Watch Dogs Review

Watch Dogs is a new game released by Ubisoft that solely revolves around technology. You play as Aiden Pearce a man who has the personality of a door and the phone of the future.  But the reason this game created a big hype was not the characters but the phone that connects you to the world around you. Yes everything is open to be hacked by the player, traffic lights, Bridges, Grenades, Camera's and more.

The story for the game was clearly not a big cause for concern for the developers as its only around 30 missions long or 5 chapters if you prefer. Even Assassins creed 1 felt a little longer. I will however explain a little bit about the story, Aiden Pearce who is a computer hacker tries to hack a hotel but comes across a strange file held on the servers. The people who own the hotel call a hit on Aiden and his niece is killed thus driving him onto finding those behind it. So not much thought put into it at all, but then you get the phone and things don't look so bad. The playable part of the game starts with Aidan interrogating the gun man that killed his niece. This is when we meet Jordi, a hitman but in Watch Dogs these people are known as Fixers and they are plentiful but only one is on your side... because you pay him. After escaping the stadium and the police who pursue you the player is introduced to what family Aiden has left, a sister and traumatized nephew.

Aiden is somewhat of a blank character in terms of emotional depth he's definitely in the shallow end. This has received a lot of criticism from gamers and Ubisoft has announced that a new character will be taking over as the main protagonist. In my opinion Aidan Pearce was a blank character, no denying that but after playing Infamous Second Son it's not really that bad. When you have a roster of characters who are stereotypes in one way or another having a blank character doesn't seem so bad. In a perfect world games would attempt to rise to the story level of The Last of Us but that is a big ask. 

It's later on in the game where you actually get the full range of abilities made available to you.  At first you get a limited amount and then boom! You have one hell of a phone in your virtual hands.

The world is what attracts you to watch Dogs though, the map is split into six different sections that are full of things that the player are free to do. There are shops that can be visited to buy clothes, supplies, coffee etc that help the player survive in the game but there are also jobs as well. These are known as fixer contracts and come in various forms, ambushing criminal convoys, Racing and some generic tasks. These jobs don't really catch the player's attention for the enjoyment but rather the players need for money.

The main problem with this game is that there are a whole range of tasks available to actually get money but little to spend it on. I was imagining that there would be some kind of system that GTA Vs stock exchange. I wouldn't have minded a system that allows you to build up a small company or something. This may sound out of place but you need to bare in mind that when I finished the game I had over $250,000 left. I say this is a problem but it's something that could easily be fixed through an update or DLC if the developers felt so inclined to do so.

Clothes while expensive offer little more than a change of style. I was hoping for little perks like more holsters, dual weapons, increased Kevlar etc. If the season pass has been purchased as well then there are a flood of free clothes already available to the player for free. This on the whole just leaves you with less to spend money on.

If he spent more time thinking about the plot and
less on clothes he'd actually get somewhere

Digital Trips are a neat little escape from the game world. A Digital Trip is meant to sound like a drug but is actually a video game. The player can become a spider tank for example and rain chaos through out the city or free the city from alien robots. There aren't many rewards for these digital trips though and there are few things to keep the players interest. On most occasions the challenge that they give the players is enough to keep interests levels peaked, or more accurately you'll keep playing because of determination.

Robots ? Zombies ? Robot Zombies ?

I have played many games set in wide open worlds but none have quite reached the depth of Watch Dogs. Every NPC that passes you on the street has a name, a back story, a life that you can get a glimpse into. Just by turning on your profiler you can get a list of information about people. They even react to the world as well as the player, take a news broadcast about the player for example. If he appears on a TV screen the NPCs may ignore you, they may cheer you or the may call the police. Which is where the games sense of moral choice comes into it, do I take the phone away from the civilian, do I shoot the civilian or perhaps shoot them in the knee. When these events occur the player genuinely feels like a man on the run from the authorities.

"I'll just tweet about sneaking into this building"

DLC for the game was marketed a lot up to its release but they are slow to be released post launch day. The launch DLC are available to all players now but offer very little for your money. The player is able to get a few outfits, a few guns, an extra perk or two and last but not least a few missions. That may sound like a hefty sum but the missions themselves are rather repetitive and lacking in any originality.

Ending on talking about the games technological functionality the video below shows it's frame rates on next gen consoles. As you can see the frame rates stay at 30fps which shows that the game doesn't really utilize Next Gen hardware that much which is unfortunate. Coupled with tearing that is experienced after completing missions makes for a very poor ride in terms of technology. Despite this however the game still manages to look amazing on these consoles and are miles ahead of their PS3 & 360 counterparts.

Watch Dogs did not get everything right for certain but they did get a lot of things spot on. It's for those reasons that I would suggest this game to anyone looking for a good enjoyable game with technological aesthetics.

9.1/10