I have to start this review by saying I'm not all that far through Watch Dogs. What I've heard of the storyline (and it's very little) is promising, but for my part I haven't really done much of it. I've had it for a few days now, and every time I play I get stuck on it, sucked in, unable to quit or leave. Many a night has been spent staying up 'til three in the morning trying to finish another side mission or just muck about and hack as many random NPC's as possible. Because here's the thing about Watch Dogs: there's so much of it, and it's all so much fun.
From the frustratingly difficult fixer missions to the bizarre digital trips, Watch Dogs is an amazing and expansive game which throws you into the world and tells you to go nuts. The premise of the story is this: You are Aiden Pearce, a hacker involved in some big thefts when someone I.D's you and sends a hitman after you. The game begins a year after this event - in which Aiden survives but his niece is killed - as you try to track down the man who hired your killer. Working with quick-talking Jordi Chin, the man who can get you anything, you are led down an ever darker path of gang wars and violence as you go vigilante and bring your own brand of justice to the streets.
It's a good premise, even if the dialogue is clichéd, and the story has enough twists and turns from the start to keep you interested. The use of story missions to advance not only the plot, but the expansion of the map and the places you can interact with was a good move - there are areas you unlock in much the same way you unlocked new side-quests in Assassin's Creed, only instead of using eagle points you have to clear out the guards and hack CtOS servers. And it adds its own new spin on things by throwing in a ton of interesting gameplay diversions, from NVZM phone games to frantic fixer missions which see you driving cars on a whole variety of tasks.
In fact, let's talk about the fixer missions because they deserve a whole paragraph. The fixer missions are ridiculously varied, from decoy driving to keep the police off a drugs deal to fun, fast scavenger hunt-style driving games with a tight time limit. My favourite fixer missions are checkpoint-style races, where you have a time limit to get between checkpoints as you draw the police, always culminating in some speed-ramping grand finale as you finally lose the police and clear the last checkpoint. But this is a small portion of the forty-five fixer missions, which also include phone-hacking missions while you're on the road, tailing your victim and extracting data from their phone before taking them out, and missions where you have to drive a car from point A to point B, then pick up another car and rinse and repeat.
The best kinds of mission, however, are the gang hideouts. I enjoy finding new routes to the target and taking them out, wondering if I should sneak past the thugs or shoot them in the head with my assault rifle. Or maybe I should distract them with an explosion, then run in and take the guy out? Or maybe...
This is one of the things I love about the game: you can try things out, the missions are so varied you have a whole host of tactics to try out across the globe. Me being me, of course, I usually balls it up at some point and end up in a gunfight, murdering everyone instead of actually sneaking around. But the premise is fun, and it's brilliant when it goes right. When it doesn't, it's kind of terrible and more than a little bit annoying, but that's all down to me being impatient and a terrible gamer. I find that as I do more and more missions, I seem to get worse too, to the point that I'm usually ready with my assault rifle when shit goes down, and I always keep an arsenal of frag grenades and IED's on hand to take out a few guards. Hey, when it all goes wrong I want to be prepared.
But if violence isn't your thing, there's still plenty to do in the world. Hotspots in Chicago let you check in and get new goodies such as cars and guns. You can hack people's phones and find items of interest from their texts and calls, like a massive scavenger hunt. You can hack open gates and find your way through a maze of pathways to jack into CtOS towers and open up new missions. Or you can get your retro video game fix with the Alternate Reality games dotted around the city, from polygonal alien-invasion shooter NVZM to the pixellated, parkour coin-collecting cash runs.
Now, I've put off talking about the campaign here, and there's a good reason for that. First, I don't think the campaign is all that good. The dialogue is clichéd, the characters aren't entirely believable, and after the first mission it all turns a bit too run-and-gun. The first mission is designed to help you get to grips with the stealth mechanics and using gadgets, but after that I rarely use the stealth in missions unless I'm crouching in cover as the enemies shoot at me (I really suck at this game, guys). That said, on normal mode they're not that much of a challenge so long as you remember to duck behind something. You get up after they've finished shooting and wait for them to pop up one at a time. A few shots to the chest, or one to the head, and they're down. I can even run up to people and knock them down if I need to, and I can still recover because I can always duck into their cover. So yeah, the campaign isn't totally great, it feels at times like it's railroading you into shooting everyone.
But my big problem with it is the online hacking. This, let me clarify, is still a problem with the campaign. As far as gaming goes, the online contracts are fun and interesting, finding your mark and staying hidden as you hack them (I'm even worse at this) or feeling the satisfaction as you find an enemy hacking your phone and draw your pistol on them (or in my case, grenade launcher - Watch Dogs is really awesome). There were some times this has irritated me too - I kinda hate some of the places it's sent me because they've lacked cover, and I don't like the fact that apparently I can't see people hiding in bushes but the police can see me when I do the same. Oh, and the observation missions seemed to be people who wanted to give me a break, they never moved for the most part. But these are all small niggles, and ones that only affect me because I'm awful at hide-and-seek, and also shooting, and stealth in general. No, what really annoys me is the fact that I have to do hacking missions to continue the campaign. It comes after you unlock the first CtOS control centre (the fourth mission), you have to stop a hacker and take an online hacking job before it'll let you carry on. And there's a fixer mission you have to stop a hacker to do. Oh, and that point on the map which just says "memories" where as soon as you activate it, says "locked" and sends a hacker after you.
What annoys me isn't the hacking here. I'm fine with playing these hacking missions, I like the thrill of looking for them and trading blows (my favourite was my first, at the "memories" point, where I got into a gunfight with my opponent - they were kicked for attacking me before it could get interesting, sadly*), I think the concept in general is awesome. But when I go to a mission it's to do the mission. I'm already sidetracked enough by sudden crimes and gang hideaways, all those distractions you throw up. When I go to a mission, I've already done a million things in the game that I hadn't planned to do. I don't want to have to go online. Let me make this abundantly clear: if I start a mission, and I have to stop some random hacker before I do it, I'm going away from that mission. What you're doing is stopping me from playing the story when I want to play the story. What I want is a dedicated single player that I can play even if I have no internet connection, and it annoys me greatly that I will not be able to do that.
Okay, rant over. But it has started me on problems, so a couple of small ones. Point one: the boats. They're awesome, but there isn't enough to do with them. I've used them to escape from police and get places, but it would be really awesome if we could've had some boat-based side missions. It's a problem with every open-world game, the ocean seems underdeveloped. Hell, there's a freaking cargo ship in the middle of the sea which you can get to, but can't go on!
Point two: there is too much. As I stated before, I do a million things before I even get to the campaign, it's too much. I get that you want it to be immersive and you want to have people playing it as long as possible, but I've got just as much amusement from driving along the roads as I have out of most of the gang hideouts together, and far more than I got from doing AR games or going on the digital trips. I haven't even tried three of the digital trips, I just haven't had the time. Sometimes it's nice not having a goal.
Point three: again, it's too gun-heavy. Apart from the missions turning into gory shooters not long after you learn how to stealth, there's an embarrassment of riches when it comes to weaponry. I've got three assault rifles, two grenade launchers, three shotguns, two sniper rifles, countless pistols and an SMG. What do I do with it all? I only use one assault rifle, I barely use the rifles, it doesn't need it all.
So that's Watch Dogs, more or less. I think I covered everything, I'm really not sure. But Watch Dogs: it's a fun game. Yeah, it has it's problems, but they're problems so many games of the same genre have, and it has a ton of extra features which make up for it. I can't recommend it enough, despite its problems, and if you're a better gamer than me then you'll love the online hacking missions more than the campaign. Always online isn't the best thing for a game, but in Watch Dogs' tech-heavy city it works well, and the variety ensures you'll never be bored again.
*P.S. Ubisoft, I appreciate why you made it so online players can't attack each other. Sure, you've got to hack them, if you kill them what's the point? But please, make an assassination mission or something, because shooting at an online opponent from cover was one of the coolest things I've done in the game. I know the idea is it's a hacking game, but I was having so much fun until my opponent was kicked. I know, I know, in a game I've called "too gun-heavy" in this very review, and in which I've pretty much slammed the lack of stealth, being able to tag another human player with the rifle from a rooftop miles away is maybe kinda hypocritical. But it would be totally awesome!
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