“Watch Dogs 2‘s ‘seamless multiplayer’ will not be live at launch as it’s not ready. The team is working on a fix and we want to ensure that the core experience is stable at launch,” Ubisoft said in an official statement.
Problems experienced during the game’s “pre-launch” period largely centered around crashing and lag issues encountered when attempting to play the game’s “invasion”-based multiplayer modes. These include modes that send a group of players after another player on the run from the cops, like “Bounty Hunter.” Cooperative play, if done through an invitation system, appears to be working as intended, and Ubisoft has already submitted a patch to rectify the stability issues to both Sony and Microsoft.
While the game’s multiplayer may not be ready for prime time, we found the game’s single-player component to be a welcome change from the drab, brooding tone of the first Watch Dogs. Marcus Holloway is a more entertaining protagonist, the game’s version of San Francisco is filled with satire, and it even references publisher Ubisoft’s tendency to leak projects long before they were scheduled to be officially announced.
Watch Dogs 2 is Ubisoft’s sole heavy hitter this holiday season, as the publisher has opted to give the Assassin’s Creed franchise a year off in order to implement greater innovation. A film based on the series, however, starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, is just a month away.
Watch Dogs 2 is out now on Xbox One and PlayStation 4, with a PC release following on November 29.
