Personally, I didn't like the hype about it. I wasn't going to touch the game because of the controversy. A few co-workers convinced me to try it.
I'm not much for visuals. Really, I think TF2 looks amazing. Photo-realistic characters and visuals hit the uncanny valley pretty hard for me. The latest COD games, or Battlefield. Hell, even NS2's marines feel broken and disjointed to me, with their... Fuckin' lips. It's all I can think about.
"LOOK OUT! ONOS!!"
"Your lips man. Those fucking lips."
"STOP THINKING HOMOEROTIC THOUGHTS AND SHOOT THIS FUCKING THING BEFORE IT- AAARGH!"
"God, those lips are so goddamn ugly-Agh! Gored!"
So, when we look at the Graphics on medium for Watch Dogs, I don't really give a shit. It looks pretty good to me. I feel that for this day and age, these graphics are acceptable. Watching a Car-takeout via lights, barricades, or spikes look pretty ugly with the bad particles surrounding them, and slow-mo sparks, but that's my only issue graphically. The game doesn't rely on Bink either. So the cut scene's voice-work actually matches the character's mouths. These are the playable models. This makes the game look much nicer, and modern systems can handle the impressive models.
Gameplay wise, I feel that there was a lot of laziness. Drivings full tilt, making it difficult, but not unplayable. I feel that, on PC, this boost of difficulty fucking needed. I ran around with an AR for some time, and found it to be a cakewalk on realistic. The regenerative health system is lazy, and a pathetic joke when it comes to giving your game any iota of difficulty. I got shot? Well. I'll just wait behind cover, and if an enemy tried to sneak up on me. I can just pop them from another angle. Falling under the challenge of just electronics and pistol makes things enjoyable for me. Forced me to
think instead of kill. This is helped by the fact the AI tends to focus on the last known location of something wrong. (Try sneaking from cover to cover in some fights. You might find the enemies will still suppress your last known location.)
The story's a bit odd. I'm screaming internally at the hacking. However, to play the role of devil's advocate, if the entire city is run on one operating system, one central hub for it's most basic of functionality, it is possible to make a massive program that you could just point a phone at and say "I want to see that." In theory, mind you. But at the same time, never underestimate the power of a bored programmer/hacker. A large enough group can get it done. This can be made significantly easier if everything has a wireless signal, which the game seems to suggest. Is the 'hacking' in Watch Dogs possible? Well, err... Plausible. Is it hacking? No you're pressing a button.
At the same side of things, man this game would be boring is you had to type every time you wanted to do something.
Code:
#include ctOS
private void hollisBarracades(){
//csOS.Barracade['hollisstally'];
private bool stat = csOS.Barracade['hollisstally'].get_status();
if (stat == false)
csOS.Barracade['hollisstally'].engage;
else
csOS.Barracade['hollisstally'].disengage;
}
hollisBarracades();
The hacking in the game HAD to be simplified. We HAD to include the camera thing because that's an interesting gameplay mechanic. We HAD to reduce hacking to holding a button because consoles cannot type. We also had to do this for PC because the average gamer also cannot type. (Lookin' at you, comments sections around the world!) Hell the average gamer probably doesn't really understand that pseudo-fake code I popped up there is just the very tip of a massive ice-berg of what the character, Aiden, or "deadsec" had to build to make his phone a possibility, or to grant themselves an iota of the access they needed to get anywhere.
Finally, all of that off the table, I don't really think WD shot itself in the foot. Yeah, you'll get people like me, or MetalHead who look at the ethics of crapshots and failed promises and go "Fuck these guys." But at the same time, It's your typical AAA release. It's fun. We're not really breaking any new ground here. It's different in the sense of a new IP, so it's a bit refreshing. Once I actually own the game, I'll be able to look into the multiplayer aspect, which seems quite inviting to me, really.
Watchdogs isn't mind-blowingly amazing, but it's different for the AAA industry. It's not groundbreaking, but it's not mediocre. It's settling around just a little above average. And if you go into it with a clear mind, you won't be disappointed. Well, you will be at the poor ethics of the developers and failed promises, but I like to look at the AAA industry as children. Thinking they can do amazing things in their own little world, but their heavy focus on being on top, and one specific shiny thing (graphics) harms their sense of creativity. When they grow up, you'll make some amazing games. For now, I'll be content to play cops and hackers with you.
I rambled pretty hard. So to remain on topic, I feel a lot of people hopped the UBI hate train on their reviews.
R - user scores are broken by fanboy love/nerd rage, reviewer scores are broken by a flawed scoring system where, unless the hive mind has already dubbed a game to be terrible, going outside the safe area of 7-9 is verboten. Look at the shitstorm this very site caught for the Dragon Age 2 review, for praising a game that was already "known" to be deeply flawed. Neither method is particularly representative of game quality, unfortunately.
