Top Graphics And Gameplay Mods For Watch Dogs: Restoring To Its E3 2012 Glory

Watch Dogs has been out for a while now, but PC gamers have seen a bit of an issue, aside from the lack of mod support, many fans feel the game has been nerfed on the PC. The beautiful graphics we saw at E3 2012 didn’t came through into the full game.

But, vigilante as ever, PC gamers have created some wonderful presets to bring the game up to par. So here’s our  top Watch Dogs presets and tweaks.  Please note, all presets require some level of fine tuning to get best results.

SweetFX:

SweetFX is the base unit used for pretty much all mods and presets, and works on all games. It allows for tweaking and image enhancement. SweetFX has been picked up by a lot of users, and you can probably use it yourself! Or, you can download a readymade preset and apply it.

You can download SweetFX from here.

Realistic Preset:

Easily one of my favourite presets is the Realistic preset, this preset sharpens the game so much. It’s almost as if the creator has breathed in fresh air to the game. It holds a near perfect contrast in all areas, never too dark or too bright in any one of them.

It also adds a great amount of colour depth and shadowing effects. The lighting casts down on the world in such a realistic way, It’s almost a sight to applaud at.

You can download the Realistic Preset from here.

CineFX:

The CineFX does what you’d expect, it makes the world look more cinematic. The preset adds glows to the right places, such as bus signs, and makes all the little details pop. It puts Chicago into an almost mafia film style setting, and really sets the mood of the whole game.

You can download CineFX from here.

Real Vision SweetFX Preset:

The RealVision preset pushes the game to the graphics we’d expect from the E3 2012 video. It really adds depth to the map and makes the trees seem super detailed.

The water looks absolutely stunning on this preset.  When night falls it all becomes just a little nicer, the shading around all the objects is really well shaped, and the lighting is almost warming.

You can download RealVision from here. [See the video’s description]

Lon3r:

The Lon3r mod is another one of those presets that makes the world become darker. I feel that this one focuses too much on darkness, compared to the style that CineFX gives.

The Lon3r makes the whole world feel as though it’s Gotham City, which is pretty damn cool. But it’s simply a little cut and dry.

You can download The Lon3r from here.

New Game + Saves:

Watch Dogs doesn’t have a new game plus; so it’s good to see that some modders are working on a makeshift mod; these files have everything you’d likely get at the end of the Watch Dogs campaign. The only issue with this mod is that the game allows you to continue playing after the campaign, so it seems slightly pointless; but I can see its appeal.

You can download New Game Plus Saves from here.

The Worse:

Despite what the name suggests, The Worse mod isn’t that bad at all. It does a variety of things, including several small lighting fixes, LoD changes, add 3 new camera angles, LensFlares, Civilians density changes and much more. In short it almost nails the effects we saw in the E3 2012 trailer.

You can download The Worse from here.

Stutter fix 2.0:

This is a simple mod, it stops the game from suffering, that hideous issue that a lot of PC players reported. This mod also works with “The Worse”, a mod we looked at earlier. It also amps up the graphics a bit, but this causes a slight aliasing issue.

You can download Stutter Fix 2.0 from here.

Kadzait24’s Watch_Dogs E3 Mod:

Although the mod is still in beta, it does improve the graphics by a substantial amount. Most of the E3 effects like wind and fog is unlocked to give users the original E3 experience.  The mod brings improvements to depth of field, cloth physics, reflection, texturing and wet system.

You can download the mod from here.

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