Watch Dogs 2 has a mighty fine single-player mode, and that fact has proved increasingly important in the week since the game launched on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles. The game's creator, Ubisoft Montreal, disconnected the game's "seamless" multiplayer modes because of game-breaking bugs discovered during the pre-release review period. That means most of the game's players have yet to test some of the game's most intriguing content.

Ubisoft announced on Tuesday, a full week after the game's retail launch, that online services had returned to the PS4 version, and that it "anticipated" the same happening for the XB1 version by "evening Eastern time." However, Ubisoft's phrasing is a little disingenuous, because while certain online content has returned, the game's promise of "seamless" online interaction has yet to come true.

The problem is that Watch Dogs 2, like Ubisoft's The Division before it, is still struggling with a major piece of online infrastructure: auto-matchmaking. At full capacity, the game is meant to have online players appear in each other's single-player gaming sessions, much like in Destiny. For example, you may be completing a single-player mission, and then another real-life player who is completing content in the same part of virtual town will conveniently appear in your game world. Tap a button and you're instantly paired up for co-op goodness. Other times, a dynamic event will launch in your part of the game world, as noted in the game's mini-map, and other real-life players will appear in your world so that you can join them for the quick, fun event. (PC gamers of old may remember this type of mission as one of the best aspects of the old Warhammer MMO).

This is the most "seamless" online content on offer in Watch Dogs 2 because it lets players stay in the game world and dynamically choose to hop into and out of multiplayer content, as opposed to making them pick through menus. However, in spite of Ubisoft's patch launching today, this dynamic content still isn't working, and Ubisoft hasn't announced when the feature will get an update.

For now, players can at least tap through menus to engage in "bounty" and "invasion" activities. Doing so will let players invade another (willing) person's instance to disrupt their single-player mission for the sake of experience-point accumulation. (Players can also stick a bounty onto themselves to attract targets and rack up experience points of their own.) Co-op missions can also be taken on with the help of players in your friends list; trying to matchmake for random co-op helpers, on the other hand, is still a slow and unsatisfying process.

These disruptive one-on-one missions are intriguing, but as I said in my review, Watch Dogs 2's co-op content is a bigger selling point. The Division broke a lot of players' trust in Ubisoft's ability to maintain an online game, and Watch Dogs 2 has already been a mutt about rebuilding that trust.