagers I’ve played as.

Watch Dogs: Legion is an experimental game with atmospheric futuristic London and mechanics of the second part. At the same time, her light mood is not here, and the main message of the creators is just more serious. Like, think about a world that has already been taken over by technology, and evil people have learned to subdue more and more inhabitants with their help. The good ones also received powerful tools of influence, but this can turn into games of the gods, which means it will end badly.

The promised trick with the recruitment of any counter character is there, but there is no vital need for it in order to use it to the fullest. At the same time, the game lost a full-fledged protagonist, who could not be replaced even by the most interesting recruited agents.

Watch Dogs: Legion is a successor to the popular series, but not a revolutionary breakthrough, as we were told by the developers. This game will appeal to fans of the sequel, open worlds, assassins and hackers, but fans of GTA will not come in, shoot and penetrate deep into the plot.