Running through Chicago armed with a smartphone, a somewhat useless gun, and the ability to peek into the dark details of almost every human you come in to contact with – this game can seem slightly farfetched. But not for Watch Dogs’ lead character Aiden Pearce, a cyber-thief and vigilante whose past has involved him stealing from the general public through cyber hacking and general chaotic violence. Pearce has found himself caught up in an emotional revenge-stricken story line that involves the death of a loved one.
Security cameras are just one example of hackable objects.
Using a computer or a smartphone you can claim control of this huge open world game, steal from strangers, control the traffic (in your favour of course), burst pipes and even activate live grenades to hinder your foes. All this and more is done by taking advantage of the City’s Central Operating System or “CTOS”, Pearce can essentially go anywhere he pleases. CTOS controls everything, sees everything and hears everything.
Upon starting the story it is easy to mistake this game for just another shoot-’em-up, open world game that will inevitably get repetitive and dull. The controls, albeit quite tricky to master after playing Grand Theft Auto for example, do eventually begin to fall in to place. This game requires your utmost attention; the first few hours of gameplay are a huge tutorial with different button combinations to help Pearce hack his way through Chicago.
Gradually, as the game progresses these controls become second nature and you’ll soon be activating bollards during a high speed chase to get the pesky five-o off your tail. The campaign has roughly 20 hours of solid game play, 80% of which will keep your attention. Unfortunately Watch Dogs is let down by a lot of repetitive content.
Take yourself out of the campaign and there appears to be endless amounts of side missions. These include quirky arcade style alien shoot-’em-ups and crime prevention, which unfortunately will always end in a very similar foot race, whomever the target may be.
Watch Dogs’ rendition of Chicago is impressive, but doesn’t have the variety of the locations in the Grand Theft Auto series.
Overall Watch Dogs is an interesting game. When you get in to the swing of it, it will keep you entertained for hours. Don’t be enticed by its open world nature, this is not going to rival GTA in terms of diverse gameplay, and taking in to consideration the almost two year wait we had for this game, I personally was expecting a lot more from it.
If you have played LA Noire, or you enjoy playing puzzled based games all the while pining for some chaos, then this is the game for you – just don’t expect to break a mental sweat during it.
Author – Garrett, Plymouth store
The game has great potential but it was sadly very rushed by Ubisoft. You cant rush games like this, its a clear sign that the quality will suffer if you rush the game to completion.