My Watch Dogs Review (No Spoilers)

Once Angry Joe releases his review of this game, don't even bother reading this because he can explain all of it a lot better then I can. I like to split parts of the games into any sort of review I do for a game, so I'll just separate them by categories and you can pick and choose, I'll try to keep myself from blabbering on about some things, but no promises. If you don't want to bother reading through all this, I put my final score in the last paragraph, very brief summary, but it's not like I went very in-depth with each category anyway. Hope you can find some insight on the game if you're on the fence about getting it or not, and without further delay, here is my review of Watch Dogs.


(I had to split my review into several posts because of the character limit, never thought I'd exceed it in a post, haha.)

1. Graphics

It's the first thing that needs to be addressed, but some people just can't look past because of their E3 demo in 2012 to it's released form. It took a severe drop in all aspects, I had a feeling what we saw at the E3 demo was way too good to be true, especially for console restrictions, apparently even the PC version at max settings isn't close to it. I have only played it on 360 so I can't say for a fact that is true or not. You can go across any website about the game and you'll see a non-stop stream of people shitting on the game for it's graphics and it's just sad, truly the game doesn't look that awful. The only thing I noticed that was out of touch for any game is the way wind animates trees in the game, they basically do this weird twitching motion rather then slowly strife left and right. If you watched any gameplay from one or ps4, then play the 360 version like I did, you will see a lot of dumbed down aspects. Shadowing isn't nearly as good during the day as compared to next gen, but lighting at night still looks great. The game also suffers from weird interior lighting issues, every time I wanted to change my guy's clothes, it was so dark I had to run outside just to get a good look at each one. I did find one store where that wasn't an issue though, they all have different interior layouts. Other than those couple gripes, If I were to rate how it all looks on a scale of 1-10, I would give the graphics a 6. It's passable, and doesn't look nearly as bad as everyone sets it out to be, but it could definitely be better. It looks like when they ported it down to previous generation, they just didn't care about alternatives methods to make it more presentable. If you popped in GTA V by comparison, you would see how good it can look, granted GTA was designed for 360 and Watch Dogs was for next gen and pc, I'm sure you get my point.


2. Content

This is, without a doubt, the game's greatest stride. It is packed to the brim with side missions, collectables, mini-games, and hacking goodies like 'privacy invasion.' The sad part of it though is that with all of these different things you can do, I think it took away from the campaign length, I understand that as purely my perspective, some people might think this game would be better off without a campaign all together. The story ends up being about 15 hours, give or take on failed attempts and difficulty, and they pull a lot of scenes to try and immerse you into the game, but it's hard to accomplish with how short it is. I won't say any more about the campaign because I feel like I'll give too much away, but I will say this, if you want to feel drawn into the game, really invest yourself into each mission and take your time to complete it. I beat the story in two sessions of playing and I regret that, definitely going to have to replay through it again. Back to the other contents of the game, you can gamble, do drinking games, chess challenges, play ridiculous mini-games from your phone (this is the over-the-top saint's row type stuff, but it's fun!), roam around for potential crimes, find a magnitude of different collectables. I'd say it would take you around 40-50 hours to get everything done in the game, I've put in about 20 hours so far and I'm at about 48% completion. You will find plenty of things to accomplish outside of the campaign, which is a massive plus, in my book. I'd give the amount of content you get out of this game a 9 out of 10. The only thing keeping it from a straight 10 is the short campaign.


3. Gameplay

First things first, the controls to this game can get confusing fast. Until you get a few hours in, then you'll adapt to them, but they are really weird in certain ways. For instance, if you want to run because you have to chase some guy after he stabbed a girl, you run by holding the right trigger, or R2 on ps3/4, fucking right trigger, why? Also, if you want to jump over obstacles, climb fences or building, go up ladders, you have to hold B/Circle at the same time. Next thing is combat, in order for you to reload, you have to push in the left stick. You also seem to glue to whatever you're using for cover, it's awkward and annoying to try and get out of or move up to take someone out because he just wants to stick in cover. Driving isn't that great either, you skid and drift around every corner, it's as if the tires have no traction at all. It's another thing you will eventually learn to control to drive like normal, but that doesn't excuse the poor handling to begin with. This isn't the case with every car though, and motorcycles control fairly well. Getting into encounters is really fun, once you develop your hacking skills, you can find multiple ways to eliminate your enemies without ever leaving cover. You can also just go in guns blazing, but you aren't likely to survive, especially later on in the game. The combat is the most engaging part of the game for me, combined with hacking, it creates an amazing and unique experience. Another thing that really bothered me at the beginning is that there is no melee encounters, sure you can take people down, but you don't control it yourself, just push a button and it's over. I began to adjust to it though, there are times you'd much rather do these take downs over and over again versus trying to do it yourself and blowing your stealthy approach. Still, it would have been nice to have the option, a button for take downs and able to select fists, or your nightstick, to duke it out with your enemies. This game can get quite glitchy at times as well, you can be in a high speed chase and brush some cars along the way and just go through them or the slightest bump can spin you the fuck out. You also can't drive up steep hills, for some reason, it'll just push your car off or backwards. All the hacks you can perform work great, it's just all about timing, so don't get too pissy when you signal all the cars to go and they only fuck you up. The button indicator will tell you when it's the best time to use certain hacks to take people out. I can't think of much else to add, but if you have any further questions, just ask. I'd give the gameplay a 7 out of 10. The contolling for driving really needed fine tuning, I'm no car handling expert, by any means, but it was one of the worst experiences I have driving in games. Any chance I had, I went to find a motorcycle because they handle so much better. They nailed the combat in this game though, nothing to complain about, only wish they added a melee system.

4. Online

I've only tried a few of the modes for this and it's fantastic. Haven't got a chance to do free roam with anybody because none of my buddies play it, not sure how fun that can be at all, but adding friends to any equation can make even the dumbest of games absolutely amazing. I played two modes, tailing and hacking, and both add a lot to the game. You can invade, or be invaded, by other players at any time you're roaming around the city. The experience is always a trip, when you get hacked, you're instantly in a one vs. one match against someone, no waiting period, and you have to find the other person and take them out before they hack your phone. You have to use your phone and profile everyone until you find the person in a small radius and as the download gets closer to finishing for them, the radius to uncover them becomes smaller and smaller. You can use all your hacks to try and bring them out but they usually just end up hiding somewhere either above or below your location. Other players are also disguised as any other npc in the city so it can be tricky to distinguish them if they can blend fairly well. The other mode can be just as exciting, tailing is exactly how you'd expect it. You either invade, or get invaded, and have to follow a player without being seen. There is no indication for when someone is tailing you, as far as I could tell anyway, so you just have to lookout for oddball behavior. I've experienced this a few times already and it's enjoying to just kill a player randomly for their failed attempts at tailing you. There is also a 'mobile challenge' which I haven't tried yet, it always a window that pops up when I'm in the middle of something so I just ignore it. There is also racing, but I'm not touching that, racing pisses me off and the driving in this game is a guaranteed rager for me, so I'm just going to avoid it completely. This game has a skill tree specifically for online, you can unlock five different things, for both single player and multiplayer, but here's the kicker, if you can call it that. The only way you can get points is by winning, not a suprise at all, but if you lose, you lose those points. You can go from having all five of those skills unlocked to having none of them if you get hit by a losing streak. The amount of points you can get or lose varies depending on who you're facing and what role you're playing. You get more points if you're the one tailing or hacking someone then just trying to find that person, it makes sense though. The online functions exactly as they intended, at least from what I've experienced. I'd give the online portion of this game a 10 out of 10. This is only judging by those two modes though, I heard they dumbed down the amount of players you can have in a free roam on 360 and ps3 then you can have in next gen or pc, this isn't an issue for me, but I can see why it is for others.


5. Soundtrack

No idea where to begin with this, the songs from the playlist are just awful, I only found two songs I liked from the entire list. I don't consider myself entirely close minded when it comes to different types of genres and play styles, but they did a horrible job of putting a list of good tracks together. I ended up editing the playlist to just use those two songs I liked and I started to end up hating them as well for how often they were repeating so I just set it back to playing almost all the songs. You can always just mute this all together though and it doesn't take much away from the experience as a whole. I'd give the soundtrack a 1 out of 10. I'm sure there are some people out there, maybe even here on fluckit, who would find the soundtrack fairly well put together, but I could barely stand it. That's the only reason I give it that number on my scale, cheers to you if you manage to enjoy it, wish I could have.



Conclusion.

Time for the final score of the game, for the overall experience of the game, I'd give it a solid 8 out of 10. It has its drawbacks, but some of them can easily be adapted to or overlooked because of how fun other parts of the game are. If you are a fan of such games as Assassin's Creed, GTA, Saint's Row, this is the perfect baby for you. You will get your money's worth in the content alone, so I hope you guys that are even slightly interested in the game decide to check it out. Don't believe the massive flood of fuckers saying this game sucks balls because it is really solid and I hope a sequel of some kind is in the works. Thanks for reading, if you did, even to the guys who might just pop in here to see my final score because the rest is just too much to read. Out B.

Glad to hear it. I fucking love Assassin's Creed and GTA/old Saints Row so I was expecting this to be a game that was way better than people made it out to be. I'll be sure to keep it in mind when the time comes around far from now that I pick up a PS4.

On a side note, I'm aware of many many many blatant Assassin's Creed references in the game, so for fans of the AC series there's some fun stuff to look out for

Thanks for the review man. I'm gonna pick it up today. Sounds awesome.