By: Robert Murphy
There have been a number of games that made my most excited
to play list for my Xbox One and one just recently came out which I am very
excited for and that game is Watch Dogs.
Taking place in a massively open world model after Chicago, you play as hacker and cyber criminal
Aiden Pearce who is tracking down an unknown organization hiding in his city. In
today’s modern world it has never been more profitable to be able to hack into the world wide web because technology is just everywhere and anywhere these days. Not only this but everything is controlled by technology in today's world and Watch Dogs will definitely be taking advantage of this fact as you must hack the city to fight the people running it and running after him.
In the world of Watch Dogs the reoccurring theme is that we are being watched and for Americans this has definitely been a subject to controversy when not too long ago it was revealed that the government was spying on people's activities. This while a horrifying breach of privacy is something that we open up ourselves to every day by tweeting, posting on Facebook, Instagraming and more, we just leave it all out there and we don't often think twice about. The thing that monitors your every move in this world is known ctOS who on the surface is a friendly organization that automates things like private information, water and waste management just every day things. But underneath it all they are a corrupt organization that invades on the privacy of every day citizens and people. Aiden is after this organization and the other villainous people in their ranks after they attacked him and his young niece which lead to her death and fueled his rage to bring down these faceless people. While this seems to haunt him, it really doesn't show as you play through the games 8 to 12 hour single player, Aiden is rather bland and an emotionless character who is glued to his cellphone through most of the game, even during dialogue which if I were the one he was talking to I'd be annoyed. The villains also prove to be shallow and a bit of a flop in most instances, they do not do much to inspire fear in you and make the effort you put into finding them to be a waste of your time.
The idea behind controlling the city does inspire a grin to your face when at the touch of a button when prompt you can cause massive damage to those around you. Whether its needing an escape from a car chase, hacking into a secure server, needing to stop a fleeing suspect of your vengeance, you can do just about anything with the touch of a button. Traffic lights can be changed from red to green, raise up a bridge to make a clean get away, honestly the amount you can do with the power in your hands is amazing while you're playing through Watch Dogs. But this was all bogged down for me with the dreadful driving mechanics of the game, driving around is lumbering and bewildering especially when you're trying to make your escape from the cops or chasing down an enemy car. Cars are also very tank-like in nature, you can almost ram them through everything in your path and your car will simply get dinged up and take the hits for quite some time until it's nothing but a husk. I haven't had this much of hassle with in game driving since GTA 4 and I can say that it is very good example in their similarity, not just for driving but graphically as well. Watch Dogs proves to be another next generation console game that doesn't really wow graphically for a next generation game, it's not that they are terrible but they certainly aren't anything you'll be wowed by.
Like many other massively open world titles there are bound to be a large amount of side quest to accompany the single player campaign and Watch Dogs is no different. There are many optional missions you can do on the side if you so choose but many of them are the same old thing over and over again and don't really break the mold. In fact, these side missions can get down right aggravating when you get down to it, one of the main things you'll find coming across your screen is the ability to stop a possible attack of a criminal. This would be fun once or twice and maybe more but it happens all the time and the attacks really never very and inevitably lead to you chasing the criminal down for 5 minutes, brutally beating them and then leaving them on the street. The frequency that these missions pop across your screen gets quite old and you will most likely end up ignoring them entirely after awhile.
What can probably save things a little for the game would be online play, all the good in game mechanics can come to life here especially with the variety of game modes you have to choose from. Intrusion is perhaps one of the best online game modes you have to choose from where players circle each other doing missions but will also try and hack you and cause you grief. You can then proceed to find and identify your hacker before they earn too many points off of you, it's really just like a virtual game of hide and seek all be it a more extreme one where the loser ends up dead. Other game modes such as Tailing, Decryption and Free Mode also do a lot to take advantage in trying to make all the in game features you have pop and it works, much better than it does in the main story anyway.
Way back when I first started hearing about Watch Dogs I had thought that it would be one of the games worth getting for my next generation console and be a very groundbreaking game for everyone. What I received though is far from a ground breaking next gen game, while it had the massive amount of ideas and plans to change things up, it does very little in changing things up from what we've all seen. The horrifying driving mechanics were something that really were a massive step back for the a newer game as well as the graphics which don't do much either to make the open world look and feel alive. Online multiplayer is where you see things break out much more with the ideas the game presents but it really is not enough to save Watch Dogs I'm sad to say.
In the world of Watch Dogs the reoccurring theme is that we are being watched and for Americans this has definitely been a subject to controversy when not too long ago it was revealed that the government was spying on people's activities. This while a horrifying breach of privacy is something that we open up ourselves to every day by tweeting, posting on Facebook, Instagraming and more, we just leave it all out there and we don't often think twice about. The thing that monitors your every move in this world is known ctOS who on the surface is a friendly organization that automates things like private information, water and waste management just every day things. But underneath it all they are a corrupt organization that invades on the privacy of every day citizens and people. Aiden is after this organization and the other villainous people in their ranks after they attacked him and his young niece which lead to her death and fueled his rage to bring down these faceless people. While this seems to haunt him, it really doesn't show as you play through the games 8 to 12 hour single player, Aiden is rather bland and an emotionless character who is glued to his cellphone through most of the game, even during dialogue which if I were the one he was talking to I'd be annoyed. The villains also prove to be shallow and a bit of a flop in most instances, they do not do much to inspire fear in you and make the effort you put into finding them to be a waste of your time.
The idea behind controlling the city does inspire a grin to your face when at the touch of a button when prompt you can cause massive damage to those around you. Whether its needing an escape from a car chase, hacking into a secure server, needing to stop a fleeing suspect of your vengeance, you can do just about anything with the touch of a button. Traffic lights can be changed from red to green, raise up a bridge to make a clean get away, honestly the amount you can do with the power in your hands is amazing while you're playing through Watch Dogs. But this was all bogged down for me with the dreadful driving mechanics of the game, driving around is lumbering and bewildering especially when you're trying to make your escape from the cops or chasing down an enemy car. Cars are also very tank-like in nature, you can almost ram them through everything in your path and your car will simply get dinged up and take the hits for quite some time until it's nothing but a husk. I haven't had this much of hassle with in game driving since GTA 4 and I can say that it is very good example in their similarity, not just for driving but graphically as well. Watch Dogs proves to be another next generation console game that doesn't really wow graphically for a next generation game, it's not that they are terrible but they certainly aren't anything you'll be wowed by.
Like many other massively open world titles there are bound to be a large amount of side quest to accompany the single player campaign and Watch Dogs is no different. There are many optional missions you can do on the side if you so choose but many of them are the same old thing over and over again and don't really break the mold. In fact, these side missions can get down right aggravating when you get down to it, one of the main things you'll find coming across your screen is the ability to stop a possible attack of a criminal. This would be fun once or twice and maybe more but it happens all the time and the attacks really never very and inevitably lead to you chasing the criminal down for 5 minutes, brutally beating them and then leaving them on the street. The frequency that these missions pop across your screen gets quite old and you will most likely end up ignoring them entirely after awhile.
Way back when I first started hearing about Watch Dogs I had thought that it would be one of the games worth getting for my next generation console and be a very groundbreaking game for everyone. What I received though is far from a ground breaking next gen game, while it had the massive amount of ideas and plans to change things up, it does very little in changing things up from what we've all seen. The horrifying driving mechanics were something that really were a massive step back for the a newer game as well as the graphics which don't do much either to make the open world look and feel alive. Online multiplayer is where you see things break out much more with the ideas the game presents but it really is not enough to save Watch Dogs I'm sad to say.
Good:
- Good ideas, the ability to control every thing in the city with a touch of the button is still fun and appealing
- Solid multiplayer that takes advantage of all the good features that the game has
- A lot of in game content to explore and see, the little in game NPC's are up to a lot of crazy things
Bad:
- Driving is a nightmare and is a major step back to what it should of been
- Graphically the game is not very high up there and really underwhelms the massive Chicago landscape
- Story is very weak
- Aiden is a bland and emotionless main character who is often glued to his smart phone
Scully Rating: 6.5 out of 10
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