Ryanrulez5 said:
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.
- Not only is the music horrid noise, the car radio often pushes news/talk show broadcasts, ostensibly world building. So I get in a car, disable music. Mandatory radio comes on, I can't change it. I stop car, get out, get back in, turn off music again and then drive on. RARRGH!
- 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 story is entirely forgettable. Seriously, I don't understand it from one mission to the next. Characters are entirely bland and I cannot describe any of them such that you could guess who I was talking about.
- Aeden is bland and grizzled. He has stumpy legs and wears a stupid outfit. He also outright narrates what's going on. I can't tell if it's a "clever" 4th wall break, condescending me or he is just stupid.
- 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).
- Autosave only, no way to manually save. Also no way at all to change FoV in-game. It's just playable, but not comfortably so.
The meat and veg:
- There are towers to climb. At the start of the game, Aeden is only "patched in" to one section of the city. You have to install "backdoors" as it were in these towers to get access to ctOS ("City OS") in different areas and unlock side missions/minigames. It's unnecessary busy work, but is entertaining enough.
- "Hacking" is a button press. Tell a lie, it's a "Press and hold". Wouldn't want it to be too easy now. In fairness, if it was any more complicated it would get very old, very fast. You will press this button more often than any other (except maybe sprint) as you control cameras, unlock doors and hack boxes which...are just boxes and don't actually do anything except tell you that you hacked them (and an XP reward). Hacking people is rewarding enough to make it worth doing (you get lots of money from their bank accounts).
- Minigames. There are so many minigames. In fairness, they're fun for a time but I only did just enough to get the unlockable rewards. There are achievements for persevering but f**k that shit. There's a "Follow the Queen" game with cups and a ball, there's a "drinking game" which involves trying to move a drunken reticle over QTE prompts and the one I quite liked (guessing from my name), Chess Puzzles. You have a chess board and limited moves to solve the puzzle (eg. mate in 1-2 moves). I found the last 3 levels hard and time consuming enough that I actually programmed it into a chess program to solve for me (mate in 3 moves).
- You can unlock weapons and vehicles by doing 5 of this side mission, 10 of the other. Vehicles are used with a Saints Row 3 style "Car Delivery" app, but is pointless when one of Aeden's first skill unlocks disabling all car alarms so he can steal anything. Neither cars nor weapons are upgradeable/modifiable.
- There are the usual weapon types available, and each category has weapons from 1* to 5*. They can be bought or unlocked. Annoyingly, the best SMG in the game is an unlock for getting heavily involved in the multiplayer. Saying that, there's a better AR available in SP anyway so it's not a huge loss. Each of the obvious categories has one silenced option.
- 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.
- There are four skill trees with multiple branches: Driving, Hacking, Crafting, Combat. Higher skills are locked until story is progressed enough, because they are. Crafting unlocks new/more gadgets, driving does nothing discernibly useful whatsoever, combat is the usual fire pistols faster, take more damage, etc. Hacking is the good stuff though...the first skills let you use those bollards in the roads like in the videos, disable all car alarms, and more. The later skills sound like fun ways to have more tactical options in approaching missions.
The Good:
- The city itself is pretty nice. No, it's not "next gen" or whatever, but it's the best of "last gen" and looks good. But it's so polished and with the "Profiler" turned on (the function that lets you hack people's info) it's alive like a digital playground. Traffic flow, especially when I mess with the lights is quite organic.
- 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.
- Though I loathe the driving, there're are plenty of other things to keep occupied. Almost overwhelmingly so but since stuff unlocks as you play it's generally manageable. Some stuff makes no sense, like why Aeden would be investigating criminal activities but it's gameplay I suppose. I like the vigilante missions even though I suck at them and all activities are rewarding, either money, XP or both. Fixer missions are mostly driving and/or driving while being chased by police, both are so horrid I now avoid them (after having done just enough to unlock the rewards).
- There are some cool missions to look forward to, tailored to being a hacker in a fully connected city. Using the hacking in this manner (timing, distractions, explosions, activating equipment) is good fun and I'm looking forward to seeing later missions like this. IMO, this is where the game shines and the premise is fulfilled.
I think this game is like the first AssCreed in a way. It wasn't itself a particularly good game, but it had some good ideas in it. This one similarly has many, many things I don't like or enjoy (driving sucks, shooting sucks, music sucks, controls and menus suck, story sucks, Aeden sucks, forgettable characters, no customisation) but there is enough good to make it playable (in a typical sandbox manner). In a similar way to AssCreed 2, maybe Watch Dogs 2 can sort out the big problems and build on the strengths.
The 5 LEs, bullshots, poor press and so on haven't done any good for Ubi or the game. If you go in thinking you're in for the GotY or a much needed "next gen" experience, you'll be disappointed; it's not a GotY or next-gen. It is however a good game with lots to do and if you're after an actiony-sandbox, it'll scratch your itch. It's not as good as older titles like Mafia 2, The Saboteur, Saints Row 3/4 or Far Cry 3 and TBH, if not for getting it early via a friend in the biz, I wouldn't have paid full-whack for it.
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.