Watch Dogs

Editor's Notes

360 version reviewed.

Introduction

In production for half a decade, 'Watch Dogs' has always, at least on paper looked like the offspring of a union between the 'Grand Theft Auto' and 'Assassin's Creed' series. Set in a modern day Chicago, 'Watch Dogs' takes the classic third-person, open-world action formula and infuses it with a tried and true story of revenge, regret and intrigue, all intertwined against a backdrop of digital espionage, where no one's secrets are...well...secret and lives can be forever changed with the push of a button on a smartphone. Players are thrust into the role of Aiden Pearce, whose alter ego 'The Vigilante' is a legendary, underground hacker with access to the city's entire network of secrets. When tragedy strikes his family as a result of his actions, Pearce finds himself a man without a home, roaming the streets trying to find out who gave the order that resulted in his young niece's accidental death. Whether Pearce will solve this mystery taking the moral high ground or losing himself into a world of crime and amorality, is entirely up to the player.

The Game Itself: Our Reviewer's Take

First things, first, the very release of 'Watch Dogs' is undoubtedly a controversial subject given the stark discrepancies in the game's graphical look when the final product (even on a high-end PC or next-gen system) is compared to the jaw dropping, E3 footage from a year back. Granted, Ubisoft, like most any other developer, never claimed the footage to be final gameplay, but the stark contrast between preview and final product remains. That doesn't necessarily make 'Watch Dogs' a failure of a game out of the gate. The sheer immersive feel of the game's real-world setting when combined with an overall feeling of increased tension as the game progresses and players become comfortable with the controls allows the intriguing plot to add a new layer time after time, and makes 'Watch Dogs,' at the very minimum worth a rental. The game's emotionally charged and slow-burning plot is what is going to push that rental into a possible purchase, as Aiden Pearce comes off as exactly what one would expect from a protagonist marred and driven by inadvertently being responsible for a loved one's death. There are times when Pearce's story and 'Watch Dogs' in general, feels like familiar territory, but the modern-day spin and ultimately what the Disrupt engine brings to the table, makes it feel like much more than a GTA/AC clone.

From a control standpoint, 'Watch Dogs' runs quite smoothly with Pearce on foot, adopting a fairly standard third-person control scheme. Movement is far more fluid than GTA, but not nearly as dynamic as 'Assassin's Creed'; there's a minor parkour element, but at the end of the day, the player will fight their battles digitally or through firepower. The game does have the feel of a steep learning curve as combat gets easier when you level up skills, although players who stick to the main story missions won't feel find as much in this dynamic as someone who tries one of the serialized side-missions. Where the control truly falters is when Pearce steps behind the wheel of a car; the physics of driving in 'Watch Dogs' is plagued with the floaty, less-weighty feel of PS2/Xbox era GTA titles. When driving around the virtual Chicago streets, it's definitely passable, but when tasked with a race mission or evading the police, it’s going to take a lot of patient trial-and-error.

Arguably a huge selling point of 'Watch Dogs' is the ability to hack any NPC whether that be to steal money from their bank account or to eavesdrop on their conversation, often leading to the opportunity to put one's moniker of 'The Vigilante' to good use. Hacking in 'Watch Dogs' is literally as simple as pressing 'X,' but this is a good thing; one, had it been precipitated on a gimmicky mini-game, the exhaustive detail into providing at the least, one-dimensional lives to every NPC would never have been appreciated as much as it should be and secondly, hacking also allows players to patch into CCTV systems and acts as a means of finding a more stealthy (or lethal) solution to a heavily guarded area. Furthermore, when taken into the game’s rather innovative and generally unobtrusive multiplayer mode, simply 'pressing 'X'' is just a minor part of the key equation.