Watch_Dogs

Watch Dogs leaves you wanting so much more and at the same time so much less if you've played games like GTA. The UI is convoluted at time due to the high-tech aesthetic and they really dive into this whole aesthetic which can be make it repulsive to play. The gameplay however is smooth enough with all the stuff in the way but it makes me want the freedoms of GTA. It's the small things, like playing golf, that make GTA the epitome of the 3rd person open world crime genre.

I consider Watch Dogs 1 to be part of the 'USA Trilogy' of games (that includes GTA 4 & 5).

I genuinely never finished this game, its so boring and it sucks

Watch Dogs is a Grand Theft Auto-like game set in Chicago. You play as hacker Aiden Pearce in a world where the entire city is run by a computer network known as ctOS. This leads to some interesting game mechanics which help set it apart from other games.

Aiden is the survivor of an assassination attempt while he was driving. Although he survived the crash, his niece was killed in the incident. He is on a quest for vengeance and feels guilty that he caused his niece's passing.

Aiden's smartphone is key to his abilities. A Profiler app allows you to see the names, incomes and life-style choices (innocent or malicious) of any resident. You can hack a selection of people's phones to download the bank account info so that you can withdraw their cash from an ATM.

There are multiple ways to approach the missions, but like most games that include stealth; once your plan fails, then you switch styles and go all-guns blazing. You can run cover to cover to stay out of enemies sight. Hacking into cameras and spotting guards automatically tags them to easily track them on your mini-map.

The camera mechanic is a vital part of the game. You can hack into a camera from another camera, essentially allowing you to cover large distances without moving Aiden at all. You can remotely activate objects this way, creating distractions, unlocking doors, or even killing guards. Killing them can be as simple as triggering explosive devices that they are carrying, causing mechanical malfunctions of nearby machinery, or using machinery to hurt them directly. I really liked the remote hacking mechanic. You feel really powerful by utilising attacks from range, and the navigation from one camera to another basically become orienteering puzzles, as you work out how you can reach certain areas.

You can use your hacking skills when driving too, causing traffic signals to change, raising and lowering barriers, bridges, gates and more. These ideas become extremely useful during enemy or police chases and are extremely satisfying to aiding your escape.

There's a wide range of pistols, shotguns, and assault rifles in addition to explosives. Aiden also has access to gadgets to aid his stealth approach such as a signal jammer, and a device that causes power blackouts.

With certain servers, you may be required to complete a hacking mini-game. This involves rotating nodes in order for data to flow to certain points. To reach the end node, you may have to unlock one or more nodes first by flowing two or three circuits into it.

As you complete missions you level up and can spend a skill point in the massive skill tree. There's all kinds of categories; hacking, driving, combat,

There are regular notifications about a crime detected on a particular street. Once you reach that point, you stay hidden, and intervene when the crime is about to be committed. This increases your reputation as “The Vigilante”. The morality within the game is a bit strange. I felt Aiden was more of an ethical hacker, but is fine to kill anyone in his way. Even if you chose to play more stealthy, there were certain missions where you have to kill. You seem to be able to steal people's money and cars without any effect on your reputation.

On the Xbox 360, the graphics are rather blurry, and there was noticeable pop-up with distant objects. The load times were incredibly excessive, especially since you are forced to install the game to your hard disc.

The game feels pretty lengthy even though I only did a small selection of side-quests. The gameplay is similar to other open world games but had a great core mechanic that set it apart from its peers.

We all know the infamous reputation Watch Dogs has, its often looked at as a disappointing game that was hyped to be this incredible open World GTA style experience where you were this bad ass hacker using your skills to take out enemies and avoid combat, and the graphics looked like nothing we've seen before, at least on consoles. Then when the game released the graphics were downgrades and the gameplay was essentially GTA lite with a little stealth. The game is really not that memorable to be honest, even though it doesn't do anything outright bad, the gameplay is satisfactory, but it leaves you wanting more. You just go through the same boring missions of sneaking, hacking a couple things to take out enemies, then driving to the next mission and repeating. The story just is uninteresting with boring characters, dumb side characters, and a really silly plot that borders Michael Bay levels of stupidity and absurdity. The one cool aspect of the game is the hacking which you can do while you hide, you can hack into things to distract enemies or hack different things to take the enemies out, but this really isn't as fun as it sounds and a lot of the hacking in this game is more of a gimmick than something fun or cool. The side content in this game is pretty average and typical, it gets boring after a few minutes and is basically doing the same tedious shit over and over. There are a few interesting missions, like hacking into peoples computers and hearing some random funny things people say but that's possibly one of the few interesting things the game does.

Being from Chicago area too, its kind of cool seeing the landmarks and going down Michigan Avenue, seeing the Sear's Tower, lake Michigan, and the Bean, hell they even had there own version of Trump Tower in this, but at the same time its not exact and they do leave some landmarks and locations out, but still thats kind of cool but people outside Chicago probably won't care. But its a shame the potential was wasted on such a bland game, it just doesn't have interesting missions, the gameplay is generic stealth/3rd person shooter hybrid that we've seen done a million times before, the story is just stupid and uninteresting, the main characters and villains are boring and awkward, and the side content is incredibly tedious and unrewarding. Plus I also forgot to mention there is a stupid mechanic in this where if you play online people can randomly try to hack you and there is no way to get out of it so you have to find them in a set amount of time or you can't progress with the main story, which is one of the dumbest mechanics I've seen in a game, its like they tried to do their own version of Dark Souls invasions but failed and made one of the most frustrating things I've ever experienced. Watch Dogs might not be a horrible game like some people mention, it plays fine and even has moments where it is mildly amusing and fun, but compared to what it was built up to, it just isn't that good and there are a million other games that are just like this, and probably even better.

There are dashes of inspiration; Aiden is not the lost cause of a character he is made out to be. But ultimately, Watch_Dogs falls too far into Ubisoft formula territory and an extreme tendency to both play it safe and misunderstand its strengths. No wonder this big budget, overhyped game soon fell into bargain bins, and I am surprised it got its sequel. Really not worth playing for the amount of bullshit in it.