Grab The Games: Watch Dogs

Watch Dogs came out on 27th May 2014 on all platforms. It is an open world Third person Action Adventure game. The developers behind it are Ubisoft Montreal which require little introduction, but if you really do not know, they were also responsible for Assassin Creed 4: Black Flag, Far cry 3 and many other hit titles.

The Game: It takes place in the city of Chicago, you will play as Aiden Pearce, a Vigilante who is also out for revenge for the murder of his niece. The game is all about hacking, and this is what separates Watch Dogs from its competitors like GTA series or Sleeping Dogs. Most of the main missions are linear with set objectives BUT you can go about completing these objectives in a number of ways, mostly utilizing your hacking skills which in turn rewards the players accordingly and makes missions much more fun as well. The story in my opinion could have been better, it was good but could have been better.

The world is simply huge, you can explore and explore and not get tired. Plus the details are amazing, not to mention the little treats Devs left us, you will enjoy them thoroughly.

One thing I was surprised by was the random information the game gives of the pedestrians walking around or the thugs you beat up. Sometimes it can be hilarious and sometimes it just makes you sad. You will see their age, occupation, and income, accompanied by some fact about their hobbies or lifestyle. Does a great job at humanizing them and keeps you going on random rampages.

The game looks amazing on its own, with intricate details and the often thunderstorms making your mission all the more fun and adding a much needed atmosphere. Also you will see many people comparing WD to GTA 5 so I will try to be clear, although Watch Dogs does seems to have been downgraded from the gameplay shown at E3 2013, but by no means it's a bad looking game. You are better off not comparing this to GTA (or any other game for that matter), it won't do justice to either of them.

The gameplay: As with all similar games, you can drive around thy city of Chicago freely after finishing the first couple of missions. You can either break into cars or buy the unlocked ones from your cell phone app. There is really no hand-to-hand combat to speak off unlike sleeping dogs, other than one take down from your baton. You have a variety of weapons to choose from, ranging from hand guns and sniper rifles to full-on rocket launchers and assault rifles. With such a wide variety of weapons, you can pretty much play the game however you want, but it will obviously be much harder if you start unloading an AK in the middle of town. But the cover system is quite smooth and the Focus power (slows time, much like in Max Payne 3) gives you an edge in any battle. But you are just as vulnerable as anyone else and will die quite a bit in open firefights. Plus the flanking mechanism was a treat. Enemies will fire at your last know position, giving you just enough time to go around and take them down however you please. The car chases in this game are horrible, for me at least. The only real way to take down a car is to neutralize it by using your environment i.e hack traffic lights causing an accident or blowing up pipes and such. There are NO combat options when driving which sometimes makes it extremely frustrating. This makes getting away from cops really hard as well, especially at the beginning. So it would be in your best interests to be stealthier than a ninja.

As mentioned before, hacking is a big part of this game. And using your ability to hack almost anything gives a whole new perceptive on the world, utilizing this ability in your missions makes them so much better, so much so that once you get used to it, you won't miss a chance to use them. So there is a ton of replay value. The side missions and mini games will keep you distracted most of the time as well. I barely touched the main story missions for the first 10 hours. Although hacking is a lot of fun but I felt it was made a bit too easy, but that's not a deal breaker.

The Multiplayer: MP is a bit like that of DS's invasion, you can be hacked (or hack other players) and mess with them in a variety of ways. Mostly sabotaging their missions. It is quite a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I didn't really get into the Multiplayer aspect of game but from what I have seen, it seems to be much better than the previous games from Ubisoft Montreal.

Conclusion: With a lengthy story, dozens of side missions and a great experimental Multiplayer, Watch Dogs is a game that should not be missed by any action adventure fan. Car chases aside, the gameplay is smooth and well thought-out with a lot of replay value, world is populated with intricately detailed areas and people, beautiful environments other small surprises that make it all the more fun to play the game over and over again.

-By Shinigami8671