Scared of Watchdogs

[pearcinator]

There's a lot of hate out there...unjustified though because I think the game is very good.

I like it better than GTAV so far, will it last? Maybe not but the mini-games are great distractions when things get too repetitive. They are a nice way of mixing up the gameplay. I can play it on Ultra/High. Ultra in most cases and high in a couple of others and the game looks great!

Driving is not bad, feels similar to GTAV to me. It's not truly 'revolutionary' but it's great for a new IP. I am sure the inevitable sequels will be better as Ubisoft is pretty good at listening to feedback to improve future installments. Don't listen to all the hate though.

 

[SonicWaffle]

TLR - I wish I could print out this post and put it on my wall.

Allot of People have gotten Watchdogs early by playing it offline and they have talked they have said alot of bad things about the game that might have some points to it but I don't know if they are telling the truth or trolling I'm just a little scared Watchdogs may not be the game we got hyped for back in 2012. Opinion?

In short, it's good but not great. It's not up to the hype, not even close, but it's good.

Starting with the bad:
- Driving is horrendous. It's so bad I am actively avoiding driving missions where possible and being chased by police is such a horrid experience I simply stop and let them arrest me. The radio stations also pipe out terrible music, so much so it's the first sandbox game I've actively turned off the car music. Driving responsiveness is negligible. ie. you only give general suggestions to the vehicle (stop, go, turn) and it takes it under consideration.

God yes. Driving cars in this game, unless you get a high-end sports vehicle, feels like riding a greased-up Orca whale down a big hill and trying to get him to go into a hairpin turn at the bottom. He will not appreciate this. He will throw a fit and spin in angry circles, roaring and thrashing his tail, causing untold property damage and knocking down civilians like they were particularly feeble bowling pins. The only way to mitigate the whale's rage is to ride him as slowly as possible, but since the police are riding on (to drag this metaphor out to painful levels) laser-guided precision sharks, going slowly is a death sentence for poor Shamu. Whatever you're driving, they are faster than you. They can brake and turn better than you. They will also gang up on you. If you manage to duck them and hide in an alley, they'll loiter around the area investigating (points to Ubisoft for a decent cop AI, at least) and if they spot your car they'll start shooting at you even if your crime was as minor as running a stop light.

If, by some miracle of miracles, you lose them completely you can set off back to your destination. Get outside the grey circle and you're home free. Except that they use the cameras of the city to check for your face, instigating "random" checks which are usually at both your current location and the very next street you're about to head onto. Floor it if you like, but the checks will always be one step ahead of you and you'll pick up a tail again almost immediately. Thanks to the aforementioned greasy whale style of handling, your vehicle will not be manouverable to avoid them for very long. One of the first side missions I picked up was to transport a wanted car from a garage to another location, but after about ten attempts I just gave up and quit because however far I ran, they always found me. It's painful.

- The shooting isn't great. It's "functional" but there's no satisfying gunplay to be found. Think Resident Evil 4, but with strafing, only much more ungainly. I tried an AR (Alternate Reality) shooting minigame and aiming was an absolute chore.

The shooting is also usually accompanied by taking cover and stealthing around an area. A nice idea, but the cover is so wonky you'll usually be spotted fairly early and end up shooting it out with the guards anyway. You can use various distractions to occupy guards, but if you then creep up and take them down you can't move the bodies, guaranteeing that after all your hard work the next guard will soon spot them and sound the alarm unless you abandon subtlety and start popping headshots. Way to be sneaky, Aiden.

- Controls are cumbersome. There are so many functions and menus it puts Far Cry 3 to shame. I've failed missions on multiple occasions because my control of Aeden is rudimentary. The menu is horrid to navigate and there's a lot of stuff whose functions I can't even guess at. I don't understand the need for a horrid sticky cover system at all (Splinter Cell style).

Agreed again. The controls seem to be a mishmash of other Ubi games, with free-running taken direct from Assassins Creed except without the climbing, and that to actually free run (which in this context means "vault over low obstacles") you need to hold both the right trigger and the B-button. Hacking is a nice idea, but in practice you're often moving - or your target is moving - so fast that all you have time to do is hold the X button to get paid. You won't often have time to read the little tidbits of info on a target. Shooting is innacurate, with what I assumed to be a guaranteed headshot from six feet away pinging off into a wall behind the target. The movement stick is also hella sensitive, with the pressure difference between walk and run being minimal, presenting a problem in the multiplayer "invasion" mode where the best bet is to act like an ordinary citizen. Just a hair too much pressure and Aiden breaks briefly into a jog and alerts the target to his presence.

- You cannot customise Aeden or change his outfit, at all, but we can reskin/retexture it. You can buy the different skins from the clothes store (same outfit, different colour combinations, textures (eg. leather, wool, etc) and caps.

The bulk of which look ridiculous for the setting. I've currently got Aiden outfitted in a bright blue-and-red combo because it appears to make no damn difference at all; for a stealthy hacker he sure does like to draw attention to himself with garish outfits and constantly wearing a mask in situations that don't warrant it.

- There's a binary-morality system depending on how you solve side missions, where people hate or admire you. I went from hated to admired and saw some cool changes. I hacked one person having a text conversation about how cool it was that I was right there next to them. Made me smile.

Another idea that's nice in theory but rubbish in execution. You can be an absolute paragon of virtue in your missions but still lose a ton of reputation when your vehicle inevitably skids on a wet corner and plows down a convents worth of nuns on their way to church. It lacks any sense of actual morality to boot - helping people will cause them to admire the Vigilante, stealing from people and generally being a fucking menace to society (blowing things up, shorting out lights or exploding water mains etc) won't do anything at all. Apparently nobody in Chicago can put two and two together and realise that the cyber-hero who manipulates the city's computer systems to his own ends might also be the guy greedily siphoning funds out of their bank accounts.

Still, it's playable and interesting enough to be worth a look by anyone interested in sandbox games. There is a freedom to explore, tackle content in whatever order and in most missions, many ways in which to tackle it. There are some cool moments to be found, though it takes a lot of looking to find them.

I agree. For all my gripes, it isn't an un-fun game, and will probably keep you entertained for some time. I'd recommend it to pass the time, but it's hardly the revolutionary experience we were expecting way back when. Don't go into it with your expectations too high, and you probably won't be disappointed too badly.