Let's Talk... Watch Dogs

Watch Dogs is a game that has been plagued by a lengthy and strenuous development cycle, with a development lasting five long years. Naturally, when a game has this much history and hype and then is quite abruptly delayed numerous times, the expectation and anticipation of the what the game should and is going to be can often cause its eventual release to be shrouded in disappointment. For a lot people that'll be one of their biggest gripes with Watch Dogs: it simply isn't the innovative, "next-gen" experience people were hoping for. What it is, however, is a solid and highly enjoyable open world sandbox with a gripping story and some cool little gimmicks.

The story of Watch Dogs opens with hacking superstar Aiden Pearce losing his niece in a fatal car crash in which he was the intended victim. Hungry for revenge and blaming himself for the incident, Aiden seeks to find the men responsible and avenge Lena Pearce's death. Naturally, this puts him the crosshairs of some very bad people and very quickly makes him the notorious vigilante of Chicago (where the whole game takes place). The revenge tale set-up is a decent premise, although it certainly feels very familiar, but the game's narrative very quickly evolves into a spy-action thriller that is way more exciting and a lot more interesting. Although the ending leaves a lot to be desired and some parts of the story feel a little disconnected from one another, the story is generally sound and manages to be fun enough to remain appealing towards the end.

Typical of Ubisoft's style, Watch Dogs features a number of really great characters, including a twisted mob boss, the aspiring and extremely dangerous leader of a dominant gang, and a paranoid, untrusting, anti-government type hiding from the authorities. The problem with these characters, however, is simply that they just don't do enough with them. Each of these great characters has one or two really amazing moments of their own, but that's almost all you'll see of them. Much like how Far Cry 3 set up Vaas as this fantastic, spine-chillingly evil villain who had a couple of truly incredible moments but still had a lot of potential that felt wasted by the end wasted, the most interesting characters in Watch Dogs feel woefully under-utilised, relegated to their spotlight moment before being put to one side for the larger story to take place.
Furthermore, although the game features a number of excellent characters, the main character, Aiden Pearce, is an extremely dull and rote character whose motives feel somewhat questionable and whose supposedly altruistic actions feel ultimately selfish, making his quest for revenge a little hard to empathise with.

The game's profiler system in action

As far as gameplay is concerned, Watch Dogs is a very standard city-based sandbox, the likes of which you're likely very familiar with by now. You drive cars, you shoot guns, you take on side missions with a disappointing lack of variety, and you'll probably unintentionally run over dozens of innocent civilians along the way. The one thing that Watch Dogs uses to try to set itself apart from the competition, however, is its constant use of hacking mechanics. Hacking is all done through Aiden's seemingly magical super-phone, which allows him to tap into almost anything in the city and gain some sort of benefit from it. Hacking is very much the supporting tool of your arsenal, aiding your endeavours rather than actually leading them. Evading the police or taking down a gang hideout, for example, can be made significantly easier through clever use of your environment (such as hacking road blockers in order to stop pursuing vehicles, or hacking something to create makeshift cover in a firefight) but very rarely can you do something exclusively through use of hacking and nothing else. Conversely, however, in a lot of cases, it's more than possible to get things done without any use of hacking (though you'll definitely have a harder time doing so), since almost all types of missions involve either shooting guys and/or driving. Consequently, although certainly not the forgettable gimmick it could well have been, the hacking just doesn't feel like the main event here and it certainly isn't enough to make Watch Dogs feel entirely fresh and original and the familiar tricks Watch Dogs relies cannot truly separate it from the likes of GTA or Sleeping Dogs.

Despite being very similar to such games, however, almost every part of Watch Dogs manages to still feel distinctly Ubisoft in its execution. The fairly dynamic free-running feel of the movement is not too dissimilar to the that of Assassin's Creed, hacking into ctOS towers displays activities in the surrounding area much like the radio towers of Far Cry 3 and the gang hideout side missions feel extremely similar to the stronghold takeovers that populated Far Cry 3, and even the game's stealth feels very similar to that of Ubisoft's latest Splinter Cell game, with its stealth-action hybrid, dynamic cover system and focus on cool, futuristic gadgets. They make no effort in trying hiding the fact that this is a Ubisoft game, which feels like the only thing that gives Watch Dogs an identity of its own (which, even then, it doesn't really have). Perhaps the crazy homogenisation of all Ubisoft games is a problem larger than just Watch Dogs, but Watch Dogs does very little to create its own distinct identity other than just being a very standard open world game with a little of the Ubisoft touch, which is something that may be a huge problem for those hoping for something new and innovative but may be completely fine for people looking for a solid open world game. 

The action may not be the most original, but it still manages to be satisfying and engaging

The game presents a number of minor mechanics that can potentially aid your endeavours in some way. Such mechanics, such as the ability to craft usable items on the go or the ability to slow down time at will to help you get off that life-saving headshot, range from essential and highly intuitive to needless and unnecessary. Focus mode, for example, the time-slowing bullet-time gimmick, is highly useful and quickly became an ability I was using in every fight, and it was certainly an ability that saved my life a number of times. Although the shooting in Watch Dogs is never particularly difficult (since enemies go down very quickly), focus mode was a neat little gimmick I very much appreciated. The crafting, on the other hand, felt completely shoe-horned in and was a system that I very rarely engaged with. The items you can craft (such as grenades, temporary city-wide blackouts and consumables that replenish your focus meter) are certainly very useful, and I definitely found myself using the system when I was in dire need of some C4 or other items, but it felt extremely unnecessary and I would've much preferred such items to be dropped as loot. 

Watch Dogs may not be the technical tour de force some were hoping, but it still manages to look quite nice

Most of the enjoyment I got from the hacking systems actually came from a lot of the smaller

activities and capabilities granted to you. Namely the profiler system, which allows you aptly profile anybody you can see and uncover information about their name, their income and even a dirty secret or two. The system isn't particularly deep and essentially serves as a HUD overlay that can be toggled on and off. Profiling a person is done by simply looking at them, but the range at which you can actually profile someone can get a little finicky and it can take a little too long to appear on screen (especially when you're searching a gang hideout for the required target and you have to awkwardly hang around until it triggers). Another example of blatant privacy invasion is, ironically, a side activity quite appropriately named "privacy invasion", in which you can hack into people's homes to observe their weird, dirty or otherwise comedic rituals. You can also "hack" into people whilst roaming the streets, ravaging their bank accounts or stealing their music as a way to unlock the game's full soundtrack. These systems are a lot of fun to mess with, and there's an impressive variety in the number of different conversations or activities you can come across.  

The world of Watch Dogs certainly looks very nice (although the frame rate sometimes fails to keep up, especially on PC, where frequent and extremely obvious hitching often ruins the frame rate), with motion-captured cutscenes boasting some excellent and extremely evocative facial animations that allow characters to be impressively expressive. The sound design is also solid and the game makes excellent use of its soundtrack to really emphasise some of the story's most evocative moments.

Ultimately, Watch Dogs is by no means the innovating blockbuster some were expecting, but its excellent execution of familiar concepts and mechanics taken from other crime-focused open world games and some of Ubisoft's best work still allows it be an exciting and gripping open world game. Furthermore, although there are a couple of grievances I had with Aiden as a character and a number of really interesting characters that they just don't do enough with, the game's narrative is still pretty well-executed as a whole. Even though Watch Dogs might not be the most mechanically original game, it certainly manages to build the foundation for a potentially incredible (and pretty inevitable) sequel.