***So I have not been posting here as often as I would have like to. All my time and effort has been going into my articles over at indiejuice.tv. The past 2 weeks have been crazy busy for me. I received a few review codes and have been making videos and really starting to ramp up my content production. I wanted to at least post something here so I decided to post my Watch_Dogs review. Its been out for a week and it was also my first major game in which I got a review copy. I want to thank Ubisoft for sending me over a copy and I hope you all enjoy the review***
So now that everyone has had some time with Watch_Dogs I figured it is the perfect time for me to get my thoughts out there. In the past I have been harsh on the Ubisoft title that, at the time, was not even released because of the way Ubisoft handled things. From the 6 month delay to the graphical downgrade I have been highly critical and the hype surrounding the title had subsided leading up to the release date due to their handling of the project. After having the game for a while now and sinking many hours into the game and analyzing many aspects of the game, I can safely say that Watch_Dogs did NOT live up to my expectations. BUT do not take that sentence as "I hate the game, don't buy it, its crap". The game reached a level of hype that was IMPOSSIBLE to live up to and I don't blame the game for that. I can say that I did have fun playing Watch_Dogs and I hope that Ubisoft will take the best elements from this to make Watch_Dogs 2 a better game (Ubisoft has stated that they will not develop new IP's unless they were confident they could turn them into a franchise, hence Watch_Dogs 2 should be coming).
Lets get right down to the details and see how I think this game stacks up and what it did great and what needs to be worked on.
Graphics
Where to even start with this... Ubisoft had everyone under the impression that Watch_Dogs was going to be THE game to really show the power of the new generation of consoles and also push the PC to its limits (HA!). While I did play the game on PC I should make a note that Watch_Dogs came no where near where it should have been on PS4 and XboxOne. 900p and 792p both at 30FPS is not "Next Gen" and the issues I had running on PC were due to poor optimization. I was running at 1080p 60FPS on Ultra but I did drop frames here and there and when I recorded my video, I had to knock everything down to High since the game crashed on Ultra when I tried to record. I am not sure why it did that but I am using an AMD video card and there was talk that the game was developed around Nvidia and AMD was basically cast aside which may have something to do with the performance issues I was seeing. The graphical fidelity is decent for what the game was hyped up to be. It has absolutely beautiful moments and the lighting effects are pretty great in some areas but then in some places you can just see where the developers cut corners. The textures aren't smooth, the character models aren't very good in places, the car damage/physics were laughable and the draw distance was atrocious (popping. lots and lots of popping). Overall, when I am not dropping frames I was totally immersed in the world. The streets may not have been as crowded as they are in real life but Chicago did feel alive in some places.
Gameplay/Mechanics
Many people have mentioned that the Watch_Dogs gameplay falls into the same trap that plagued the first Assassin's Creed game. Repetitive nonsense. I somewhat agree to an extant that the game does get a bit tedious after a while. The game was built up around the mechanic of hacking devices and using them to manipulate the world and while the gimmick was fun in the beginning, it fell flat in the end. Hacking devolved into just simply pressing a button... and that's it... a button. "hold X to hack" is what you see all around the world and then in some instances you get involved in a puzzle which resembles pipe dream where you have to press X to manipulate the pipes to hack the device. I do believe though that the hacking mechanic has the potential to grow and become something really cool so we will have to wait and see what happens to that in the future. As for controls they were okay... as long as you were using a controller. I started the game playing on keyboard and mouse and found the controls to be terribly stiff especially when driving. Maybe its me but the kb/m controls did not cut it for me which is surprising because I usually prefer kb/m to a controller no mater what type of game I am playing. But once I switched to my Dualshock 4 controller I had a much easier time navigating and the movement felt a lot smoother to me.
World
I touched on this in the graphics portion, I feel the world was well done, had a lot to do, a lot to see but could have been executed a little better. One thing a lot of people bring up is the amount of people on the streets which makes sense. Chicago is a metropolis and its streets are buzzing and crowded at all times but to pull that off in game would be difficult. I felt that Watch_Dogs had more crowded areas than most other open world games do so that is a plus for them. Like I said before, Chicago felt alive in areas and especially around the landmarks you could get immersed in the game very easily. The Digital Trips added a lot of fun to the game (Spider-Tank being the best) and really opened up the world as to give you a sense of future tech in a modern world. It seems like the developers put a lot of time into building the world and it shows.
Online
The diamond in the rough of the game. The Online has SO MUCH POTENTIAL! While I think it is a very strong aspect of the game right now, I can only imagine that it is only the framework and "test" for a much larger implementation for the next game in the series. The ability for players to hack or 'invade' your world really can lend to the atmosphere the game was trying to convey that you are constantly under watch. It makes you paranoid to stay in one area too long or go into certain places (garages, large areas of NPCs). The ground level is set and if Ubisoft could come up with new unique ways to invade other players and actually have a risk/reward type system, I think the online portion of Watch_Dogs could really expand on itself and make the next installment great.
Story
This is the worst aspect of the game in my opinion. Very generic, very bland, and the voice acting was HORRIBLE! I mention in my video that the voice acting in a lot of scenes really feels empty, like you are literally listening to someone sitting in a booth reading their lines. The emotion is not captured right and it breaks immersion. The forgettable story had the potential to be great but falls flat on every note. Hopefully Ubisoft can step up their writing for the next game and spend some of their millions to hire some good voice actors (whats Troy Baker up to these days?) but for this game, they missed the mark completely which is a shame because of all the great story driven games we have had recently (Metro: Last Light, Bioshock Infinite, The Last of US, etc...). I wanted the story to capture me but it didn't.
All in all, Watch_Dogs is a safe game from Ubisoft. Not great but not garbage either. Forgettable story with some fun quirks and a good framework for future games in the franchise. I do recommend giving it a try as it does have enjoyable moments and is building to something bigger. After the press releases by Ubisoft generated the hype before release, Watch_Dogs was doomed to fall under the mediocre group because nothing could have delivered on the hype that was attached to this game before release. I enjoyed the game but did not love it but I am excited to see where the franchise goes in the future because it does leave a lot on the table that has the potential to make a great game if expanded upon.
Thanks for reading and until next time:
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