Personally, I’ve enjoyed my time playing Watch Dogs, but I can see where the majority are coming from when they say they’re disappointed.
After two years of waiting and build-up, what we got wasn’t quite what we were expecting. The city of Chicago is massive and there’s so much to see and do, so what exactly has let it down so much?
When I first imagined what Watch Dogs would look like I was picturing almost identical gameplay to one of Ubisoft’s biggest franchises, Assassin’s Creed, but with a modern twist to it, and that’s not what we got. Another downside to this game is that it’s really not a next-gen game but it’s masquerading as one – the graphics are on the same level as Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag. The smoke looks a lot better than previous gen games but that’s about as far as it goes.
The driving mechanics are clunky and seem cheap and I put this down to Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto driving mechanics setting the bar so high for any other open world driving game. I did find that if you changed the view to the dashboard view, the driving became a lot nicer and very similar to Far Cry 3’s driving.
Now, on to the positives, the gun play. Shoot outs in this game, for me, are really fun, I thoroughly enjoy getting into fire fights with large groups of enemies. Running around from cover to cover picking each enemy off with my pistol. Or taking the stealth approach with the silent pistol and using the asp, the hugely satisfying whacks and the thud of the bad guy hitting the deck.
The assortment of side activities are a massively satisfying distraction from the rather short and confusing main story. Taking out a criminal convoy by waltzing out into the road and unloading your grenade launcher into the vehicles is a lot of fun. You can also try solving the ctOS router puzzles which are done by trying to get in range of the little routers to hack them, but you’ll need to find a way onto rooftops or hack into the correct camera and all within a certain time limit. There are also lots of hidden collectibles and mysteries to find around and also locations you can check into to learn all about the history of Chicago across the map.
As well as using your weapons you have the hacking power that your magical phone provides you, the thing I like about this is that Aiden is meant to be a very talented hacker so the fact that hacking is so simple and easy really gives weight to this, if you had to go through some little mini game or quick time event just to open a gate or raise a bridge it would make you feel like he wasn’t all that talented at his day job.
The smooth free-running animations are really cool as well as the hundreds of different back stories that have been created for all the different people walking the streets and hacking into a ctZNOS randomiser video provides plenty of amusement and emotion. If you fancy a change from the normal game you can play one of the digital trips, there’s one where you become a giant spider and rampage around the city which is super fun way to waste a whole lot of time!
Overall this game wasn’t what I was expecting but I’ve grown to love it, it’s a fun beginning to what could become an amazing franchise over the next few years. My advice to anyone who has bought this game and it not live up to their expectations is to give it a little time before you write it off completely.
8/10
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