I stepped into the world of Watch Dogs with my eyes wide open. What I've seen was a new franchise that impressed me from the beginning and overwhelmed me with a large amount of content....and i love it.
Note: I wont spoil anything about the story and will keep it as short as possible, which will be hard because this is a very HUGE game.
First, I'll start off with the controls. This game is very easy to pick up and play. The movements are more or less like Assassins Creed minus the climbing. Most hacking takes 1 button press, which helps due to the fast pace of the game. Some of the bigger hacks require you to solve a mini game. (I wont detail the mini game but its simple.) Driving is responsive and tight, it has that Grand Theft Auto V feel when driving. Drifting and hacking while driving is also very well done. Gunplay is also similar to GTAV minus the auto lock and with better cover to cover controls.
Taking on missions is a blast, I felt I could approach a mission from any angle I could think of. You can go stealth by hacking cameras to get the layouts and little hints on what abilities the enemies have. For example: Some enemies can call in reinforcements while others have phone conversations and texts that sometimes reveal useful information. You can do much more while hacking but I wont get into that. If you go in guns blazing you can find success too. The crafting system reminded me of The Last of Us as you find ingredients and craft weapons like grenades on the fly to aid you.
One gripe I had with the game was the enemy AI, while they were not dumb they were not overly smart either. It was rare but I found some of the AI (when alerted and searching) would walk into walls and stay there as I easily stealth killed them from behind. Again this was a rare thing, I've seen it twice so far during 3 days of play, but it was enough for me to point out. As far as combat goes the AI will hide in cover, flank and call in reinforcements. The cop chases are intense, they will chase you all over the city and while challenging I haven't been caught in my play through yet unless I totaled my car. The cars can take a surprising amount of damage. The chases would be even more intense if I felt the fear of totaling my car.
Online play (from what I played) is fun, I wont go too deep because not many people own the game so matches were not as frequent as they will be. The online racing was fun though, using hacks to hinder your opponents and shortcuts to get the advantage made for fun races. (I found the motorcycle races especially fun) That said, I did have a problem with cars appearing out of thin air while racing causing unexpected crashes. My SP game was hacked twice and while it was fun to find and kill the other player who hacked me, I feel it was too easy to find the hacker. It was reminiscent of Assassins Creed's MP.
As for the mini-games and side missions, there are plenty. Some are action packed and some are stealthy. There are a few driving mini-games and side missions that were fun as well. This adds a huge amount of variety. Some are fun and some are outright weird. Bouncing around the city on flowers?....Yes. Robots with flashlight heads? you betcha! driving through hell? YUP! Its all in here and ready to play instantly though your (in game) cell phone.
Player progression is pretty deep. You can upgrade skills, combat hacks, and driving. Aside from main game player progression there's more. You can upgrade the machines you use in the mini games as well...Like your Spider-Tank or your Hell Car..They too can be upgraded while playing the mini games, making you want to jump back in. Again, I wont go too far into it, so not to spoil the immersion.
As for the story.....play it. I wont even give you my insight on it...just know I like it.
This game is massive and I know I missed something, but I recommend you buy it. The mini games, Online play, and side missions are worth the purchase alone. This will be another great franchise for Ubisoft.
With the world of information and technology, privacy and security growing every day, Watch Dogs deserves another chance in the spotlight, now more than ever.
The only Ubi title that deserves a faithful remake right now is Splinter Cell 1.
All 2014+ Ubi titles are just underwhelming. Especially ones from 2016+ are just cancer.
Seriously, are we so far removed from Ubisoft actually making good games that people now praise Watch_Dogs in retrospect?
"Watch_Dogs has remained one of my favourite games of the last ten years." Jesus Christ.
I remember being so disappointed in Watch Dogs when I played it at release. It was alright, but I think I fell for the hype and I needed a game to play on my new PS4.
This is what happens when mediocrity gets praised as good.
Standards are slipping across the whole entertainment industry.
What was once considering rubbish is now considered as OK, what once was OK is now being praised as good etc etc.
Everyone has their own likes. I liked it a lot myself. I played through it twice and liked the car chases and the open world with fairly decent environments and missions. It suffered from the whole downgrade thing where they showed graphics that weren't actually there. No game will appeal to everyone but it was still ambitious for it's time.
For certain! AC1 was brilliant at the time but with new graphics and gameplay it would be amazing! Do you prefer old combat or new though?
I'd say a reimagining of AC1.
I direct AC1 remake would be a bad idea. It'll need better story pacing and significant better world building.
Old. Let it play like how it did with AC2-Syndicate style gameplay but refine the setting and story.
It would need a lot changed for it to be enjoyable again as even back in 2007 on launch we were all complaining about it's repetitive gameplay go here perform one of three side quests repeat then assassination now do it over and over until a big battle with a unforgiving checkpoint system.
I'd prefer it didn't. Ubisoft would make it so bloated, it wouldn't be anywhere near the original
As a fan of the franchise legion was garbage and I regretted my purchase for the first time in the franchise the entire thing felt like an experiment in NPC behaviour and released without the writers input on what makes a good story.
I don't think I'm alone in that feeling though as wrench and Aiden are brought back and the campaign was rewritten to fit them.
I am tempted to buy the season pass to play it again with Aiden but fool me twice shame on me I'm waiting for a deep sale
Agreed. Despite the annoying hipness of the characters in part 2 I thought it was a really fun game. I was extremely disappointed and surprised at how many steps back they took with Legion. You'd think it was made by an entirely different team. Or was it?
It was just so devoid of fun.
Honestly one of my biggest annoyances with Legion is that they took out the camera views for the driving. I mean the behind the car view that they stuck us with is near unplayable. I always used a first person driving view. After two releases why did they take OUT features? I don't get it.
The fist watchdog game was the best by far
After that they weren't weird and annoying with that hipster stuff. Aiden was a badass.
I thought so at first too. I got used to it and it ended up being good after some play time. I just had to give it a chance.
From VG247: "When cars slide, they leave tyre marks. In a game like Driver, they’re an aesthetic touch, part of the inherent cool of a handbrake turn. But those dark shadows in the road also tell a story. From tyre marks, you can determine the speed of a vehicle, when it started to skid, and its ultimate direction of travel – long after the car itself has vanished into the distance."
Why did they stop making some of the best games ever? Driver was one of them.
Assassins Creed 2 showed Ubisoft how to make money and Far Cry 2 showed them that gamers don't like complex ideas. Now Ubisoft just turns out games that are just variations of the same thing.
A story driven game with pure driving gameplay. I'd love to see a new Driver game or a remake of the first one.
Yes. This one. A definite remake of the first without adding any ridiculous fluff. The first game had great physics and sound for its time. The start of the car in the beginning cinema I watched constantly. My father and uncles were big muscle and classic car freaks. Only thing crazy about the game was the relentless cops in the last level. Insane the way those police cars were and launched at you.
Bleemcast made it look better just like PC emulators. But would definitely take a remake.
An Assassin's Creed Watch Dogs crossover has been hinted at for years, but could it work? FinalBoss explore the past and potential future!
I don’t know I still haven’t played Watchdogs 2 because the first didn’t keep me interested and I quit quickly to play something else
2 is much better but the puzzles are absolute shit. Tedious annoying shit. It has a lighter tone but the characters are pretty cringe as they try to be funny and so cool. The game is nothing you have not seen in a million other GTA like open worlds before. If had for super cheap it kills time. Outside of that, it's nothing special.
I thought that watchdogs 2 had you hack into the Ubisoft studio in San Francisco and from memory there was some assassin's Creed mentions which mean that if it's a video game in watch dogs then it can't cross over
Image double micros and extra level gated content that can be eased by the purchase of Watchdog Assassin boosters.
Nice review, I agree with nearly everything you have said. My one major problem with this game however is not being able to shoot while driving, I really miss that and think it was a mistake to not include it in the game. Overall, I also feel addicted to this game, on PS4 it looks and plays amazing and is just outright fun.