Watch Dogs, 1 year later
Read our original review on Watch Dogs here.
By: RJ (@rga_02)
I remember visiting a friend’s place around the summer of 2012. He’s what people would call a “casual gamer” You know, the type of people who would only play Call of Duty, Madden, FIFA, etc. Before I was about to leave, he asked “Hey, have you heard about this new game called Watch Dogs? It looks pretty awesome! Finally a GTA style game set in our very own city!” I too was hyped, but I never actually got to play Watch Dogs until now.
Right after the release, Watch Dogs was met with varied reactions. It simply didn’t live up to the hype that Ubisoft tried to paint the game with. Clickbliss staff writer Paul blasted the game to pieces, even going so far to compare the protagonist to a “2x4 board”. All the negativity surrounding the title infiltrated my mind and I was turned off by the game. I had a sealed copy in hand, and I returned it after the bad press. Usually, that isn’t like me. I form my own opinions about the game, but as I was influenced by the hype surrounding the game, I was also influenced by the negativity. Last month I finally decided to fully check out what was so divisive about Watch Dogs and re-bought a copy. In hindsight, I should of have left that copy on the store shelf.
I sure do remember strolling by Chicago Forest and Mt. Chicago as a child
I was initially interested in Watch Dogs because it took place in my hometown of Chicago. Not a lot of games are set in this beautiful city. It’s either New York, London, or Los Angeles. I was excited that to be able to roam around in a virtual rendition of the city I live in. But the city I knew and love presented in Watch Dogs wasn’t Chicago. The only Chicago thing about it was the probably the in-game version of the Sears Tower. The rest of the city? It seems like the developers over at Ubisoft were using Sim City to recreate the city. You might say, “Oh it’s just a videogame, it doesn’t have to be 1:1″. Yeah its a videogame, but something must be wrong if GTAIII can stay faithful to New York City through its own interpretation while a game 13 years later can only get a few landmarks right.
At least Far Cry 3 was a better game
The city wasn’t the only issue here. Instead of something unique, Ubisoft decided to literally CTRL+C, CTRL+V the Assassins Creed format into this game. “It’s truly like Skyrim Assasins Creed! With Guns!” If I wanted to play an Assassins Creed, I’d go play one of its mainline titles, not some re-skinned version disguised as a new open world game. I probably wouldn’t have minded if it borrowed from Grand Theft Auto. Heck, I probably would of have enjoyed this game a lot better. It’s almost insulting how this game treats you thanks to those AssCreed mechanics. Everything is bare bones simple and without challenge at all. You can get by a lot of enemies with just a push of the button.
And don’t even get me started on the storyline. I felt more emotion out of Hyperdimension Neptunia.
yes Neptune, how did Watch Dogs manage to spawn over 6 million copies
I hate being influenced by the negativity of others. But I was probably better off listening to those bad vibes. Watch Dogs is a confused game who thinks its a Grand Theft Auto but is actually a rejected Assassins Creed game. A bad case of identity crisis. Let’s just hope Watch Dogs 2 washes its mirror and sees its true self.