I liked Watch_Dogs.

[Ambient_Malice]

I liked Watch_Dogs. I didn't LOVE the game, but I enjoyed it. And here's why.

GRAPHICS:
Watch_Dogs is a really good looking game. Yes, it looks better at night. Yes, it has some framerate problems. But the game has excellent textures, shaders, and general environmental detail. Contrary to popular myth, there was no significant "downgrade". Pretty much all the visual effects from the E3 stuff is fully intact in the final game except for stupid levels of DOF.

The game looks beautiful at night, even if it looks a bit flat during the day. The city is rich with detail. The high quality textures lie at the root of the stuttering problems some players encountered.

Watch_Dogs has some of the best facial expression tech I've seen in any videogame. Aiden acts with little quirks of his mouth and eyebrows.

Audio
Watch_Dogs has great audio design. Guns sound good, vehicles sound good, the music choices are interesting, and the environmental audio is top notch. The voice acting from the cast is uniformly excellent and helps to "sell" the digital acting. I never heard any real problem with Aiden's voice actor and his softly spoken "Look at me, I'm just like John Reese from Person of Interest" delivery.

The story
The overarching story is actually pretty decent. The writing is crisp and the characters have unique personalities. Aiden has a typical Ubisoft "REVENGE" motivation, and also a typical Ubisoft "PROTECT MY FAMILY" motivation. But regardless of this, his quest to seek revenge on the men behind the curtain who ruined his life is quite compelling. The plot has some major holes -- for example, Aiden is a wanted fugitive identified by name on the news at certain points in the game, yet he hangs out with his sister. It's not as if agencies would be watching his family or anything. The whole "Vigilante" aspect of the storyline feels clumsy, as though various parts of the game were stitched together during the period in which the game was delayed.

Watch_Dogs follows a similar story arc to The Phantom Pain. Aiden seeks revenge, discovers the people closest to him were responsible for his misfortune, and eventually kills his foe. And like Phantom Pain, there is no climactic battle against the real villain. Instead, you kill

Spoiler

Lucky Quinn by stopping his pacemaker remotely and impassively watch him die.

"This is the part where I'm supposed to say I feel empty. I'd be lying to myself. I finally feel awake... like I can breathe again. And Lena? Nothing can change her death. But maybe I can still do something that will make a difference.

But the problem is that Aiden isn't really happy. He got his revenge, but he's still morose. Nothing really changed. The ending has an emptiness that defies Aiden's monologue.

The Gameplay
Watch Dogs has very good weapon handling and very good on-foot handling. Aiden feels RIGHT. The way he scrambles to his feet after being knocked down, the way he jumps over car bonnets. The driving is a bit stiff, but it's not a huge problem. What is a problem is how fiddly using gadgets while driving is. Also, the fact you can't shoot while driving. However, these don't detract too much from the game. The Phantom Pain has stiff, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine-esque car physics, and it's still a brilliant game. The stealth works fairly well. Watch_dogs supports both straight action and stealth in most scenarios, as well as a hybrid of both. The silenced pistol feels lifted straight from Splinter Cell, which coincidentally is also a Ubisoft franchise. Watch_Dogs is like an open world techno-thriller Splinter Cell game with an even more whisper talky Sam Fisher.

The actual missions have decent variety, and the game generally offers you a fair amount of freedom when approaching situations. Also, the randomised missions where you stop crimes in progress are a nice touch.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Watch Dogs is a really solid game. IMO, it's way better than GTA or anything Rockstar has done. The controls between Watch Dogs and GTA is a night and day difference, every Rockstar character controls so stiff and mechanically that it feels like a whole process to jump over a wall. The cover swap in Watch Dogs (and Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell) really add a lot to a TPS that I feel pretty much every TPS should have the mechanic as it can be both used defensively (obviously) and also offensively. The shooting was spot-on and the best TPS shooting I've experienced in an open world game. The stealth is as good as you're going to get for game that isn't primarily focused on stealth. The hacking could've used some work in regards to more things to hack as there were way too many things to just explode, I wanted more environmental interaction (hopefully a sequel improves upon that). The hacking while driving felt like a quick-time event and I even made my own house-rule that I have to see what I'm hacking to hack it when driving. I thought the driving was pretty good, I did play on PS4 (I heard driving on PC was rough). The overall mission design was pretty solid, you were given a rather good amount of freedom to go about completing the missions very much unlike Rockstar's games where you have linear missions in a sandbox, which makes no sense. I definitely felt the story was rather weak, there was a lot of generic-ness and cliches going on and the tone seemed to jump around. There was some good aspects here and there but overall it was quite forgettable and the major story missions were kinda disappointing. I did very much enjoy how you take out the old guy at the end. I think the story would've been much better had the hacker chick been the character out for revenge while Aiden was formerly in the military or special forces. It really didn't make sense for him to be such a great hacker and badass soldier all at once. I am definitely looking forward to a sequel for sure, hopefully with a fresh set of characters (keep Jordi though, he was great).

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

I also quite enjoyed Watch Dogs. Maybe because I didn't get so totally caught up in the hype surrounding it, that I didn't worry so much if it didn't come up to standards. No, it wasn't amazing, but it offered enough mechanics to keep it somewhat interesting and offer a slightly different approach to losing police/pursuits and such. My judging it was also based on open-world games though, and there are a few things which need to be sorted out, which Watch Dogs did fine in my opinion:

Graphics:
Like you point out, the graphics are fine. I played it on an AMD HD 7770 and had zero problems. Game looked fine, night time was great, even the rain and everything felt suitably gloomy and high tech at the same time.

Controls/Handling:
The sneaking, cover and shooting mechanics work well enough that with a bit of practice, you don't need to fumble around too much and can smoothly go through each approach that you choose. Hacking, stealth, or guns blazing all work and feel quite satisfying. Especially when you have a big confrontation coming up, and plant bombs and take note of enemy approach.

Handling of vehicles is obviously very important, and while not stellar, it was good enough to reward you with good driving and multi-tasking while in a pursuit.

Otherwise, story was a bit up and down, engaging at times and downright boring at others, but always enough to keep the momentum going. Lots of stuff to do, and although I didn't 100% it I had fun with what I did do (except for hacking towers, that shit's gotten real old Ubisoft). The game within a game and the acid trips were pretty funky.

 

[Kyrian007]

I liked it too. It's just the most modern version of "the Ubisoft game" and I happen to enjoy "the Ubisoft game."

Watch Dogs is a really solid game. IMO, it's way better than GTA or anything Rockstar has done. The controls between Watch Dogs and GTA is a night and day difference, every Rockstar character controls so stiff and mechanically that it feels like a whole process to jump over a wall. The cover swap in Watch Dogs (and Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell) really add a lot to a TPS that I feel pretty much every TPS should have the mechanic as it can be both used defensively (obviously) and also offensively. The shooting was spot-on and the best TPS shooting I've experienced in an open world game. The stealth is as good as you're going to get for game that isn't primarily focused on stealth. The hacking could've used some work in regards to more things to hack as there were way too many things to just explode, I wanted more environmental interaction (hopefully a sequel improves upon that). The hacking while driving felt like a quick-time event and I even made my own house-rule that I have to see what I'm hacking to hack it when driving. I thought the driving was pretty good, I did play on PS4 (I heard driving on PC was rough).

I agree with all of that, except that last bit. Driving was fine on PC. Runs better and is faaaarrrrr better optimized for PC than Rockstar's RAGE or Euphoria engine. And that makes the driving better as well, better than GTA 4 or 5. And maybe not as fun, but had more of a realistic feel than Saints Row IV (which won't anger Saints Row fans because realism wasn't at all what they were shooting for.) That's why I thought the driving complaints were coming from the console crowd... guess not. Graphical downgrade or not, it's beautiful. And it's sandbox is more "alive" than any I've seen before. Maybe its just that you can scan details about every passerby, but people going in and out of businesses, standing in lines, maybe my favorite I thought was a glitch. I saw 2 guys spazzing out, spinning in circles like they were dancing with invisible partners. Then I got closer, and realized they were actually miming holding guns... they were playing NVZN. An augmented reality game, inside a sandbox game... like The Matrix having super awkward sex with Inception.

It just had too much build up, that's where the hate comes from. 3 years or so from an amazing E3 demo is way too long to wait for release. No game will live up to that. I assumed the demo was bullshot, and wasn't even confident it would be released after a year. I just assumed if Yhatzee said it was good, I'd pick it up on a steam sale at some point. Otherwise I wouldn't bother. But I have even less invested in it, I got a Steam key for it for free with an upgrade I bought for my CPU. And ended up getting it on release day. And without having anything invested in it and no expectations... it was good. Like a nice mix of Assassin's Creed and Far Cry 3... and better than either, mechanically. I even wound up having fun with the random multiplayer, which I NEVER do. First thing I do in most games is lock it into offline mode. And it WORKED on day one, better than most releases these days. I wasn't particularly fond of the pretty generic story, but I wasn't expecting much in that department from "the Ubisoft game." Even when they get a decent story, Ubisoft can't get more than halfway through a game without setting fire to the plot (looking right at you Far Cry 3.)

Again it was just the build up being way too drawn out. After the E3 demo, and waiting so long, gamers felt entitled to more than Ubisoft could deliver. And maybe they did deserve better, I'm not saying the hate isn't justified. But most of the time people have to rationalize hate, and so it gets a reputation as a worse game than it actually is.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

There's no accounting for some people's poor tastes. But then we live in a world where people like and pay for all sorts of garbage. If a game as bad as Watch Dogs is good enough for folks here, then I can only take my hat off to Ubisoft for successfully peddling shit and getting your money. It's disheartening however that such crap does make money because it will only encourage more of it. It also does a massive disservice to games that actually are good by using the word to describe something that at a push, could be generously called mediocre.

I suspect ubisoft could sell you folks uplay on a standalone disc and you'd buy it.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

Well, nobody's perfect, OP.


...

Snark aside;

It was decidedly meh to me. Wasn't engaging. Graphics were meh. Writing was generally crappy. Characters either weren't relatable or were just downright stupid.

"Meh" pretty much sums it up.

Throw in the bait-and-switch with the graphics and performance issues then you've managed to take a "meh" game down to a "bleh."

 

[Kyrian007]

If a game as bad as Watch Dogs is good enough for folks here, then I can only take my hat off to Ubisoft for successfully peddling shit and getting your money.

Exactly my point, folks who were invested, who bought the hype... excessive hate. A whole paragraph insulting people DARED to voice the opinion that Watch Dogs was a fun game. And then another stinger sentence I think conjecturing a bias toward Ubisoft. Or maybe it was just another shot. But it couldn't have punctuated my point any better. The only way it would prove my point even more would be another post, trying (as I pointed out) to further rationalize their hate as "it's shit" as opposed to "I wanted it to be better." As if there's something wrong with expecting a lot out of a game that had that build up. Even Crowshaw said Watch Dogs "won" that E3. Haters, just admit it. There isn't anything wrong high expectations.

 

[Diablo1099_v1legacy]

Personally, I loved the setting and the idea of remote hacking as a gameplay function.
The "Ubisoft Game" thing was kinda annoying but I still had fun, the only real gripe I had was that the slow-mo mode was kinda hard to get used to as it also slowed down the act of pulling your gun out as well as everything else.
That and the game was kinda too serious most of the time, but once the Defalt showed up, started messing with ya and ended up driving away in what I hope was called the "Defalt-mobile", it was pretty awesome.

I think they should kinda do what Saints Row did and kinda move into Die Hard 4.0 levels of hacking nonsense and actually make you play as some kinda Batman-style "Superhero".
I mean, he even gets that massive Hack-Cave during the midpoint of the game and the ending shows him embracing his role, might as well go whole hog.

 

[RJ 17]

Congrats! You liked a thing! Is there a particular reason we should care? Are you looking to try and convince those that didn't like it to suddenly think it was good?

Sorry, I just fail to see the point of topics like this. Unless you're addressing a specific and well-known criticism of something you enjoy - intending to provide a defense against said criticism - there really is no point in coming out and just declaring the reasons you like something.

Unless, of course, you're just trying to bait people into arguments, in which case I'd still say that there's better uses of time than bickering over something that is expressly stated to be entirely opinion based.

 

[happyninja42]

I liked Watch_Dogs. I didn't LOVE the game, but I enjoyed it.

Good for you, glad you enjoyed the game. No need to defend the game in detail, as it's not a big deal either way.

I think I would likely enjoy the game myself, but I don't buy Ubisoft games anymore, so I'll never know.

 

[Danbo Jambo]

I'm genuinely glad you posted the thread Ambient Malice. It's always nice to hear different perspectives on games, and too many opinions get influenced by hype both positively/negatively. Just good to hear an straight up honest opinion.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

I enjoyed it regardless of its issues. I do think it has lots of promise if they evolve the hacking aspect of the game to enable more interesting and original stuff.

 

[Elfgore]

Watch_Dogs was the ultimate "meh" for me. The gunplay and stealth were really fun at first, but got repetitive very quickly. The story, characters, and driving left a lot to be desired though.

I ended up turning it in after completing the prison level.

 

[ecoho]

sounds like fun but yeah boycotting ubisoft games because of how they bait and switched that games collectors edition.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

That's why I thought the driving complaints were coming from the console crowd... guess not.

It just had too much build up, that's where the hate comes from. 3 years or so from an amazing E3 demo is way too long to wait for release. No game will live up to that. I assumed the demo was bullshot, and wasn't even confident it would be released after a year.

I thought there was a PC issue with driving due to keyboards being digital while controllers are analog. The driving was pretty damn good in my opinion, I even YouTube'd some driving vids of Watch Dogs. The physics were a bit too on the realistic side for what I thought a game like Watch Dogs should drive like, but I never had any control issues.

It's gamers own fault for getting hyped about games like that. The first trailer of Watch Dogs didn't even sell me, it just looked like another sandbox game to me but with great graphics. It wasn't until the full gameplay demos of missions that I became interested as I saw all the different options you had to complete a mission. To me, from watching full missions of the game, Watch Dogs was going to be basically 3rd-person FarCry set in a city with a hacking mechanic and that's exactly the game I got. I expected the story and characters to be generic and bland; hell, I expect that of any game really as there's barely any games with good writing.

Hell, I knew what Destiny was at its E3 unveil when one of the devs said that you shouldn't be worried about choosing the wrong class and regretting it because all the classes play similar. Then what's the point of having classes? I tried the alpha and the game was everything I thought it was going to be. They made the game from a competitive standpoint first instead of a MMO/co-op standpoint as they really limited your characters' abilities so it was easy for them to balance PvP. You couldn't do any cool shit like Borderlands, and the powers work just like killstreaks and thus would work perfectly in PvP. You can't even fucking sprint and reload at the same time in Destiny.

There's no accounting for some people's poor tastes. But then we live in a world where people like and pay for all sorts of garbage. If a game as bad as Watch Dogs is good enough for folks here, then I can only take my hat off to Ubisoft for successfully peddling shit and getting your money. It's disheartening however that such crap does make money because it will only encourage more of it. It also does a massive disservice to games that actually are good by using the word to describe something that at a push, could be generously called mediocre.

I suspect ubisoft could sell you folks uplay on a standalone disc and you'd buy it.

I totally agree that's why we get games trying to be similar to shit like GTA and COD. GTA is a sandbox game with linear missions which defeats the purpose of it being a sandbox game to begin with. However, Watch Dogs has open-ended mission structure and its sandbox is actually merited. And even Yahtzee liked Watch Dogs more than GTAV.

 

[RedRockRun]

I liked Watch_Dogs too. For awhile I've been really sick of media critics, how they seem to band together and trash things en masse. Then it becomes uncool and shameful to disagree with them. So yes, I liked Watch_Dogs, and I liked Destiny as well. While I'm at it, I also liked The Lone Ranger.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

Writing was generally crappy. Characters either weren't relatable or were just downright stupid.

I've never really agreed with the "I can't relate to the characters" criticism. Aiden is a mopey crook who got in way over his head and his family suffered the consequences. He keeps trying to use his talents to "fix" the situation with varying degrees of success. Mostly he just gets people around him killed or hurt. He isn't a good person. I can agree that various characters make stupid decisions, but I've discovered that real people in real life are way more stupid than we give them credit.

Throw in the bait-and-switch with the graphics and performance issues then you've managed to take a "meh" game down to a "bleh."

The game had performance issues, but there was no "bait and switch" with the graphics. The so-called "downgrade" is a myth. (Edit: By this, I don't mean that there weren't changes the game's graphics and overall "look". But the differences are not dramatic. It blurs the line between graphical fidelity and art style. Kinda like how people accused The Phantom Pain of being downgraded when more often than not the promotional shots were merely taken using flattering lighting conditions. Likewise, most Watch_Dogs promotional stuff was taken in the evening or at night. It's worth noting that Watch_Dogs doesn't have a dynamic day-night cycle - it has prebaked times of day akin to AssCreed Unity, which is a limitation of the global illumination engine. For some reason, Ubisoft decided to make daytime lighting excessively white and non-moody.)

sounds like fun but yeah boycotting ubisoft games because of how they bait and switched that games collectors edition.

What are you referring to? All I can find is some vague reference to Trials Fusion.

I liked Watch_Dogs too. For awhile I've been really sick of media critics, how they seem to band together and trash things en masse. Then it becomes uncool and shameful to disagree with them. So yes, I liked Watch_Dogs, and I liked Destiny as well. While I'm at it, I also liked The Lone Ranger.

You have good taste. Even if The Lone Ranger was a blatant amalgamation of Shanghai Noon, Back to the Future 3, and Zorro 2, it was a genuinely good film. However, I don't think it's fair to blame media critics for Watch Dog's reputation. The game got fairly decent reviews. The hatred seemingly comes from gamers who are angry at what Watch_Dogs *isn't* rather than what it actually is.

Watch_Dogs has a number of design problems which stem from Ubisoft's literal "design by committee" approach. But the game does a good job of melding AssCreed-esque tasks such as hacking CtoS towers (which, thankfully, you don't actually physically climb) with Splinter Cell-esque stealth mechanics. The game offers some nifty, if poorly explained methods for handling situations. Using a device to shut down the power grid and escape in the darkness is quite impressive technologically.

One of the weirder technical quirks with Watch_dogs

 

[zombiejoe]

There's no accounting for some people's poor tastes. But then we live in a world where people like and pay for all sorts of garbage. If a game as bad as Watch Dogs is good enough for folks here, then I can only take my hat off to Ubisoft for successfully peddling shit and getting your money. It's disheartening however that such crap does make money because it will only encourage more of it. It also does a massive disservice to games that actually are good by using the word to describe something that at a push, could be generously called mediocre.

I suspect ubisoft could sell you folks uplay on a standalone disc and you'd buy it.

Wow, somebody clearly woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

 

[Evonisia]

I was under the impression that the general consensus to Watch_Dogs was "Eh, it's OK I guess". Most of the bile is aimed at the marketing which does sometimes end up as jabs at the game.

I'm glad to see an honest opinion on the thing. I'm not a huge fan of the Ubisoft sandbox model, though[footnote]"I didn't like FarCry 3" should sum up how little the model engages me[/footnote], so I don't feel as if I'd ever feel like playing it. Dying Light and Saints Row IV are the closest you'll get me to that model.

 

[tippy2k2]

Watch_Dogs was the ultimate "meh" for me.

Sums it up pretty nicely right there.

The shooting was OK. The driving was OK. The story was OK. The graphics were OK. A lot of OKs in the books for this one.

The only obvious difference between this game and other GTA-type games was the hacking and I found that it worked...well....OK. There were the things of beauty every once in a while when you could get everything to just work as planned but I found most of the time, it was easier and quicker to just shoot your target in the face then to mess with hacking.

The only time hacking really came in handy was when you were being chased and the game managed to ruin that by going into some big sloooooow mooooootion crash as the car chasing you hits something...leaving you driving blindly for the second it takes for the game to remember that it's a video game and not a movie where you can just cut away from the main character to show some crash-porn.

I don't regret playing the game but when it finished, I was more than ready to put it away.