In addition to the similar games listed above, which have been linked to this game specifically in the database, you may find games with a similar theme to Watch Dogs 2 in the following lists:
The Besties is a podcast about video games with a focus on a Game of Year format. Although episodes do cover new games like other podcasts, much of the content builds towards yearly Game of the Year shows, and head-to-head showdowns for best games in a series (Zelda, Grand Theft Auto and so on).
"It's Game of the Year meets King of the Hill as four of Earth's best friends – Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy, Chris Plante, and Russ Frushtick – rank and review their favorite video games. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?"
This is a list of the game that they have picked for their final game of the year show from 2014 to the current year. In some cases we didn't have the game on the database, but generally this is a good representation of their picks over the time of the show.
Like a good crime drama or whodunnit novel, solving mysteries and puzzles is a good way to engage in a story. However, rather than just watching these mysteries while someone else does the heavy lifting, these video games place you firmly in the role of the detective. Gathering statements, sifting evidence and making intelligent leaps of deduction requires care and attention. These investigations makes these games slower than others, but it’s worth the effort each time you find the correct conclusion and move the story on.
These games present you with a mysterious scenario to be solved. Whether with direct puzzles, locations to investigate or crime scenarios to deduce, they offer a unique, first-hand sleuthing challenge.
Some forms of play are timeless. Running around with a stick pretending to be in the army. Chasing each other in games of tag. And, of course, hide and seek. The games in this list offer digital ways to play hide and seek with a variety of different twists.
Hide In A Crowd: There are games like
Spy Party,
Thief Town,
Hidden in Plain Sight and
Buissons, that let you play as a range of characters and then challenge another player to find you amongst a computer-controlled crowd, from what way you move and interact. The
Fruit game in
Game & Wario on Wii U has the same mechanics, with one person trying to steal fruit without the other players working out who they are.
Wii Party offers hiding in its Spot the Sneak mode where one player has a secret advantage in the mini-games that the other players have to spot. Another great example is
Wii U Party,
Lost and Found Square mode. One player stands in a crowd of identical people and uses the Wii U gamepad to look around and describe their location to other players, who use the TV to explore and find them. At the end, you see a map of where the players had run.
Prop Hunt: There are games with "Prop Hunt" modes where you can change into the items in the world to hide.
Fortnite has a great Prop Hunt mode, as does
Minecraft. Then there are games like
Witch It designed around this idea of transforming into normal items and hiding in a game world.
Separate Screens: There games like Mario Chase and Luigi's Ghosthouse in
Nintendoland, or
Pac-Man Vs where one person has their own screen while the others team up to hunt for them use the main TV screen. Or games you play online where everyone has their own screen and try to hide from a particular character like in
Secret Neighbor.
Screencheat is a twist on this, where you share the same screen and try to shoot each other, but your characters are invisible.
Hidden Objects: Or there are hidden object games where the computer hides things that you have to find, like
Hidden Folks and
Hidden Through Time. There's a hidden object mode in
Super Mario Odyssey where you hunt online player's hidden balloons. A twist on this is
Here Kitty where one person hides a phone that then makes cat noises until the seeker has found it.
Open World Hiding: You can use pretty much any open-world game to make your own hiding fun. You can hide in
Minecraft (having turned nameplates off), sneak around on public transport in
or simply count to 10 while visitors hide in
Animal Crossing New Horizons.
Things don’t stay put. You’re the only one keeping the ship afloat. You can’t get people to do what you tell them. The effort you spend doesn’t produce the results it deserves. Well, in these video games you get to wield complete control over people, things, situations or even whole worlds.
If games offer an escape from chaos, these games are particularly good at granting a sense of satisfying agency and power as they do that. Whether it’s ordering the perfect stock room in
Wilmot’s Warehouse, organising your island in
Animal Crossing, perfectly controlling the flow of traffic in
Mini Motorways or even build civilisation just the way you want it in
Civilization the sense of satisfaction and calm from the achievement is second to none.
Games use the spaces they create to tell stories. Some games do this by locking you in a key moment where the time of day doesn't change. Other games let you explore and revisit places at different times of day.
These day-night cycles invite players to explore at different times not only to find different things to do but to see how different locations change visually and audibly at different times of day.
Some games, like
The Long Dark, do this to offer a different environmental challenge at night, when the sun is in and the cold wind really affects your character. Other games offer more unusual ways to tie in-game light levels to the real world, like
Unmaze that uses your smartphone's camera to determine how much light there is in the game.
These games are big, brash and popular. They have big budgets which means the visual and interactive quality is particularly high. They also have strong and wide ranging player communities.
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