Watch_Dogs Review
- Watch_Dogs
- Developer - Ubisoft Montreal
- Publisher - Ubisoft
- Sony PlayStation 3 & 4, Xbox 360 & One, Wii U, PC (Reviewed on the PlayStation 3)
- Rating - M
There’s always something cool about playing a virtual representation of your hometown. This is especially the case when you’re from a major metropolitan area such as New York or Los Angeles as they are both commonplace locations for games. In fact, the most recent game I can think of that allows you to explore Chicago is Driver 2, and that was 14 years ago. However, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a game that properly represents Chicago. Well I’m glad to say that this is no longer the case as Watch_Dogs, has finally hit store shelves.
Watch_Dogs takes place in an alternate reality Chicago, where it has succeeded from Illinois and has a single operating system controlling everything from traffic lights to TVs. This is not a faithful representation of Chicago as only a few locations are recognizable while the rest is fictionalized. The city sometimes feels dynamic and it’s interesting to stand on a street and watch people go about, but it feels like a generic city that could have gone by any other name and no one would have noticed. It also seemed totally unnecessary to make Chicago look like Manhattan, but I digress. There are other districts in the game, but there isn't much in those other areas worth mentioning.
You play in this Chicago as Aiden Pearce, a professional hacker who sounds like he eats nails and cigarettes for breakfast. He is about as interesting as a 2x4. His story involves getting revenge because some dude killed his niece or something like that. It’s not very interesting so I’ll leave the story out. The rest of the cast is bland as well, with strange design choices and flat line delivery. The game shines when no one talks.
The hacking itself is neat, and your hacking skills increase throughout the game, allowing you to do bigger and badder things. For some portions of the game where you need to invade a building, you have the option to hack into camera to get a better view of your enemies. It gives you an omnipresent feeling that I haven’t felt in a game before. As for the rest of the gameplay, it’s lackluster at best. The gunplay feels unresponsive and stiff, but it is tolerable enough. The driving is obnoxious as all the cars have this floaty, imprecise feeling to them which makes driving a chore. On foot segments are the far better, with Pearce having decent controls, but he can often get stuck in certain environments.
Graphically, this game looks bad. Of course, I played the PlayStation 3 version of the game but it does not excuse the fact that some areas of the game look straight out of the PlayStation 2. While of course I do not expect this version of the game to hold up to it’s next gen counterparts, this game is from Ubisoft - who is known for pushing the limits of the consoles they develop for. Regardless of the game being a cross gen or not.
Overall, this game doesn’t live up to the hype from the E3 demo. It doesn’t even feel like a AAA game made by a big name company. However, this is a game worth checking out - once it goes on sale. Until then, stick to Splinter Cell: Blacklist for stealth, & Driver: San Francisco for sandbox driving.