Watch Dogs review
There's no doubt about it, today we rely on technology and the internet more than ever before, and we're only getting more dependent on it. We check Twitter or Facebook regularly to keep up do date with friends or events, our banking is predominantly done online and there's an app for pretty much everything you can think of. Technology has made our lives easier, but is there a danger that having all of our data to hand could lead to us being exploited somewhere down the line? Possibly, and that's where Watch Dogs comes in.
You play Aiden Pearce, a "fixer" who uses a smartphone to hack into an array of electronic devices tied to Chicago's central operating system (cTOS). This leads to a massive and enjoyable range of gameplay options at the touch of a button, from changing the colour on traffic lights to drawing bridges behind you. Aiden's smartphone also comes with apps such as the "profiler" - giving you details on every citizen in the city - and the "crime prevention system" - which lets you know when a crime is likely to take place near your location.
Holding the details of every NPC at your fingertips is a dramatic change from the norm, when they're usually only there to fill game worlds with a bit of life. Now you'll see their age, what they do for a living, how much they earn and a short line of information that sums them up best. It might only be a few lines of text but the difference it makes in your approach to them is shocking. Shooting that random guy in the face might not have been that troublesome before, but what about when you read he's terminally ill with cancer? It changes everything.
The potential for these innovative gameplay features to catapult Watch Dogs into a must-have is limitless, so it's unfortunate to find out that the main campaign hardly takes advantage of this at all. There are a few highlights, but the mission structure mainly boils down to 'Drive to this point' or 'Shoot this guy'. It's incredibly frustrating to see that Ubisoft Montreal has discovered such an original game idea but then stumbled clumsily through the narrative. There was a great chance for Watch Dogs to really examine the topic of privacy while living in a surveillance state in the modern age but it's never explored deeply enough, and we're left with a case of what might have been.
Nevertheless there are some really clever ways for Aiden to go about his business, and doing so gets easier as you progress and learn the best times to do what. The best example is his ability to hack CCTV cameras positioned anywhere around the city and control them so he can view areas that were otherwise obstructed. Brilliantly, camera hacks can also be chained together, so moving from camera to camera to camera around a large building becomes a smart way of infiltrating your target area. Aiden can also hack into other computers or linked systems from the cameras, so it's possible to complete a whole mission from the comfort and safety of a remote hiding place.
Hacking into the bigger systems leads to a puzzle mini-game, where you have to rotate pipes to guide a blue power line to a target. It can get old before long, but thankfully it's often an easy task and doesn't take much time to complete. You might not feel like the all-powerful hacker that Ubisoft is trying to portray, but you'll be having fun along the way.
When the time comes for you to physically enter a guarded area you can use your smartphone to distract patrolling guards in several ways. Setting off car alarms, causing forklift trucks to lift suddenly, there are plenty of techniques for you to sneak by undetected. Some guards will even come with explosives that you can hack to go off, making them visibly panic before seeing them fly through the air. Unfortunately, and this is my pet peeve with a lot of games, it's often easier to just run in all guns blazing and take down the five or six guards with a machine gun. Spend five minutes cleverly scouting the safest route through a room, or 30 seconds having a gunfight when there's no punishment for doing so? The choice is yours.
There's a cover system to make Aiden's life a bit easier and it's intuitive enough. You can also craft new gadgets for one time use, such as police signal jammers, to mess with the enemy. As you progress and level up you'll be spending points upgrading Aiden's skill tree, in areas such as hacking, combat and driving. Every new ability turns out to be very handy, and working out what to upgrade is a hard choice indeed.
When it comes to the open-world of Chicago it can get a bit claustrophobic. Maybe we've been spoilt by the delights of Los Santos in GTAV, but it's clustered by comparison. However there's plenty to see and do, and as mentioned earlier having the details of every NPC in the city adds a lot more life to it. Side quests actually end up being more entertaining than the main campaign, and we recommend taking them on whenever you can. You also have the chance to "check-in" to different areas around the city and compete with players around the world to become the "mayor" of that particular hotspot. It's only for bragging rights but it's interesting enough.
What it does feed into is the idea that in Watch Dogs, you're never really alone. That's where the multiplayer comes in and it works surprisingly well. Should your settings allow it to happen, any player around the world can hack into your single player game without warning and start stealing your data. You could be minding your own business enjoying the scenery when you'll get a warning saying that you either find the intruder or lose the mini-game. What follows is a few minutes of frantic panicking as you use your phone to profile everybody in the area before time runs out.
Finding the intruder leads to a gunfight that could potentially carry out across the whole city, as you desperately try to terminate them once and for all. It's a superbly tense game of cat-and-mouse and the randomness of it makes you more aware of the connected game world. There are other online modes, too, such as free-roam modes or car races. They're definitely fun to pop into now and then when you fancy a challenge.
When it comes to driving the car physics are solid enough and get the job done, but the vehicles can feel a bit light at times. The most interesting thing here once again is the hacking, and drawing a bridge behind you as you're being chased by a group of cops so you can get away is one of the most satisfying things you can do in the game.
On the new consoles Watch Dogs can really look very pretty at times, although it's certainly not the graphical beauty that inFamous: Second Son or Ryse are to their respective machines. That can be forgiven considering the world is filled with all manner of things to spend time doing, and you'll still have lots to do well past the 30-hour mark. You can see that GTAV, Assassin's Creed and even Far Cry 3 were big influences here, but as such Watch Dogs can struggle to maintain its own identity. You feel that with a bit more focus this could have been something special.
Watch Dogs is a mess. I mean that in the nicest possible way. It tries to do too many things and appeal to too many people. It doesn't quite work as a social commentary on how living in a connected world is actually a terribly bad thing, and it doesn't quite work as a free-roaming open-world game where a virtual Chicago is your playground. However put all the parts together and what you've got is an enjoyable adventure that can give you some truly memorable moments. This is a solid start for a new IP and the sky's the limit if a sequel ever arrives.