My first review in quite some time and I pick a game like this ... well where to begin. Watch_Dogs was created by Ubisoft and is a brand new IP from them. In this game you play as Aiden Pierce the small time hacker that uses his abilities to take down the system in a quest for revenge. Along with the hacking Aiden also has a slew of weapons to choose from and a kind of police baton. Lets get into the meat of this review.
The Gameplay
There is so much with the gameplay in this game, it could run circles around some of the other titles from Ubisoft. The hacking starts off very simple, you can change the light signals in the road, peoples cell phones, overload electronics and cameras. The longer you play the more skill points you get to start hacking road blockers, explode steam vents, guards grenades, disrupt communication among with a slew of other things.
Hacking is the main focus of the game, I've heard and read some people say that the hacking isn't used all that much and you can just run in with a shotgun. That all comes down to play style, I personally tried to use hacking as much as I possibly could and then would try to sneak around the rest then either take them down with melee attacks or used the silenced pistol. Using bigger guns, seemed to ruin the experience, however the fact that Ubisoft included all of these guns was also nice because it gives you more than one way to play the game. During my second play-through I was thinking about going with more of a run and gun approach. (Getting the mobster outfit and Tommy gun really sounds cool for this.)
As for how everything works, the hacking works very well with itself and even a more direct approach. You can distract a guard and cause the plate he is standing on to explode, then disrupt the communication so that they cannot call backup and mow down the rest of them, or just take them down with hacking. The sneaking is pretty tight, one button press glues you to the nearest wall and another button unglues your. The button that glues you allows you to move to the next bit of cover. The biggest problem that I have this games sneaking, and all of Ubisofts sneaking mechanics is there is no crouch button, I don't know why but that has irked me in every installment they make.
There isn't much to say about the gunplay, you aim and the gun shoots. The reticle has slight movement that creates the idea of a very unsteady arm, someone who doesn't know how to use guns all too well. There is an ability you can unlock called focus that slows down time and allows you to properly aim your weapon. There is also an entire skill tree for guns, however like i said, Aiden doesn't really feel like he should be using as many guns as he can carry, except maybe the pistol.
The final part of the gameplay has been one of the more controversial parts of the game, the driving. Each car has its own handling and torque, which causes the way that each car drives to be different. Sometimes it feels as if the car is driving on ice, but that seems to mostly be the sports cars, they go fast and have a harder time drifting. If you can find a muscle car that start slower but can drift better and have generally better handling, they just have a harder time winning a race. Although the cars have a hard time doing certain things, the rain does affect the handling, with this I would say that for an open sandbox game, it has one of the better driving mechanics.
The Story
The story is decent, not the greatest. Aiden's nieces dies and Aiden is compelled to punish who did it. Doing this causes his sister to get kidnapped and have to deal with the kidnappers while he is also trying to find out who the killer is. There were a few times where I was genuinely surprised with the route that the story took. Then there were a few places were I just shook my head. One of the biggest things I shook my head about was that every female character in the plot is kind of flat they either disappear, get kidnapper or *Spoilers* Dies. The rest of the story was pretty interesting and they added enough flavor to the hacking to make it believable however there are a few places where it is a bit ridiculous. Overall the story wasn't the worst but could have been better,
Others
The soundtrack was nice, where it was present. The copyrighted music was pretty good, but the composed music, where present, was amazing. When you go into a mission the "radio" will be turned off or when you do a side mission the "Radio" will be turned off, sometimes with nothing playing.
One of my biggest gripes with this game is that there were only about 36 story mission in this games and it seemed like they focused more on what they could fill the city with and not what they could have put in the core gameplay. After I beat the main story line I looked at the map to find the side missions, I believe there was something near 200 things I could do. Now, almost all of those things were intertwined into the story somehow, but it seems like they could have pulled more into the core gameplay if they didn't focus as much on the side things.
Conclusion
I had so much fun playing this game and I've had the hardest time writing this review. As a new IP from Ubisoft I would say they made a great first installation, a much better start than Assassins Creed 1, which I was also one of the few to love for its time. However as a Tripple A title, its kind of flat. The story created a great setting and a decent character progression for several of the characters. However there was so much extra content that added and took away from the experience. The shear amount of extra things makes it feel like too much, but several of the side things concludes some of the stories that the main missions started while others add nothing to the experience besides ... well ... experience points, sometimes a nifty audio log that adds to the story but often times, nothing much. As it currently stands this game would be my game of the year for it's mechanics and just for the amount of fun I had for screwing around. In the end I would say, play this game somehow. I am proud to have this sit on my game collection shelf. Some disagree, just go in without any expectation and you will have so much fun with this game, scratch that, any game.
PS
If you get the chance, play the digital trips. They may just be one of the side things that don't add too much to the experience of the main portion of the game, but it plays with several of the mechanics. The sneaking, the driving, there is even a DT that has you bouncing between flowers. They may not add to the experience but they are damn fun to play.
