I just want to say in advance that this blog was written in chunks, and it may feel a little disjointed at times. Just saying.

Despite what I had been thinking mere days ago, I was able to finish Watch_Dogs within a month of its release! Or, rather, finish the story. I still have side stuff that I will probably do eventually (and time before one month after release), but never mind all that.

Watch_Dogs is kind of a weird game. Ever since that initial showing at E3 2012, the game has had a dark, and very serious tone. And that extends into the game too, aside from a few moments of levity from a couple of the side characters like Jordi. Generally speaking, though, it's a serious game trying to tell a serious story about serious characters doing serious things.

The problem where this all falls apart is the second you get into a car, and realize that a few memos between the people working on the story, and the people designing the core mechanics of the game must have gotten lost in transit. While the part where Watch_Dogs is a story is no nonsense, the part where it's a game is almost ALL nonsense. The driving is loose and crazy in a way that just screams, "We want this game to be fun nonsense." I could call it slidey and loose all I want, but that doesn't really do it justice, so I went and edited together a video. Though, I should say that it very quickly devolved into a lot of other nonsense, like ghost riding motorcycles in midair/slow motion, so maybe it won't actually do a good job of demonstrating the looseness of the driving.

It does do a better job of showing the tone of the open world part of the game much better than any official stuff you'll see from Ubisoft, at least. I mean, if this game was as serious as the story, it shouldn't have a slow motion mode, for example. But it does, and it's quite useful both in shootouts and whilst driving. Aiden Pearce (the dude you play as, and no, I don't know why they went with Aiden) is fragile enough in gunfights that you can't just run around willy nilly during fights. If you do, you're probably going to die. The game isn't super hard, it's not like I was playing Rainbow Six Vegas and dying constantly (to be clear though, RSV was a great game, I'm not knocking it), but you gotta be careful...At least until you buff up the slow motion skill. Then you can kinda just pop off head shots like they're going out of style. It is governed by a meter, like video games are wont to do, but you can craft slow motion refill items, so it's not really something to worry about. Even without the items, it refills pretty quickly.

It also does this weird thing with the slow motion where every time you pull the trigger, it goes out of slow motion to allow the bullet to hit the guy, but for less than a second, then it goes back into slow motion. It's a good way to let you know if you actually killed the guy or not, but it was also a little jarring at first.

I think jarring is a good word to use when describing a lot of aspects of Watch_Dogs. There's definitely a bit of of a jarring difference between the tone of the story, and the tone of the game play. And really, we all know WHY it is that way, so I'll stop beating around the bush. I'm sure someone at Ubisoft had this great vision for an open world game where hacking was going to be your tool. Rather than fighting with weapons, you would be using the environment to your advantage. Don't shoot those cars, hack the traffic lights to cause a collision in the street. Don't shoot the cops, cause a blackout in the city and use the cover of darkness to escape. And there are certainly times in the game where I used tactics like that, and they not only worked splendidly, they were some of my favorite moments in my time with the game. The problem is that at some point during development, someone realized that the project was too big to make back its money without appealing to a wider audience, because they assumed that a game with just this hacking stuff wouldn't get the sales they needed. So, they added guns.

Now, would the game have sold as well as it did without as heavy a focus on gun play? Maybe, there's no way of knowing. I'm pretty sure that a lot of the hype around the game was from the graphics of that 2012 E3 showing, not the fact that he shot some people at the end of that demo. And I bet that most of the sales were from people like me that just wanted SOMETHING to play, and were foolish enough to not buy Wolfenstein (don't worry, I will play that game eventually).

It really is unfortunate, because like I said, my favorite parts of the game were when I was able to use the hacking stuff to accomplish my goals. When, rather than running in guns blazing, I used the cameras to mark all the enemies, used distractions to get by them, or even used the environment to take them out. Granted, I really like stealth game, so of course that type of stuff is right up my alley, but I'm sure there was a middle ground between "hardcore stealth game" and "game with stealth elements where you carry twenty guns."

Speaking of stealth elements, while I do like that the game often has options for nonlethal take downs, I wish it was more consistent with them. If you hit the take down button with no gun equipped, Aiden hits the guy with a baton, and he's knocked out. But do it with a gun equipped, and he'll do a different animations where he shoots the guy with the gun. While I appreciate that the gun doesn't get magically replaced with the baton, I would have been happier if instead he hit the other guy with the gun. Even worse is that while you can shoot cops in the legs to disable them, you can't do that with any other enemies in the game. I tried, they just take it and keep going, unlike cops, which fall down after one shot to the leg, and a message pops up saying "Cop Disabled." I get that something like that might be game breaking, but you can't even do that when the game specifically requires you to use a nonlethal take down on an enemy. But, at least in those situations the game does do the thing where it magically replaces the gun with the baton if you do a take down with a gun equipped, so hell, I don't know. Video games!

I've got other complaints with other fairly specific things in the game that I might as well mention while I'm at it. You can hack helicopter to momentarily disable them, which can mean the difference between escaping the cops quickly, or being in a long, drawn out chase. But, it my experience, while in a vehicle the helicopters were usually so close that I couldn't actually pan the camera up enough to get the helicopter into view, so I couldn't hack it. Even with the slow motion power, turning the camera completely around to try to see a helicopter and hack it is dangerous, and then not even being able to do it is annoying. Especially when helicopters are about the only thing that won't be shaken off your trail by a blackout, which is really limited to only being useful at night, for obvious reasons.

There's a few times in this game where it puts you into insta-fail stealth situations. I love stealth games, but I can't stand it when they do that. A lot of the fun in stealth games is trying to salvage a situation that quickly deteriorates once you've screwed up and been seen. Now, there's not too many of them in Watch_Dogs, and the ones on foot aren't super hard. But there's one, near the end of the game, where you have to do it in a car, and it was one of the most aggravating things I've played in a game in quite some time. It's not even that long, as I was quite surprised at how short it actually was once I finished it. It was a sequence that should have taken two minutes, but took closer to 35 or 40, if you count repeated attempts.

The production values of this game are all over the place. No, it doesn't look nearly as good as that E3 demo (I played on PS4, obviously), but there are still times when I think the game looks pretty good. At night, with a heavy downpour, I think it looks very nice. And the frame rate holds up, aside from when the game is saving right after a mission, which is definitely a bummer that that is still a thing in modern games.

But on the other hand, there's stuff in this game that just looks absolutely rotten. Like the facial animations, or the lack there of. No, I'm not saying that faces don't animate, but they have all the quality of a GameCube game. Seriously, I don't think the facial animations are any better than Resident Evil 4 era faces. Granted, that was definitely the high end of GameCube games, but this is the year 2014, and this is the PlayStation 4 I was playing on. LA Noire came out three years ago and still has the best facial animations that I've seen in a game. Granted, there are games this year that have great faces, and I bet more will later. Ground Zeroes and Second Son both have fantastic facial animations. Watch_Dogs does not.

And in a game that cost tens of millions of dollars, hell, probably well over a hundred million dollars to make, I can't comprehend how someone thought this was acceptable. How, no one thought to budget in the extra money to put some metal dots on people's faces and record something that looks decent. I'm not saying that level of facial capture is easy, or cheap. Of course it's not, otherwise it would be in the game. But I still don't think what's in this game is acceptable for the scope of the game, and the amount of cutscenes in this game. We, as a society, should be beyond things like this, and have good, realistic facial animations in big budget games. Hell, Uncharted 1, which came out in 2007, and has all hand animated faces, blows this game out of the water in terms of faces. And no, this isn't just me vaguely remembering, I went and rewatched some stuff from that game to make sure before writing this. That's right, I did RESEARCH. Well, "research," at least.

Now, I know that most of what I've typed here has been pretty negative. And for good reason, Watch_Dogs has a lot of issues, but overall I liked the game a lot. There may have been a tonal divide between the story and the game play, but I liked the game play regardless. I had a ton of fun sliding around the streets of Chicago like a lunatic. I had a lot of fun ghost riding those cars in slow motion in mid air. And I even had a lot of fun during most of the story missions. I just wish there had been more tonal consistency in the game. And better faces.

So, for Watch_Dogs 2: Dog Watcher, I hope they change that. I don't care if they make it into the game we all thought Watch_Dogs was going to be at first (harder core stealth, less shooting), or if they make the entire thing a goofy and silly story to match the game play. I just want consistency between those two aspects of the game, and I think either could work. But I doubt that we'll get either, and Watch_Dogs 2 will be more of the same. Also, it'll probably be called Watch_Dogs_2.0.

Also, there's no dogs in Watch_Dogs. Come on Ubisoft! GTA V had dogs, and that game doesn't even have dogs in the title!

Part of the reason why it took me so long to finish Watch_Dogs was that E3 happened, and at a certain point during that week, I just stopped playing games so I could focus on being on the internet to see stuff about games that aren't out yet. And I figured that whilst I was writing this blog, I might as well write something up about E3.

I liked it. I think this was a good E3 year. Granted, a lot of the new games were either officially announced, or leaked before E3, but if you discount that, then it was a pretty killer E3. Okay, sure, maybe you might be bummed about how most of the stuff is coming next year, but isn't that kinda the case with most E3s? Whatever, I was happy with what I saw from this year's E3, and I am excited for games being released both this year, next, and who knows, what with delays and all (I will eat a metaphorical hat if Uncharted 4 is actually a 2015 release, don't ask me why, but that's the one my money is on for a delay).

Anyway, I thought Far Cry 4 and Assassin's Creed Unity had really strong showings for games coming out this year. And uh, I guess that Shadow of Mordor game seems pretty cool. Bayonetta 2 and Destiny (more on that later) are also games coming this year, though I dunno if I'll have a Wii U or not. Depends on if there's a price drop, or a good deal closer to holiday season. Okay, fine, I admit it, this fall is looking a little slim. I mean, that's (hopefully) two really good Ubisoft games, and a (hopefully) good Lord of the Rings game. And #DRIVECLUB, I'll have the free version of that, I guess. And uh....hm....Dragon Age III?

Next year though? Man, can I just preemptively declare it my favorite year for video games? MGSV, The Witcher III, Batman, Bloodborne, Mortal Kombat X, No Man's Sky, need I say more? Okay, sure, No Man's Sky doesn't have a date attached to it yet (so far as I know), but those other games are gonna be rad, and there's others I didn't mention.

I don't really have much to say specifically about those games other than that I continue to be obsessed with all things Metal Gear, and that The Phantom Pain Is looking especially good. I mean, just look at this sheep. It's being Fulton Recovery-ed! So good.

My favorite thing, or even trend, you might say, from this E3 was the, "And you can play it, RIGHT NOW" thing. It happened with Super Ultra Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix Hyper Edition EX Plus Alpha (almost got that one try, without checking), it happened with the Battlefield Hardline Beta, and most importantly, with the Destiny "Alpha," which I was able to get into.

I have mixed feelings about Destiny, based on what I played, which was a fair amount. The "Alpha" has three character classes in it, and the level cap is 8. I was able to get one character of each class up to 8 in the course of the "Alpha." So I feel like I spent about as much time with it as you can, if not more than I should have.

Overall, I liked it. I think the core game play is rock solid. Everything about the shooting feels good, and I'm glad that it does, because that's probably the most important thing, right? If that part was junk, then none of the rest of it would matter, unless it had a great story (which I'm going to say it probably won't). But the rest of it? Well, the story mission it starts you in was good, and the Strike was fun too. The Strike being a quest to go fight a boss with a couple of other people in co-op. It was pretty tough, in a good way, mostly. It has a recommended level, and I would not recommend playing it too far below it.

But then there was the explore mode, which just seemed boring to me. If I was playing and chatting with friends, it'd be better, I'm sure. But at a certain point, I don't see why I would rather do that in the explore mode over play the story missions, strikes, or just chat with them via the internet. I'm not going to fully condemn the mode, because it's not the final version of the game, but right now, I'm really feeling it.

So, if the game ends up having a lot of focused story type stuff, and I have some people to play with it'll be a rad game. Actually, I should say, people that I can coordinate when to play with, and actually play with them. I've had this happen before, where I would make sure I bought the same version of a game as my friends, to make sure we would play together, and then it never happens. Sometimes it wasn't our fault, like with Dark Souls II. My friend and I did everything we could to try to play with each other. We made sure we were in the right level range, in the same covenant, and even had that ring that helps with co-op, but none of it worked. At a certain point we just decided that From Software hates us and gave up.

Oh, and [Insert tired joke about moon wizard here.] I love that Bungie is doing its thing with dumb enemy names again, but making them even dumber than ever. At least with Wizards, I don't really remember any other, specific enemy names. Knights, maybe? I remember the faction names, like "The Fallen" and "The Hive." And really, if we're talking poor Dinklage lines, "Oh no, it's the Hive" is the winner, not the moon wizard line. The moon wizard line is at least funny.

That's one of the characters I made in the Alpha. I will say, maybe my biggest complaint is that there's no beards. Granted, that's a lady, but my first character was a robot, and my second was a dude, and there weren't any beards. As a bearded man, I'm offended at Bungie for not representing me in its game.

I think that's all I have to say about that. And everything else, really. Maybe not, I did start playing PixelJunk Shooter Ultimate yesterday. It was free on PS+ this month(?). Or was it last month? I don't remember, either way, I started playing it, even though I played both of those games on PS3, and this is a remake of those. Still fun though, and the game looks quite a bit nicer than it did before, which is nice.

But what's up on the horizon? Hell, I don't know. Looks like a whole lot of nothing until Destiny comes out in September. I downloaded War Thunder onto my PS4 a while ago, because it's free to play, and airplanes, but I haven't played any of it. I might play some of that at some point, I guess. I dunno, maybe not. There was a Quick Look of it, maybe I could rewatch that to see if the game is any good or not.

And outside of games? I continue to have little in the way of a life, I continue to slowly practice driving, in the hopes of getting my license, and I keep trying to make progress on my next novel. It's been slow goings, though. After the complete and utter failure of Space Cops 5000 (which part of me was expecting, given that's what happened with the first one), it's been hard to motivate myself to write when I remember that no one cares enough to actually read these books. And I don't know why I keep harping about it in these blogs, clearly if I haven't convinced anyone yet, I'm not going to.

Or, more people, I guess. Some people have at least read some of it, but in a way, that's kinda worse. I mean, never starting it is bad enough, but what does it say when someone does start it, but doesn't feel compelled to finish it? Not good things, I can tell you that.

I'm ending this now, because writing about it makes me feel depressed, or I make my friends annoyed because I keep complaining about this and then they respond by saying they do want to read the stuff, but don't have the time, etc. I know, I know.

Oh, and as is typical, I didn't proofread any of this, so it's probably of low quality, for a variety of reasons. I'm sorry.

I found that on the internet, and it's the best fan art I've seen yet for MGSV. Sure, maybe the right thing to do would be to credit its creator, but who has time for that? It's not like working on something means the creator wants recognition, right? Oh, wait...