Watch Dogs Review - No Hack Job

[Kenjitsuka]

Watch Dogs Review - No Hack Job

Slickness and polish turns an ordinary open world game into something more special.

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Jim, ARS Technica trashed the games writing, characters and enemy AI.
I don't really see you touching on those too much.
Did you like those points better than they did?

Also: "It notably does not impress as much as it did when Ubisoft showed it off two years ago, but it's still quite nice."
Grrrrrr! I hate this industry with it's lying pre-advertising and fake images/video's!

 

[Kerethos]

snip

You watched that WTF Is...? too, huh?

The AMD lock-out by Ubi and nVidia is seriously riding the monopoly line too.
Might wait until it's on a deep discount sale, because $75 for a hobbled POS that punishes me for wanting good value for money is disgusting.

It's the first place to go if you want to know if a port is any good, so of course I watched it!
If the port is poor, there's no point in even reading the reviews - as the game is just plain worse on PC.

But I was not aware there where additional issues with running the game (or Ubisoft games in general) on AMD-cards (and it seems the same will be true for any Unreal Engine 4 games too). Having read a few articles, I am now though. And that just sucks.

So now Nvidia has successfully drained most of my interest in Watchdogs... good job! I'm happy with my two AMD Radeon HD 6900 for now. They let me max out most games - despite their age - at a steady 60+ fps. And being held hostage by Nvidia's choke hold on performance won't make me shell out the 400 Euro it'd cost me to replace them with two GTX 760's.
I'd rather just pass up on games that run like shit, it's so far proven to be the cost effective approach.

Still, as sad as it is, it might make me consider Nvidia cards - if the trend continues. And if this practice continues, it's also likely to rush the time when I can't get acceptable levels of graphical fidelity, and 60+ fps, meaning I'll have to upgrade sooner to maintain that standard.

I don't see how hampering the performance for roughly 40% of PC gamers is a good move, for any publisher, but it seems some will do so for access to Nvidia effects in their games. Troubling news indeed...

 

[Zakarath]

I think one of the upsides of playing Dark Souls on my PC is that I hear complaints about other game's ports and I immediately think "That doesn't sound that bad."

 

[LobsterFeng]

The game apparently is filled with Internet references.

Spoiler

So far the only thing going for it is how lively the world is like Jim said.

 

[Kerethos]

Unless you're one of those people who cry about sub-60FPS (which means you apparently ignored all gaming up til a few years ago, but hey.)

As this is a review of the PS4 version, yes, sub 60 is to be expected, as consoles have made 30 fps their standard.

On the PC though, 60+ fps has basically been the standard since it became regularly achievable. And, as far as I know, 60 Hertz monitors have been around for about 30 years. And, as such, fps is very relevant when discussing the PC version - as that would make it the standard for PC gaming since at least the late 90's.

Though, admittedly, having been primarily a console gamer for most of my gaming the past few decades, with only the occasional PC title here and there, I can only guess that 60 fps became the PC standard around the time Quake 1 (edit: or similar fast paced titles) where able to run at 60 fps for most PC gamers.

Anyone more knowledgeable on this is free to correct me, as this is, at best, an educated guess on my part. And I'd really like to know when 60 fps actually became the PC standard.

 

[Norix596]

I've heard the complaints (and can see where they're coming from) of this being just next "annual Ubisoft sandbox game" but as I haven't played the other entries in this meta-series that won't be an issue for me - looking forward to it.

 

[Buizel91]

The game apparently is filled with Internet references.

Spoiler

So far the only thing going for it is how lively the world is like Jim said.

Okay...I'm sold! xD

Shall pick this up Thursday, anything to increase my PS4 library of 3 games...

 

[w23eer]

There was that early review a few days back that claimed there was a minor form of DRM and while the review itself was shoddy, that point kind of worried me. I believe they claimed that if you go from online mode to offline mode, you lose all your abilities, or they get reset to level one, or something along those lines. Can someone confirm this please?

Besides that, the game looks pretty good I reckon. I haven't played a sandbox in a long while because I pretty much stopped gaming for a couple of years until recently. I'll definitely try it out as soon as I can (assuming the DRM claim is false).

 

[LeQuack_Is_Back]

Eh. Don't have a PS4, and my PC is hardly the stuff of legends. I'll give it a miss. It sounds good, but between the reportedly bad ports and ridiculous volume of controversy over how Ubisoft was handling this game, I'm not interested.

 

[nima55]

Can't wait till the Wii U version comes out =/

 

[Cerebrawl]

Oh, and reviews are objective, not subjective. A 4.5 is an objective score. You may not think the game is worthy of that score. You're free to make your own review and place the game at a rating you see fit.

No no no no no. Reviews are ALWAYS subjective.

The reviewer is just as important as the review. If you don't agree with the reviewers stance, find a new reviewer. Cross analyze reviews. Etc.

And this part right here, highlights that it's subjective, even if you don't realise it yourself.

I am surprised that Jim glossed over the faults of the game though, and called this a mirror polished product, which it's not.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Is it just me or does this sound an awful lot like Gary's Mod? Or Sims: Rampage? What I mean is that they're practically giving you the editing software and no clip and hope you find a way to have fun yourself. Maybe this is the wave of the future? Throw literally everything against the wall and hopefully something, anything, will stick and then pretend that one bit was the emphasis all along...
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure programming this took a lot of effort, but it feels lazy in the structure department. Look I'm sure there are plenty of people who will love this, but in most games sandbox games where I can do anything to just about everyone, I get so disillusioned and bored. I'm worried that for all its bells and whistles, there's no real immersion outside of goofing off, and when I get to the point where I ask myself 'what should I do next?' my answer is usually turn off the game and get a sandwich.

 

[bfgmetalhead]

Jeah.. bought it, found out neither Uplay nor the game itself works and now i'm currently writing a ticket to the Steam Support to trade in the game for steam-money or another game i want.
Because they clearly sold me a product which is not working at all. Double so, since AMD cards are not supported at all - without a single lable providing information about that.

Meh, got proven right once again: Stay away from Ubisoft. The only company i consider worse than EA.
Back to Transistor it is.

Amen to that, had the same damn problem with Black flag and my AMD card AND Uplay. Ubisoft should really realease two versions, one with Uplay and one without. Charge 5 £/$ more for the non-uplay one and it probably sell a ton or even more.

 

[ExtraDebit]

Totally agreed with the review, Though some of the mechanics borrows alot from other games and some of these gameplay are a bit lacking to their dedicated counter parts that inspired them, this game put them all into one world and did it superbly. There are car chase, puzzles, third person cover shooter, splinter cell like stealth, gadgets and exploration.

One of the thing I really love about this game is that alot of the missions especially the side missions give you a goal but does not tie your hands at how to achieve these goals. You can set up traps and lure enemies into them, go in guns blazing, stealth, go in as a ghost without killing or alerting anyone......it was just damn awesome!

Another thing the review forgot to mention is that this game is very well programmed. It not only looks better than any open world games out there, it also out performed them. I was able to run this game at almost maxed setting and never dipped below 30fps with only an I5, 8gb ram and nvidia460. The ps3 version ran pretty smoothly as well, much more than gtaV.

 

[Middle_Index]

Review without hysteria. Looking forward to this game.

 

[Brian Tams]

You know what, I was secretly hoping this game was going to astronomically suck and bomb harder than E.T., just so Ubisoft would be forced to get a grip on how its been handling its marketing lately.

Ah well. Can't really get worked up when people are harmlessly enjoying themselves. I'm still not going to buy it, though.

 

[Lightknight]

You know what, I was secretly hoping this game was going to astronomically suck and bomb harder than E.T., just so Ubisoft would be forced to get a grip on how its been handling its marketing lately.

Ah well. Can't really get worked up when people are harmlessly enjoying themselves. I'm still not going to buy it, though.

I really couldn't care less how the sausage is made as long as it's good and isn't made of human.

 

[Dragonbums]

Are you going to do a Wii U version review Jim? Since it's coming out next month there is a possibility that there could be some more options to look through while playing the game.

 

[themilo504]

Seems like a fun and polished sandbox game, however I get the feeling that for a lot of people that won?t be enough.

I would like to play the game myself, but I heard that the pc port is poorly optimized, so my pc probably won?t be able to run it.

 

[StraightToHeck]

Jimothy, why are there Xbox controller prompts in the video when it says you reviewed the PS4 version?