Watching the release trailer for ‘Watch Dogs’ was exciting, I had remembered its reveal at E3 2012 and that futuristic characterization of Chicago looked and sounded stunning, imaginative, game changing. As the release date crept closer the hype didn't die down; it intensified and I too was excited, I was expecting something along the lines of 'Deus Ex: Human Revolution' I guess but with a bit more 'Grand Theft Auto' thrown in for good measure. There was to be an open world; that part was important. Open world settings all the rage right now and if your game lacks one then prepare for criticism as its such a commonplace practice now in this genre of games that there's simply no reason not to. The hacking spin was, of course, extremely important as well as there's simply not enough good quality, intelligent futuristic games out there on the market right now so 'Watch Dogs' proved to be a valuable addition to the genre. So, did it live up to the hype? Unsurprisingly, no. In typical modern AAA game fashion it was little more than a huge wave of anticipation followed by the sound of lots of games clicking into consoles, boot screens, updates, some silence as players had a little whirl in their new playground followed by a gradual feeling of, 'well this is a mediocre experience' coupled with an intense desire to find something positive to defend their pre-ordering decision. Why is this? So many reasons, none of which make this a bad game (I cannot stress that enough for these posts) but plenty of which make it a disappointing game.
#1 Watch Dogs
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Genre: Action/Adventure
Release date: 27th May 2014
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
ESRB: M - Mature
So after all that disk tray clicking and riding the hype train for two solid years what I ended up getting was something that looked pretty, though unworthy of a 'next gen' console, but which was weighed down by a predictable storyline, bland characters and a half-assed attempt at integrating hacking into a traditional action game. You play as Aiden Pearce, who turns out to be the most boring character ever to be conceived, who is doing all of this illegal stuff as a revenge mission because his niece was killed and sister kidnapped. In terms of storyline, that’s about it. It’s all extremely generic and clichéd and despite the rather disasterous situation poor Aiden's been put in somehow remains completely unemotional. Perhaps it's the diabolical awful voice acting that's most noticeable in Aiden as his droning, stereotypically hoarse 'tough-guy' voice is simply a chore to listen to and does very little to offer him any character or emotional development.
Voice acting aside, Aiden himself is a relatively poor protagonist and whilst I'm not getting into the debate of 'he's like Batman because he's on a revenge mission and is a criminal to stop criminals, and has a hoarse voice' I will point out that he has no redeeming qualities. He's an incredibly inconsistent character and never owns up to or accepts the terrible things he's actually doing to people resulting in a you having to play as someone who is formally known as a 'dickhead'. Whilst I accept that sandbox games tend to leave moral choices to the player this is no 'Skyrim' or 'Dragon Age' type game; Aiden Pearce is a character already conceived with scripted sequences and set choices, he has a backstory, sort of, a motive for his actions, in a sense, and a personality, if you can call it that. Games like Uncharted dealt with the moral inconsistency in a pretty simple way; they ignored the rising kill count and just gunned on with the storyline as though you'd never mowed down those hundreds of innocents. I don't like that, but you know, fair enough, you can't control a player's actions. Some games like 'GTA' and 'Saints Row' just let you loose on the world and don't apologize for how much of a sociopath you are; that's also fair enough, they leash those psychotic actions in and make them their own and that's kind of what I wanted 'Watch Dogs' to do, but it didn't; it copped out of it. So whilst you're running around as a vigilante, becoming more of a mass murdering monster hacker rather than a force for good, the game spends the rest of its time playing catch up and trying to account for why you're doing all these things. If I was supposed to pity Aiden for bad things happening around him, I didn't. He's pretty much impossible to love and even though his actions often turn out justified you only tend to find that out after you've already killed someone making it conveniently ok now. Well, that's not good enough really, nobody goes around just murdering people based on hearsay and scant details, nobody except Aiden and, for a vigilante, that makes him a pretty unprofessional one. Worse still, the guy doesn't even enjoy himself when he was doing all of these bad things so you can't pass him off as a regular video game sociopath and, whilst he doesn't enjoy it, he doesn't hate it either. When I said Aiden Pearce was the most boring video character I meant it; he has no personality, not even a negative one, there's just nothing going on in that little head of his except a serious revenge plot that never comes up for a breather.
That's another thing; this is a serious, serious game. So serious it's boring and whilst I understand it's a serious topic with serious consequences and serious things going on... there's a reason why, in the 'Assassins Creed' series, nobody liked Altair and everybody loved Ezio; he had a goddamned personality and a sense of humour to boot. I'm going to leave Aiden alone for a bit because he's had enough stick from me and instead I'll focus on the 'glued together with string and cheap sellotape' storyline. 'Watch Dogs' is a game that takes itself too seriously and the very least I was expecting from it was some substance that justified the setting and premise the developers had been cawing about this whole time, but no. Maybe I was being naive or expecting too much but I was genuinely looking forward to a game that grabbed an extremely important political issue by the horns and tackled it in a way that was well written, well thought out and well researched. Mass surveillance and living inside a society that is terrified of being observed, especially with the frequency of hacking scares and institutes like Anonymous should have been enough fodder for a fantastic and insightful game. If you want it to be an action/adventure game with a shit tonne of shooting and driving then fine, that's ok, you can have you fun with it but remember what makes a game memorable and stand apart from the competition. If you're having trouble remembering I'll give you a hint; it's not six shirts all layered on top of one another, and constantly being on your mobile phone, even in the presence of friends and family.
Watch Dogs never quite gets to where its going, it has a good idea but the writing is terribly weak and unfounded in reality, its one of those games where it's really fun as long as you're not looking for anything with meaning or personality. There are plenty of minor irritants in the game such as a lack of jumping, no, really and the inability to shoot whilst in a vehicle, although considering how difficult it is to effectively drive what feels like a metal skip on roads covered in black ice it probably would be impossible to shoot and drive at the same time anyway. Strangely, you also cannot attack pedestrians with melee attacks except a scripted animation of a takedown where you tackle someone, this would be reasonable if you couldn’t due this due to a ‘don’t beat up innocents’ rule but you can shoot them to death and with almost no consequence as police presence is extremely limited. Strangely, the police AI is also something to be wary of as they'll always turn up with a shoot to kill mentality and will never attempt to arrest you and, if you happen to see a civilian commit a crime, they'll never bother attempting to do anything about it. Frustratingly, whilst the police have absolutely no way of entering the water they do have the ability to locate you even when you're neatly tucked away behind several walls in what was, presumably, an impenetrable hiding fortress.
Now, whilst the game is by no means short it may as well be because after a few hours you’ll have seen everything there is to be seen in terms of gameplay and missions. As if that's not bad enough there are no more skills to utilize and you're left to trek diligently onwards through a deplorable storyline as you're left with very little reason to continue playing unless you're a completionist. What this necessarily results in is a game which is extremely easy as, having unlocked all of your potential abilities, you’re now incredibly overpowered and fighting against easy enemies for the rest of the game. In order to upgrade your equipment you must procure yourself some money but that too is extremely simplistic as you can hack approximately 25% of all NPCs and quickly acquire masses of wealth with nothing to spend it on. Similarly, whilst I was expecting a glorious, sprawling open world of future day Chicago where I could go anywhere, do anything, hack everyone, what I was left with were very few and limited opportunities to actually be the magnificent hacker I supposedly was and whilst the city is certainly an open world experience, it’s not a very interesting one due to the lack of interaction.
Watch Dogs is essentially only successful because it's a laugh. There's not much depth to it, the side missions are extremely irritating and repetitive though are essential for leveling up so you just kind of have to put up with it. There are some pretty annoying mini-games that are surprisingly frequent but tolerable but overall the game is lacking in personality, originality and intelligence. It feels as though 'Watch Dogs' has picked up loads of gameplay elements from a lot of other games, mashed them all together in a new setting, put in some awful driving mechanics and thrown in a lazy explanation for why you're on a hell sent vengeance mission where you can do whatever the hell you want. On a positive note, the game is sort of fun if you can get beyond all of its negative points and if you enjoy messing about and don't care about the substance behind it all then it's a good game for that purpose. But for a game that’s supposedly digging at the political issue of living in a surveillance state it comes across from the point of view of a child who only understands it as a way of reading bits of information about people and stealing their money. All in all, the writers appeared to have either played safe to the point of boring or they cobbled together something at the last minute and given this game was announced two years ago and was pushed back a further 6/7 months that seems fairly unlikely. What this game boils down to is your usual sub-standard action game that's all bark and no bite; nothing really grabbed me, nothing made it stand out and whilst I would play it if I was really tired and just wanted to dick about for a bit I would never sit down, engage with it, and love it to the end. It's just not that good of a game.
The Good:
- Some fun gameplay elements
- Nice setting; futuristic Chicago is very cool
- The open world setting is good, though didn't take advantage of its setting
- Graphics are decent, could have been better for PS4/Xbox One though
- Nice mission variety
- Good stealth elements
- Understated but effective skill tree
- Very good animations
- Fantastic soundtrack
- Enemy randomization offers up new experiences
- Aiden Pearce
- Money is far too easy to obtain and becomes meaningless
- The driving is awful, unable to shoot from a vehicle
- No storyline, diaboloical writing, flimsy
- Terrible voice acting
- Side missions are irritating
- The game is both far too serious yet unintelligent
- Morality is ignored then scraped back to no avail
- The hacking is quite tedious and not very dynamic
- Police AI is irrational
- Gunplay overshadows the hacking aspects
- Dodgy checkpoints, a lot of mission restarts, lots of insta-fail missions.
Final thoughts: "It's surprisingly average for an action game but seems to think it's better than it is, that's probably the advertising budget right there. Aiden is a chore to work with, I have never hated a character as much as this guy, apart from that guy from Soul Suspect... Simply, this feels like a game that any developer could make, change a few elements and re-release it as the next big thing. Sadly, this game just doesn't impact on me in the slightest."
5 Most Disappointing Games of 2014 (So far)
