I hoped so Minder: legion On-line would start this week with a greater sense of intent than I’d seen in a preview of the mode two months ago. But it doesn’t really have. If anything has changed since January, I realize how empty an open world multiplayer experience is when only three other players can participate.
Ubisoft Toronto promises that there will be more to do in a couple of weeks, including another PvP mode and some additional cooperative missions. But for me the crux of the matter is with Minder: legion Online is that when I start into a free roam from London the pool of potential teammates is three and that’s it.
It’s not that the mode’s messy co-op slugfests need more body. But with only four players per instance, pretty much everyone has to be there for the same activity, which is usually a five-chapter team job that takes less than an hour to complete. With Guard dogs: Legion
Unfortunately then Guard dogs: Legion Online plays directly with the criticism that it is an unnecessary mode that Ubisoft Toronto has integrated into a basically single player game. In contrast to in Tom Clancys The Division 2, the single player missions of Guard dogs: Legion cannot be solved faster or more efficiently with additional firepower; additional players would only get in the way.
That’s perfectly fine, but there’s no real need to turn around either Guard dogs: Legion into a PvE cover shooter with teammates asserting themselves against waves of AI enemies, as is often the case with the structure of cooperative missions. The base game already has a lot more variety and value than this one, and its mix of stealth and near-omniscient hacking talents will be challenged when everyone else on the roster is playing with a premium character carrying a fully automatic weapon.
As depressed as I was when I realized that I was unlikely to bump into others and help them get their chores done, I was all the more disappointed to find out that I probably didn’t want them to help me either. Not that I met mourners or villains. The people I met seemed to want to play along.
The problem is that their idea of help was a frontal assault where I tiptoed around a courtyard with a spiderbot looking for a server to hack into, which is essentially a one-player job. Of course, they set off every alarm, and a combat drone settled on my player character and filled them with lead before I could get them back into cover.
Since I felt that we needed a more structured agenda to focus our talents, I started the collaborative mission. A player can boot all four into the event by simply selecting it on the map, which suggests to me that the developers are just looking at this open world as a complicated lobby for the same types of multiplayer games Guard dogs 2 served four years ago. If you really want to do single player activities, attend a friends-only session and don’t invite anyone.
There are currently three different cooperative mission sets, but there doesn’t seem to be any sense in doing these tasks other than building another wardrobe (completely separate from the main game) to equip another list of punks and hacktivists (also separate from the main game) – unless they are one of the three premium characters that are only available for real money.
Guard dogs: Legion The online raid, called Tactical Op, doesn’t start until March 23, so I can’t say yet if this has gotten any easier than what I played in the preview. The card says that microphone communication is highly recommended. Hence, coordinated teamwork seems absolutely critical. I just hope the game is a bit clearer on what everyone should be doing because it took more trial and error than we figured out ourselves in the January preview.
Last but not least, this week’s update features two additional single player missions – Guardian Protocol and Not in Our Name – for those who own it Guard dogs: LegionSeason pass. I understand that Ubisoft Toronto doesn’t want to overshadow the work (delayed twice) in multiplayer. But if anything encourages me to go back to London, it’s more story missions that harness my hacking talents, not run-and-gun rampages for more virtual clothing.