Poll: Watch Dogs: What do you think? Review?

[trekkiesailor]

Hey guys and gals!
Now that Watch Dogs has been out a bit, I was curious what you all thought?
I bought it for the PS4... and I'm gonna share a few things that I loved and a few things I'm a little sad about.
1. Online Play VS. Campaign- I'm a little confused and a little annoyed. I've searched for about 2 hours on different sites and through multiple Google searches and still don't understand. There is a HUGE grey area between what seems to be Online Play and what is Campaign play. I will start from the main menu, hit continue (to continue my story), and as I'm driving around exploring the city.. BAM! I'm being "intruded" upon or hacked by another player online! There doesn't seem to be a way to tell if you are in Online free roam mode or playing just by yourself. For example, in GTAV you know on the map, and from your character, and by the menu whether you are playing in free roam online or if you are in "story mode" and with Watch Dogs... I just can't tell the difference. I understand on my phone that you can go look for people to hack, or that requests will pop up mid game stating someone messed up and you can go hack them! I would really like to see the difference... if anyone has knowledge of a very specific way to tell... PLEASE let me know!
2. Hacking- I really like the idea if being a vigilante hacker. You use your skills as a hacker to save people from muggers, stop mob bosses from taking control of the city, bringing down "the man" pretty much. I LOVE the idea of hacking pipelines, bridges, and street lights to stop people from chasing your or running from you. And I also like the idea of hacking to stealthily complete a mission... but unfortunately it all become mundane. It's too easy to accumulate money that there isn't even anything worth buying with such as houses, useful cars, or a wide range of guns.. all too basic(unlike some other games I know of), it's crazy easy to unlock skills/level up (i've played for 2 1/2 days now and unlocked all the skills except notoriety skills), and you just run around the city after a while holding down SQUARE to get money, unlock garage doors etc. I'm also sick of the side missions all being the same! If they took so long to develop a game... why wouldn't they make some diversity in it all. Even hacking IN the mission to unlock security systems and such are extremely easy "puzzles." I can already tell just after a few days of playing the game, I'm going to get bored with the game play.
3. Story- The story is meh. It's a cool concept as I said in point 1. Vigilante hacker working against the man and to get revenge for is niece being killed. But some story points make me want to play the story missions right away and I'm excited and determined and some are just pointless and make me wanna skip them and just go boat out in the ocean on the edge of the map for 2 hours. It can get boring and mundane. PLUS did Clara (badboy17) make anyone think of Girl With The Dragon Tattoo instantly!? It's almost as if they copied it completely! Foreign, tattooed up, rocker chick who is a crazy awesome hacker with skinny jeans and a Mohawk?! I don't mind it... I actually like her character so far... but it just seems like a copy!
4. Bugs- Now point four might make me sound really dumb, but it's a complaint I have. I even called up Ubi, waited 2 hours on hold just to try to get some sort of compensation or points back... but I was sick of getting hacked by other players while trying to explore on my own in that grey area which I thought was "story mode." I found out finally after my 2 hour google search you can turn off the "online invasion" so you can play completely without scare of being tailed or hacked... BUT if you do it will put your Notoriety Points back to 0 and take away any Notoriety Skills away. I assumed they would be given back to you when you go back to "online mode"... I ASSUMED WRONG... my roughly 3000 Notoriety Points... GONE! So I talked to Ubi and they pulled that "you agreed to the game taking away your notoriety points when you went full incognito" bullshit! I argued back and forth but the game developers designed it that way so it's useless... my own assumptions just put me behind by a few good hours and much frustration with online players...
The other "bug" i see is "swimmers" as I like to call them. If you initiate a trail or hack on another player... they can simply jump into a body of water... swim away and get away clean. You move to far out of range so you have to chase them... BUT you can't hack in the water... if you're lucky enough you can find a boat... but then they just swim for shore... it's just shitty! It needs to be fixed somehow. I'm not here to come up with solutions, but seriously... it's getting annoying... "Oh I'm being trailed... jump in a river.. and I'm clean!" It defeats the purpose of the "online hacking other players" portion of the game... the whole ONLINE portion of the game... it would be like COD or Battle Field... if you go into this one building... you are indestructible but can shoot anyone and no one can touch you! .... the map would be boring a useless after a while! Right? At least in my mind it is the same premise... and people are too selfish to play fair...
So after all this... there are a few things they need to change:
A. Get rid of the ability to escape online players in water from hacking you.
B. Make it so you can go to "offline" mode WITHOUT a penalty... Or at least make it more obvious when you are in online mode and able to be hacked and when you are in "story mode."
C. Make it harder to obtain and earn skills. I've played for maybe a total of 15-20 hours and have all the skills (minus the notoriety.. thanks Ubisoft!)... and I'm still in Act 2/5...

Let me know what you guys think about the points I made and if you guys have any other points about what you like or dislike in Watch Dogs. Over all I do really LOVE the game... I'm just picking at it due to my frustration with losing my Notoriety Points. Please remember to respect each other and me in the game discussion. We're all nerds here

-Trekkiesailor
"I Aim To Misbehave"

 

[sXeth]

If you didn't go into Online Free Roam on the Online section of the phonemenu, you aren't in online free roam. You can still be invaded and accrue bounties if you hack the booby-trapped NPCs (unless you turned that off in the menu), and the online activities will flash up occasionally as detected, but you have to specifically go in or you're just in "standard" mode.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Watch Dogs is just an amazing game, I'm loving it and I HATE most sandbox games.

The online is like Demon's/Dark Souls where you can be invaded while just playing by yourself. I believe you can play signed out of PSN if you don't wanna be invaded and don't want to lose your Notoriety.

The main thing I would change is to remove a lot of the explosion hacking things, there's way too much shit to explode. I wish there was more variety of things to do to enemies other than exploding them or other things. That would allow you to be a bit more creative and tactical.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

All of my missions were by using the Spec Ops pistol 95% of the time. That pistol was pretty much the only thing you would ever need in the game to finish it.

When I would set off an alarm I would immediately change to Assault Rifle to finish the job.

 

[Roofstone]

I stick to the desert eagle and the best shotgun. A magnificent combo! For stealth I try to stick to close quarters, since I like imposing my own two weapon limit.

The game is awesome, truly great fun! The driving is horrendous, but you quickly get used to it. On the flipside I can no longer play GTA, since I am used to horrendous driving.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

I bought it for PS3 and... my god, it's ugly. Don't get me wrong, the actual gameplay is really good but the graphics on LastGen are terrible. Objects, cars, pedestrians and textures pop in all the time, the draw distance is absolutely poor, textures are extremely lowres and the lighting is extremely poor. Now, I'm not usually obsessed with graphics but Watch Dogs just looks downright unacceptable on PS3 especially if you compare it to GTA 5 or even Ubisofts own Far Cry 3.

 

[Smiley Face]

I mix it up - going into enemy strongholds, I do usually stealth it with my Spec Ops Goblin AR, and on the rare occasion that I'm found and have to fight a lot of enemies, I tend to use the shotgun. My favourite thing though, is when facing off against vehicles, I like to do the Winter Soldier - standing in the middle of the road with my grenade launcher, blasting their entire convoy to pieces.

As for the game itself, I was underwhelmed in many ways. The plot development seemed very scattershot and disjointed, whihc isn't unsurprising given their long development time, but it didn't really hook me in. I did enjoy exploring the open world and missions for a while, but that lost interest after a time.