The Blurb
Aiden Pearce is a hacker out for revenge on the people who murdered his six-year-old niece. Criminal conspiracies, fratricide, and a chilling descent into the corrupt 'Chicago' government await him. Watch_Dogs is a third-person 'vigilante simulator'. Pearce hacks, races, spies, shoots, bombs, and bludgeons his way through the criminal underclass of his city, a driven man on a mission of vengeance.
Recommended for mature audiences, Watch_Dogs features nudity, violence, and combinations thereof (including ♥♥♥♥, human trafficking, etc)
The Good
Ubisoft managed to get an amazing atmosphere in their repainting of Chicago. The Windy City feels wet and cold as it rains. It feels warm and welcoming as you rocket through sunshine on the Loop. The game's background graphics are superb, getting an attention to detail that many games tend to ignore completely, which adds to the immersion so well that it deserved a standalone point in of itself. Around you, the city moves and breathes. People live their lives and little dramas. Now, this doesn't mean that the main graphics are poor; running at top performance specs, I was questioned by passers-by about which movie I was watching. Explosions are breathtaking, people walk in a realistic fashion, cars reflect the light as you turn corners, guns flare like an action film.
Both music and sound often help to keep you on the story; the main music is not too intrusive and keeps to the background, often ignorable until it stops as you near an objective - and then all to evocative of an imminent threat.
Use of background in cinema serves to drag you along with what the protagonist feels. Here in the game, it's not hard to feel a pang of guilt as you find that the account you just ripped thousands of dollars from was owned by a struggling stage-two cancer patient and his overworked pregnant wife. It's just as simple to see why Aiden is so angry. Mobsters game the system and the feel of people being oppressed by ruthless, powerful sociopaths isn't just 'backstory'; taking a lot of time to ensure that you are given good reason to want to see Aiden succeed. Your protagonist is involving, he's no idealist, but he wants to make things right, and sometimes makes mistakes. Throughout the script, you'll watch an unfolding tale of betrayal, murder, corruption, and self-doubt.
A good variety of weapons are available, with their own balancing of traits, so you can find a playstyle that suits you. The scenarios rarely favor one style over another, meaning you can work combat in your preferred style, and there are few 'railroad' barriers to prevent you from say, snapping a dozen IEDs to a budget sedan and then sending it careening into the middle of a gang hideout.
Multiplayer matches are fun, with well-timed battles giving a variation on traditional 'capture the flag'. Tailing and hacking give good 'cat and mouse' and 'hide and seek' gameplay, which can be a fun diversion when you feel like something a bit more challenging than the typical AI NPCs.
The Bad
Glitches are a frequent occurrance in Watch_Dogs, giving rise to hair sticking into your nephew's head (rather than out), objectives no longer functioning, NPCs that you need to kill falling through the floor, and more. Unfortunately, the multiplayer can easily cause this, with laggy invaders causing the engine to make hacking objectives 'unavailable' while you host your uninvited guest. This also applies to artifacts left over after you take part in another player's game, with police standing and smiling at you, gun drawn, staring into the sunset as you steal their car.
Car music was gets quickly repetitive and jarring, background chatter suffers this same 'finite pool' symptom, with intercepted texts or calls or pedestrian conversations.
UPlay.
The Ugly
While some people would not find this such a cardinal sin - the railroad that they took out of combat, was thrown into the storyline.
From the onset of the game, if the player does nothing fatal to their opponents; taking down goons and gangsters with a Batman-style beating and intervening with the people's predators with panache and poise, punctually pausing their pain with a professionally-prepared punchup; expect the game to ignore it, and not only assume you to be a cold-blooded killer, but act on that assumption for the premise of the story. The immersion that they give only serves to heighten the disappointment when you realise that your efforts did not matter, and were never meant to. "Do as we want, not as you want", say Ubisoft, in a more direct fashion than they usually push with UPlay.
Ubisoft's efforts towards a believable, involving game are also severely undermined by the game's AI. When people in "Chicago" start screaming and running off, calling the police because a car drives past them or parks in a parking spot on the road, I have to wonder if the developers ever got to actually see the AI in action before release. People will panic and scream and cost you reputation or call the police over the most inane nonsense. "Officer! I saw a man get into a car in the parking lot!" Suddenly, a helicopter and patrol interceptor is dispatched.
The combat AI doesn't fare much better. The AI tends to focus on going to cover, grenading your position (if they have grenades), and moving closer on occasion. While this is actually a worthwhile tactic - there's little to no variation on this, despite the variety of enemies you can face ('gangsta' gangers, mafia, professional hit men, mercenaries, riot cops, etc), and it tends to make fighting a little predictable and unrewarding. Given the role combat plays in the game - a major part, if that isn't clear so far - this is poorly set out. With the effort Ubisoft have put into the other, smaller details in the game (like how leaves fly up when you drive through a country road), this is significantly more noticeable, and shows that there was a poor allocation of time or effort in this department.
Suggestions
To players, don't go into this thinking it's a game that cares about how you do things or how well you do things. Watch_Dogs has a story to tell, and to get that story to continue, feel free to do the bare minimum it needs to progress. It won't reward you for going over and above what you needed to, or sparing the lives of the criminal scum of the city in some attempt at 'justice'. If you can handle that, the story isn't bad, and Aiden's tale is one that I, personally, enjoyed.
To Ubisoft? Watch_Dogs is a sign of some serious disparity between your development team and your executives, and the executives can call the shots on release day. This had potential to shoot far higher than what it got, and could have been award-winning. The areas that developers couldn't cover, however, is tangible and that degrades the overall experience, like an unfinished, raw-construction corner in an otherwise very tasteful hotel foyer.
The Summary
I managed to avoid the hype that came before this game was released, and went in with an open mind. I hope that serves to illustrate that while Watch_Dogs is a good game with plenty of play value, I was sincerely disappointed with the overall result.
A vigilante story with amazing background, which drags you into a hacker's quest for vengeance. 6/10, 7/10 if you enjoy the multiplayer content.
The author of this review is highly unimpressed to find that the character limit has been restricted significantly, forcing a mangling of a longer review. Fie.
Minimum Requirements of Watchdogs:
OS: Windows Vista (SP2), Windows 7 (SP1) or Windows 8 (Please note that we only support 64 bit OSs.)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 @ 2.66Ghz or AMD Phenom II X4 940 @ 3.0Ghz
Memory: 6 GB RAM
Graphics: DirectX 11 graphics card with 1 GB Video RAM - Nvidia Geforce GTX 460 or AMD Radeon HD 5770
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 25 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c Compatible Sound Card with Latest Drivers
Additional Notes: Broadband connection and service required for multiplayer mode. Supported Video Cards at Time of Release: nVidia GeForce GTX460 or better, GT500, GT600, GT700 series; AMD Radeon HD5850 or better, HD6000, HD7000, R7 and R9 series Intel® Iris™ Pro HD 5200
Recommended Requirements of Watchdogs:
OS: Windows Vista (SP2), Windows 7 (SP1) or Windows 8 (Please note that we only support 64 bit OSs.)
Processor: Eight core - Intel Core i7-3770 @3.5 GHz or AMD FX-8350 X8 @ 4 GHz
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: DirectX 11 graphics card with 2 GB Video RAM - Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 ti or AMD Radeon HD 7850
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 25 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c Compatible Sound Card with Latest Drivers
Additional Notes: Broadband connection and service required for multiplayer mode. Supported Video Cards at Time of Release: nVidia GeForce GTX460 or better, GT500, GT600, GT700 series; AMD Radeon HD5850 or better, HD6000, HD7000, R7 and R9 series Intel® Iris™ Pro HD 5200
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