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| Watch Dogs review – beyond the hype | Watch Dogs review – beyond the hype |
| (2 months later) | |
| Ubisoft/PC, PS4 (version played), PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360/£40/ 18+ | Ubisoft/PC, PS4 (version played), PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360/£40/ 18+ |
| Watch Dogs is a very easy target. It lumbers into view as the biggest and most heavily promoted Triple A title in a release window where its only rivals for attention are the new Wolfenstein game and maybe Murdered: Soul Suspect. No, Mario Kart 8 isn’t in competition here. Everyone with any sense is buying Mario Kart 8 anyway. | |
| It’s not just the timing of its release that presents problems. Watch Dogs arrives creaking under the weight of two years' of hype. It was the belle of the E3 2012 ball. It was the first glimpse of next generation tech a year before either Sony or Microsoft had announced their new consoles. It was prescient, presenting a world where the electron and the switch had evolved to gift a backdoor to prying eyes and exploiters. Where the high-end gadgets we’ve all come to rely on have become liabilities and weapons. | It’s not just the timing of its release that presents problems. Watch Dogs arrives creaking under the weight of two years' of hype. It was the belle of the E3 2012 ball. It was the first glimpse of next generation tech a year before either Sony or Microsoft had announced their new consoles. It was prescient, presenting a world where the electron and the switch had evolved to gift a backdoor to prying eyes and exploiters. Where the high-end gadgets we’ve all come to rely on have become liabilities and weapons. |
| But now that Watch Dogs has arrived, some of its sheen has been stripped away. The knives initially came out when a trailer released back in March showed the game’s graphics had been downgraded. The last couple of weeks of reviews haven’t helped. While many critics have been complimentary, there is the lingering sense that a game as hyped as Watch Dogs should blow minds with the same force as Darryl Revok in Scanners – and it simply hasn’t. There have even been accusations that its content is racist, sexist and misogynist. | But now that Watch Dogs has arrived, some of its sheen has been stripped away. The knives initially came out when a trailer released back in March showed the game’s graphics had been downgraded. The last couple of weeks of reviews haven’t helped. While many critics have been complimentary, there is the lingering sense that a game as hyped as Watch Dogs should blow minds with the same force as Darryl Revok in Scanners – and it simply hasn’t. There have even been accusations that its content is racist, sexist and misogynist. |
| Perhaps it’s an indication that we expect more from developers on this generation of hardware. Critical views have hardened. Aspects that were largely skirted over in reviews of games like Far Cry 3, Batman: Arkham City and Grand Theft Auto 5 may be in for shorter shrift as the gaming audience matures. About time too. | Perhaps it’s an indication that we expect more from developers on this generation of hardware. Critical views have hardened. Aspects that were largely skirted over in reviews of games like Far Cry 3, Batman: Arkham City and Grand Theft Auto 5 may be in for shorter shrift as the gaming audience matures. About time too. |
| Lead character as dead-eyed sociopath | Lead character as dead-eyed sociopath |
| I confess, though, that my experience with Watch Dogs didn’t send me into fits of indignation. In open-world games I’m used to developers painting with broad strokes when it comes to narrative and characters. It’s what made keeping company with Trevor Philips in GTA 5 just about bearable. Aiden Pearce, the all-powerful hacker at the centre of Watch Dogs, isn’t as hateful as Trevor, but he’s initially rather bland - apart from his voice, which is a throat-shredding growl. | |
| Over time, though it becomes quite clear that Pearce is a dead-eyed sociopath. He is out to avenge the murder of his niece and he pursues this goal with a commitment that is as disturbing as it is blinkered. It’s not just the trail of corpses he leaves behind him that makes him hard to identify with; at one point his sister – the mother of the child he’s seeking revenge for – begs him to let his quest go and to move on. He refuses and as a result, he throws her and her one surviving child into the firing line. Pearce is driven to such a degree that when the player runs over the odd civilian by mistake it doesn’t seem like behavior that would be out of place for the character. | Over time, though it becomes quite clear that Pearce is a dead-eyed sociopath. He is out to avenge the murder of his niece and he pursues this goal with a commitment that is as disturbing as it is blinkered. It’s not just the trail of corpses he leaves behind him that makes him hard to identify with; at one point his sister – the mother of the child he’s seeking revenge for – begs him to let his quest go and to move on. He refuses and as a result, he throws her and her one surviving child into the firing line. Pearce is driven to such a degree that when the player runs over the odd civilian by mistake it doesn’t seem like behavior that would be out of place for the character. |
| The story that drives the action in Watch Dogs isn’t exactly groundbreaking, hitting the familiar beats – revenge, death, kidnapping - but it’s covered in quite a substantial amount of grit. The one aspect that saves it is that it eventually sets out the notion that the single-minded pursuit of something – especially something that involves criminal activities – has a rather heavy cost attached to it. Without going into spoiler territory, the denouement in Watch Dogs isn’t what you’d call a happy ending, and this seems fitting; after the misery, pain and violence Pearce has visited on both his enemies and loved ones, he doesn’t get to ride off into the sunset like so many other open-world protagonists. | The story that drives the action in Watch Dogs isn’t exactly groundbreaking, hitting the familiar beats – revenge, death, kidnapping - but it’s covered in quite a substantial amount of grit. The one aspect that saves it is that it eventually sets out the notion that the single-minded pursuit of something – especially something that involves criminal activities – has a rather heavy cost attached to it. Without going into spoiler territory, the denouement in Watch Dogs isn’t what you’d call a happy ending, and this seems fitting; after the misery, pain and violence Pearce has visited on both his enemies and loved ones, he doesn’t get to ride off into the sunset like so many other open-world protagonists. |
| On the way to his date with retribution, Pearce will hack, drive and shoot his way across the city of Chicago in a fashion that’ll also strike players as familiar. The feature that bestows Watch Dogs a sense of uniqueness is Pearce’s magical phone, which allows him to wreak chaos using the city’s operating system. Once players plough enough experience points in Pearce’s talent trees, they’ll be able to use his smartphone to steal cars, scramble traffic lights, raise bridges, deploy bollards and even send the odd manhole cover shooting up into the sky. | On the way to his date with retribution, Pearce will hack, drive and shoot his way across the city of Chicago in a fashion that’ll also strike players as familiar. The feature that bestows Watch Dogs a sense of uniqueness is Pearce’s magical phone, which allows him to wreak chaos using the city’s operating system. Once players plough enough experience points in Pearce’s talent trees, they’ll be able to use his smartphone to steal cars, scramble traffic lights, raise bridges, deploy bollards and even send the odd manhole cover shooting up into the sky. |
| They’ll be able to help themselves to the details of the smartphones of the NPCs in his environment, reading text messages, listening in on phone calls and ripping bank account details – that last aspect comes in handy when the player’s low on funds and needs to buy some hardware. The smartphone also gives them a window into the personal details of the people around Pearce. Initially this feels like a nice touch, positing the player with the odd moral conundrum – do you rip off a woman who is down to her last farthing and clinically depressed? – but eventually it blurs into background noise. | They’ll be able to help themselves to the details of the smartphones of the NPCs in his environment, reading text messages, listening in on phone calls and ripping bank account details – that last aspect comes in handy when the player’s low on funds and needs to buy some hardware. The smartphone also gives them a window into the personal details of the people around Pearce. Initially this feels like a nice touch, positing the player with the odd moral conundrum – do you rip off a woman who is down to her last farthing and clinically depressed? – but eventually it blurs into background noise. |
| Hacking and sneaking | Hacking and sneaking |
| Before the player is able to unleash the full capabilities of Pearce’s phone, they need to hack the local ctOS hub. There’s an open-ended quality to these encounters; players can charge in guns blazing, or they can opt to sneak in and out without using any bullets. In some instances, they’re able to dot through these facilities simply using the CCTV network. Once the hub’s hacked, new players will see the local ctOS towers in the area. Once those are hacked quests and missions open up on the map. | Before the player is able to unleash the full capabilities of Pearce’s phone, they need to hack the local ctOS hub. There’s an open-ended quality to these encounters; players can charge in guns blazing, or they can opt to sneak in and out without using any bullets. In some instances, they’re able to dot through these facilities simply using the CCTV network. Once the hub’s hacked, new players will see the local ctOS towers in the area. Once those are hacked quests and missions open up on the map. |
| These range from missions that result in their own mini-narratives, to fetch quests, to criminal take downs, to augmented reality games. There’s also the opportunity to invade another player’s game and engage in a rather gripping game of cat-and-mouse where one hacks the other’s phone and tries to make off without getting killed. We were concerned this would fall apart on public servers, but aside from the reported troubles on the PC version, it holds up well and offers something very interesting and possibly indictative of where seamless interconnectivity is going. | These range from missions that result in their own mini-narratives, to fetch quests, to criminal take downs, to augmented reality games. There’s also the opportunity to invade another player’s game and engage in a rather gripping game of cat-and-mouse where one hacks the other’s phone and tries to make off without getting killed. We were concerned this would fall apart on public servers, but aside from the reported troubles on the PC version, it holds up well and offers something very interesting and possibly indictative of where seamless interconnectivity is going. |
| There’s a wealth of activity for players to sink into in Watch Dogs, some of it innovative, some of it not. What there isn’t, sadly, is any overall comment on the real-world technological panopticon that Pearce uses to smite all and sundry. You could argue that it isn’t the job of developers to illuminate and educate when all they want to do is entertain. But given how forward-thinking Watch Dogs appeared to be when it first showed up on the radar, the fact that its most compelling hook is simply a useful tool is more than slightly disappointing. | |
| That said, Watch Dogs is solidly entertaining and a lot of fun to play. And while it could’ve achieved true greatness if it had followed through on its most ambitious promises, it is still better than a lot of what’s been released this year. The hype seems already to be benefiting the sales figures. Everything about Watch Dogs tells us that we are all susceptible in the digital age. | That said, Watch Dogs is solidly entertaining and a lot of fun to play. And while it could’ve achieved true greatness if it had followed through on its most ambitious promises, it is still better than a lot of what’s been released this year. The hype seems already to be benefiting the sales figures. Everything about Watch Dogs tells us that we are all susceptible in the digital age. |
| • Watch Dogs review round-up – can it live up to expectations? | • Watch Dogs review round-up – can it live up to expectations? |
| • Watch Dogs is a wake-up call on internet security | • Watch Dogs is a wake-up call on internet security |
| • Watch Dogs – freedom and morality in open-world games | • Watch Dogs – freedom and morality in open-world games |
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