Back in 2012 at the annual E3, Ubisoft announced a new IP that won numerous awards and was a highly praised by anyone with the right mind.Titled Watch Dogs, it was set to be released the following year with the PS4 and Xbox One release, however it was delayed until 2014 and with video evidence that was leaked out showing a downgraded version of Watch Dogs. With all these problems surfacing, could Watch Dogs be released with the hype and excitement it had back in 2012? Let’s hack into this game.
Concept
Watch Dogs is an open world- stealth action adventure game following our vigilante Aiden Peirce, who is on a quest to avenge and find out who killed his niece in a failed assassination. Armed with a smartphone and an arsenal of weapons, Aiden goes for the person who put the hit on him that caused his nieces life to end. While Aiden himself is not the most memorable character of all time, his seriousness is sometimes boring and not cleverly used. On the other hand he has a robust set of supporting characters that really bring life to the story. For example, Jordi Chin is a hired contractor who can get almost everything Aiden wants such as cars and locations for people. His sense of humor is great, with every situation he gets into, there’s always at least one joke anybody can laugh about but his character really does emphasize on him only caring who will pay the highest for his service.
Set in Chicago, Watch Dogs takes the city into full advantage replicating a lot of the recognizable landmarks and anyone can travel the whole city without any loads times thanks to the current generation hardware (Ps4 and Xbox One, PC) and it looks stunning. The whole city is hack able thanks to the large city network called ctOS. ctOS is a network that connects the whole city as a whole reducing crime rates, increasing jobs and making it all connected in some way from the traffic lights, to ATM machines they are all connected. Chicago feels alive, with cars and people in every corner, and with your smartphone can see a short bio of any person, but not all of them make sense or really grab ones attention. For example in my game time I would walk around hack peoples profile and the person’s bio would say "Has diarrhea problems”. I mean that would be funny, if I was 8. But it is fun to go to local parks and see how people interact with each other, some playing soccer while other fly kites, makes the game feel alive.
Game play
Watch dogs is a third person stealth action game in which the player can either tackle it stealthy or guns blazing but it was much more enjoyable taking a group out one by one by distracting them with small gadgets and with silenced weapon. While the A.I is not perfect, and occasionally will just wait in the same place for about 3 minutes without doing anything, it can get smart at times usually ambushing you if you lose them out of your sight so be vigilant if surrounded by a group.After completing the main story, they are side mission ranging from solving a murder mystery to stopping weapons traffickers. They are fun collectibles to collect and some pretty interesting hackable computers in private homes, some are funny like how a little girl keeps begging her mom to go to the park with her, to more serious and dark ones like when there is a dead person in the living room and you listen to a call from their son saying he will be visiting for Christmas. You can also do side activities such as playing chess, drinking games and the use of "digital trips” which you play 4 mini games and especially my favorite in which you take a control of a Spider Tank to destroy the city.
Multi player is integrated into the single player mode which is a nice way to play it as you will be walking and randomly someone will hack you. It can get annoying but you can disable the multi player in the settings. Decryption is an 8 vs 8 player in which each team try to process a file that needs to be hack. It’s frantic as you try to defend the player that is hacking it as well as the team trying to kill the other team and possess the file. You also have your racing mode as well as a Racing mode in which you can download their official App on the App Store or Google Play and you try to stop the other player by activating barriers or calling up cops on your opponent, nice gimmick but it can get quiet boring after a while.
Conclusion
While Watch Dogs delivers hours of content up to 40 hours of content, it seems that somehow the story isn't as polished as it could have been, while there is no major updates to be seen it looks like Watch Dogs might be seen as a onetime game to play, but if you enjoy exploring and gathering every trophy in the game, and even paying 20 dollars for the seasons pass which will give you and exclusive single player campaign playing as a supporting character, you will enjoy this game even if the story is not so memorable like past Ubisoft notable games, it will sure grab your attention. The content is here and now you just need time to tackle on everything.
