So I bought watch dogs today.

[AndrewC]

From maxed out on PC, here's what the game is from a mechanics side and other stuff:

1) lacks basic mechanics of an open world game (the cars don't even have a radio selection, I mean for fuck sake this is a game about technology being everywhere and you're stuck with the same damn playlist)
2) shoddy texturing and shader implementation (the sun reflection you see is just an image textured onto building windows)
3) civilians don't react to you holding them at the gunpoint, nor when you point weapons at them whilst they're in a vehicle.
4) boring repetitive gameplay - hack everything? more like press one button to do the same shit over and over, on every mission
5) car handling? you'd have better luck driving a sausage
6) look at all those tasty glitches, boy oh boy
7) hope you're ready for a fantastic story with 'Bland Man in a hat' and 'Angry Family Member' and 'I sure hope he doesn't betray me-man' and watch out for 'This character was a girl all along? TALK ABOUT A PLOT TWIST'
8) the story is complete balls
9) every mission is basically the same

I wouldn't recommend this game to anyone but if they were so insistent then it's hardly worth the money, even when it's cheaper I'd still recommend it as a rental.

 

[Treeberry]

Hrm. The technology gets better but the games get worse...

I wonder if they half-ass things on purpose so that when they release sequels (because everything HAS to be a franchise now!) they can pretend they made a better game.

 

[Netrigan]

If the game had any type of satisfying story, I'd call it a great game.

Instead it's a okay game with some really fun bits, especially game hideouts which combines the base take-overs of Far Cry 3 with specific target take-down instructions (not unlike the Assassination missions of Assassin's Creed 2). The convoy missions are fun, but wear out their welcome.

Over-all, the stealth and camera hopping give it an identity in the crowded sandbox genre, but there's a lot of painfully average content in there. And none of the cool NPCs are nearly as cool as the game thinks they are, while Aiden is a total twat.

 

[Netrigan]

Hrm. The technology gets better but the games get worse...

I'm not sure I agree with this. The biggest issue modern games have is the big budgets means they take fewer chances. The same thing happens with big budget movies and it just means you have to move a fair bit of your focus toward content with smaller budgets where they can do some interesting things.

Yet as many problems as I have with Watch Dogs being an insanely safe product with a horrible story and a lot of painfully average content... that average content is enjoyable and polished. I might not have the urge to replay any Assassin's Creed game, but it's not because it isn't insanely fun... it's because there's always a new one coming out which is the usual mixed bag of improvements and missing the point.

Every so often I go back and revisit the games I loved in the past... and they're never as good as I remember. I love, love, love Doom, but to go back to that "brutally hard" game is to find a game which isn't nearly as tough now that I changed the way I play it. And if you go back and play random games you missed, you'll find a bunch of cookie-cutter content which would have been painfully average back then... and is just horribly dated today.

I always smile when people talk about Goldeneye being the greatest FPS evah. And while that might be true in the sense of its importance to the development of the genre (although often in the most annoying ways possible, i.e. suicidal escort missions), that Oddjob was so hated in multiplayer is pretty much proof that there's some really, really huge problems with the game which nostalgic fans are far too willing to over-look.

What's missing is that impact. It's nearly impossible to get gob-smacked by a game these days. Star Wars can never happen again because no one can hope to match the impact of it... even if there are quite a few movies which are a lot better.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Watch Dogs is a great sandbox game that does things right. Most sandboxes have linear missions which defeat the whole purpose of said sandbox. Most of the missions have good level design to them, they are like playing through a chuck of a Splinter Cell level to a degree. Care is taken with regards to enemy placement instead of just spawning X amount of enemies here and hoping for the best like other more higher rated and well-known sandboxes. You can replay through missions over and over again and each time they will play out differently due to enemy AI and the ability to hack objects. The cover system is actually one of the best cover systems in a TPS, the shooting itself is very good, better than some pure TPSs like Uncharted.

The 2 complaints I don't understand about Watch Dogs is the driving and the story. The driving is just fine, I really don't understand how people can't drive. The story and characters are bland like 99% of games out there. Writing is the thing that needs to be improved in games across the board. Did people actually go into Watch Dogs expecting a good story? That is just insanity. Even games that are acclaimed for having good stories mostly have just average or above average stories when compared to other mediums like TV, movies, books. Gaming is still very young and almost all games are nothing more than Jackie Chan movies, the story is just there to link all the levels/missions together just like plots of Jackie Chan movies exist to link all the action scenes together.

 

[Netrigan]

The story and characters are bland like 99% of games out there. Writing is the thing that needs to be improved in games across the board. Did people actually go into Watch Dogs expecting a good story? That is just insanity. Even games that are acclaimed for having good stories mostly have just average or above average stories when compared to other mediums like TV, movies, books. Gaming is still very young and almost all games are nothing more than Jackie Chan movies, the story is just there to link all the levels/missions together just like plots of Jackie Chan movies exist to link all the action scenes together.

Even in a fairly bland story (Far Cry 3, I'm looking at you), I usually have a sense of wanting to see what happens next. I didn't feel attached to any of the characters, I wasn't curious about the unfolding mystery at the heart of the story, I was pretty much bored with every development in the game.

Even Assassin's Creed 3's pitiful story managed to hook me more than Watch Dogs. There's usually something, a character, a situation, a mad sense of fun. Even The Saboteur had me more emotionally invested and that game was all kinds of meh.

 

[putowtin]

It is a fun game, the problem with Ubisoft and most game developers is they over-hype or show all the best bits before the game is released. Everyone saw Watch Dogs at E3 last year, got their knickers all in a twist (in a good way) then because it didn't live up to 12 months of hype got their knickers all in a twist (in a bad way) and slagged it off.

I'm not saying it's the greatest game ever (which the Ubisoft hype train wanted you to believe)
I'm not saying it's going to cure cancer or solve world hunger (which the naysayers seemed to think it would the amount their moaning)
It is just a fun game, and at the end of the day, isn't that what a game is supposed to be?

 

[AnthrSolidSnake]

I really liked it as well. It didn't exactly live up to expectations, and I knew that. However what we got was still a very solid game, well, except for performance. The game still manages to run like garbage on my 780ti, particularly while driving and sometimes just walking forward.

Even after their "fix" it's made no difference.

 

[Alfador_VII]

This is on my list to consider when it's discounted in the next Steam Sale, because especially with a patch or two ot should run better.

And there's the unofficial mod/tweak that makes it look about as good as they promised a year or two ago. So yeah, I'll play it eventually.

The only real question is whether I get GTA V on PC before it. That's partly down to how well/badly Rockstar port it this time, and how long it takes to get fixed.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Even in a fairly bland story (Far Cry 3, I'm looking at you), I usually have a sense of wanting to see what happens next. I didn't feel attached to any of the characters, I wasn't curious about the unfolding mystery at the heart of the story, I was pretty much bored with every development in the game.

Even Assassin's Creed 3's pitiful story managed to hook me more than Watch Dogs. There's usually something, a character, a situation, a mad sense of fun. Even The Saboteur had me more emotionally invested and that game was all kinds of meh.

The only saving grace of Far Cry 3 was Vaas and the ridiculous "bad" ending. I go into almost every game with absolutely no expectations with regards to story and characters and anything I get out of that is a bonus in my book. I'm not saying don't criticize games for writing, it's just that Watch Dogs is seeming to get dumped on for it when it's a problem in almost every game. I'd be fine if a game couldn't get over say an 8/10 if the story was bland, but that's not definitely not the case with game reviewers. I actually did get a few little bits of enjoyment out of the characters and story here and there, Jordi had his moments, even Bedbug was occasionally entertaining.

I have the same feelings about online too. Did people actually expect Watch Dogs to have good online modes? Most online focused games have bad online (I'm very picky with online multiplayer, it has to be extremely good or I won't play it), yet people expect a single player focused game to have good online. That is insanity as well.

It is a fun game, the problem with Ubisoft and most game developers is they over-hype or show all the best bits before the game is released. Everyone saw Watch Dogs at E3 last year, got their knickers all in a twist (in a good way) then because it didn't live up to 12 months of hype got their knickers all in a twist (in a bad way) and slagged it off.

I'm not saying it's the greatest game ever (which the Ubisoft hype train wanted you to believe)
I'm not saying it's going to cure cancer or solve world hunger (which the naysayers seemed to think it would the amount their moaning)
It is just a fun game, and at the end of the day, isn't that what a game is supposed to be?

NO, NO, NO. It's the people that over-hype everything. The gameplay demos of Watch Dogs showed exact missions from the game. Like this video here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEeEoU2wyXg] (which isn't even an actual mission). The game plays almost exactly like I thought it would from the gameplay videos. There's some minor disappointments like all the things you can explode via hacks (I was hoping for more kinds of hacks) but also some small good surprises like the cover system and the unexpectedly good shooting. I got pretty much the exact game I was expecting.

People already have the new Zelda over-hyped when the trailer showed NO GAMEPLAY.

 

[DirgeNovak]

I bought the PS4 version last week (used, because I'm not giving money to Ubisoft until they stop being dicks) and I'm really digging it. It's definitely not OMG TEH BEST GAME EVAR like the hype machine tried to convince us it was, but it's still a lot of fun. The hacking mechanic works better than I thought it would, it has this almost Deus Ex-like feeling of freedom in your approach to missions, it has a great sandbox with tons of side activities, and it has one of the rare instances of competitive multiplayer I can actually enjoy. Great stuff.

The story can go fuck itself, though. All the characters with the possible exception of Clara and Jordi are completely insufferable, and the plot so far (I'm on act two) is a giant pile of clichés. Person of Interest this is not.

 

[sXeth]

I liked it. Played free roam mp for the first time yesterday, that was lackluster. Disappointed. They don't even have a blip on the map to tell you where your friends are. Liked single player though.

Yeah, I'd classify Free Roam as incredibly broken. Passive mode doesn't actually stop you getting grenade spammed (which kills you via fall damage) or the person firing said grenades. There's no way to team up in Adversarial Mode, so you can't even climb near each other (takedown and climb are the same button) or ride together in a car. Most times I've gone in, its just been people sniping your car constantly with the vehicle-one-shotting rifle from the convoy mission completion. Hacking can also be used to circumvent passive mode to kill people, though thats at least a timing exercise, and more counterable.

I should note, I'm referring to when you go in on Adversarial, and the place is full of people in Passive just doing the trolling techniques while they can't be killed. You do rarely just find people on passive mode who want to race, or take on the cops survival-mode style or whatever.