Watch_Dogs Review Thread

Ubisoft... Why? your capable of such great things, but 90% of what you make is garbage.

Update: By garbage, i mean, garbage. It looks like there is no freedom in this game. Also this guy is not a badass, he just has a program on his phone that does shit. I'm not interested in playing the guy that reviews codes for dozens of hours to find potential weaknesses, but thats how shit actually works. and this guy just has a phone that does it all. gtfo of here with that shit

This feels like one of those games that has a "right way to play". When you figure out how the game wants you to play it, and with a bit of luck, it can be pretty good at times. The problem is, despite whatever good ideas or interesting mechanics it may possess, they are buried under the mediocrity and tedium of every other game feature. Jumping from camera to camera while taking out various guards by hacking explosions at them can actually feel pretty rewarding when you end up clearing a room without ever leaving your little hidey-hole, but so far it seems like getting caught at all turns the whole thing into an unpleasant game of "lead these guys into the correct type of trap and hope they actually fall into it". Of course, you could always go in guns blazing, but I feel like that takes away from what little amount of unique gameplay this game has (also I don't think the shooty mechanics are all that great).

The ability to control your environment is fairly interesting, and I love being able to traverse an area by manipulating the environment to my advantage. That said, it also becomes a case of "playing the right way" when in an actual combat scenario. Especially in a car chase, it seems like you need an intimate knowledge of not only the map of virtual Chicago, but how and where the hackable traps that will actually slow down or stop your pursuers are. Getting the cops called on me has been as good as a death sentence, as they seem to be immune to all but a few of the available traps you can set and also seem to be able to ignore most of my attempts at using the game's 'car stealth' mechanics.

I do like the 'feel' of the city, and profiling and hacking it's various citizens is still gimmicky enough for me to enjoy, but I don't find myself rushing to do much else in it. Honestly, the only thing I've been really thinking this whole time is "man, I hope they take and improve on some of these ideas if they ever do a modern day Assassin's Creed". It's not a terrible game, and I think the hype that it built for itself ends up hurting it in the end, but it's definitely a game you can skip over and not feel bad about.

p.s.: Is Aiden the worst protag in a AAA game in the last couple years or what? I mean, damn.