By: Travis Robinson
I hopped into Watch_Dogs expecting a great open-world experience, and at first it was, just with a lot of pop ups in the form of citizen's profiles. After slowly getting used to the profiling system that was introduced, it turned out to be a fun experience.
The first thing that I did after getting a handle on the game was go on a rampage through Chicago. That's when I ran into the most punishing part of the game: the police. Chicago's finest are not the kind of people that you want to mess around with. Without having a good handle on how to hack the environment the police will absolutely destroy you.
The driving in Watch_Dogs is a little clunky and with obstacles popping up in front of you constantly, the motorcycles seemed to be the best choice. Vehicle durability didn't seem to be a problem either. When hitting something at high speed on a motorcycle, you only fly off of the handlebars 1/3 of the time. Most of the time you can keep on driving with barely any damage done to your vehicle.
The vehicles are a bit of a disappointment following other open-world games. Damage is barely seen on the vehicle even after ramming into a wall at top speed. The most that could be seen normally would be some scratched paint on the side and it made me not care as much about hitting other cars.
The music available in Watch_Dogs is a nice selection. The game gives you several different genres to choose from and lets you create a playlist out of the songs available. This really helps to filter through the music that you would skip through anyway. Even if you only enjoy a few tracks you can play them on repeat and they don't get old quickly. When does jamming to Help Is On The Way by Rise Against while going to bust up a prostitution ring ever get boring?
The combat was good overall, the guns seemed balanced and the stealth was done well. The gun play isn't impressive, but it didn't detract from the gameplay. When playing stealth, the game never cheats you. If you get seen by an enemy it's because they actually saw you, not because they had some 6th sense that you were behind a box. Even though most parts can be played without stealth, it was fun to switch things up from time to time.
Watch_Dogs has a story that is lacking a lot. It tries to introduce so many characters in its five acts that it hardly gives any time to develop them. Characters don't have an attachment to the player so most of the deaths that happen don't really cause an emotional reaction. The only one that is remotely emotional is a fourth act moment when a player has a cutscene to kill a villain with a hack.
The game tries to build a relationship between Aidan and Clara but they only have one scene together that seems semi-flirtatious, after which the game tells the player to assume that they care a lot for each other.
Characters also end up dropping off the face of the earth after they've served their purpose. The character Bedbug is almost never mentioned again after act 2 when it seems like he may become a key player in the game.
The story becomes tangled because of all of the villains. There is at least one new villain per act and you never really know who the true villain is until the rest are dead. At certain points, it's confusing as to why you are actually doing what you're doing. It feels like Aidan could have done what he did near the end of the game earlier and saved himself a lot of trouble.
The story does become interesting at the end when someone else has control of CTos and the tables have been turned. Driving through the city becomes chaotic and you feel helpless with the city attacking you from every direction. It was nice to see the hunter become the hunted.
With Infamous: Second Son just being released a couple of months ago, high end graphics are now becoming expected for PS4 games. The cross-gen nature of Watch_Dogs hurts the game because it feels like it's being held back by it's last-gen counterpart.
As mentioned earlier, cars don't react the way that they should when they get into a wreck. Scratched paint shouldn't be the answer for every wreck. The cars just aren't destructible enough.
In Watch_Dogs, the motion capture isn't great. The characters mouths don't move as naturally as they should. Actions made by the characters seem like it is a video game instead of a real person, mix that with the lack of character development and it kills the immersion. There was even a point near the end of the game where there was a cutscene of a news anchor and her voice never once matched up with her mouth, the character even took pauses when the voice didn't take any at all.
One thing detail to mention is the poor reflections in the game. Pictures are circulating around the internet of the reflections that show empty streets in the background with no cars or pedestrians.
There isn't much that calls for a second play through in the story line, but Watch_Dogs has a lot of content for people that want to keep playing even after the credits have rolled.
The multiplayer modes have something for everyone. You can tail another player and try to remain undetected, try to hack another player without getting caught, drag race, have a shoot out, or even just invite someone to your world to hang out. All of the modes are fun, but the first two are pretty difficult if you are the player that is trying to assault another player. Most people can detect someone that isn't an NPC in a small search radius.
If you're tired of playing with other people, the game has four completely different minigames to play through digital trips. You can drive through the city and run over demons, fly through the sky and land on flowers, become a spider tank and cause havoc, or save a world that has been taken over by robots. These all are greatly different from the main game and can really relieve some stress when you get fed up with failing a stealth mission.
Even if, for some reason, you don't find any of these things appealing then you can always just go profile random people and prevent crimes from happening to them or invade people's daily lives.
Overview
Watch_Dogs is a great game, but after being delayed for a year, it still seems incomplete. It's good overall, but the little things really pile up and become hard to ignore. The game lacks in the innovation that it promised and just becomes another open world game to play
+ Variety
+ Music playlists
+ Stealth
- Character development
- Unimpressive graphics
- Vehicle damage
- The little details
7/10
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Pictures: usgamer.com, kotaku.com, blog.ubi.com, lightninggamingnews.com
