Watch_Dogs, a game released in 2014 to wide scrutiny, but was it all deserved? Short answer, yes, but it wasn’t really because of the game itself.
This game is pretty good. The characters are (mostly) well fleshed out, the detail in the city is a massive improvement on the graphics I’ve been seeing in the previous games on this console and the hacking while basic makes you feel so powerful and that all leans great in the games favour. The biggest problem this game had was its advertising.
It was severely overhyped in trailers, with wind effects and abilities that weren’t represented as much in the game, leading to people rightfully trashing the game due to the disappointment.
But taking that out and looking at it just as a game, it’s actually good.
This game centres around Aiden Pearce, a vigilante hacker overrun with guilt, who is out for revenge after the death of his niece, trying to track down and kill everyone involved as he tries to shift the blame onto everyone else. Aiden is sympathetic, but he is not good, his actions are questionable at best and he’s constantly being called out for it throughout the game, but plows through anyway to stop himself from having to look back.
The side characters all stand out in my mind which I take as a testament to the individuality they have. Clara, Damien, Jordi and the many other characters you meet all tie themselves to different aspects of Aiden’s character and are much more vibrant than the grief and guilt stricken Aiden, which can make them a lot more likeable and make you ask why it isn’t focused around them.
For anyone who is unsure about whether Aiden is “the good guy” or not while playing, his sister (his nieces mother) Nicky is there to set them straight. Nicky has been moving through her grief over her daughter, the memories are still painful for her but she keeps moving forward, contrasting Aiden who is stuck in it. Aiden wants to somehow fix it, avenger her death, and the only way he knows is killing the threats, to which Nicky repeatedly asks him not to do. Nicky is the voice of reason, and Aiden does not listen to her, he’s completely unstable and lost and the game does well to make that clear throughout.
The gunplay throughout the game is simple but serviceable. Other games from this time are more fun in this sense. Watch dogs just does enough to not be a let down. Nothing special but it’s there.
The most prominent thing you do though in this game about hacking is, funnily enough, hack. Most of the time the hacking itself is simply hold square to hack which is extremely simple and un-engaging on its own, but when combined with other gameplay elements like the awesome driving, it goes from being a boring button press, to being able to control the world as fast as you can go past it. I don’t see how it could’ve been improved to be more interesting, while still providing an all powerful feel for these moments.
Hacking would also sometimes take the form of a simple puzzle to hack into a firewall, common in privacy invasions, one of my favourite parts of this game. During privacy invasions, you get glimpses into peoples lives, seeing them not even realising their being watched and fleshing out the world fascinatingly, being the best piece of side content the game contains.
The rest of the side content does not contribute anywhere near as much to the game, being much less interesting and very copy and paste. You can scan ctos boxes, this games version of ubisoft towers to climb and give you a feel for the area… except you wouldn’t climb very high a lot of the time… making it feel very underwhelming as opposed to being dramatic.
You can identify potential crimes in the world, which you can stop, by waiting til they are about to attack someone and then swooping in with your baton. There are criminal convoys where you get in a car chase with a criminal in a very cut and paste fashion. There are fixer contracts where you act as a hired gun where you can transport stolen cars, drive to help someone escape, or tail cars, also very formulaic. And gang hideouts, where you would have to go into a base, and knock down a single person before leaving, most often resulting in me running in, smacking the guy, and running out.
All very simple and not that interesting, similar to the hacking.
Building of the earlier comments of how other characters were much more likeable than Aiden, that led to some massively disappointing moments, when interesting characters in this game got shelved early, instead of being given their time to shine, so that the game can stick to Aiden’s bleak story. A good decision in the sense that Aiden’s story is compelling, but a questionable call when you wonder how much more interesting and heartfelt it could be with some other characters…
All in all the story is amazing, one of the better ones I’ve engaged with. But the gameplay in every category is not as good as I would have hoped. The side content is all pretty much worth ignoring, the gameplay itself is a let down most of the time whether it be your hacking superpowers or gunplay. It certainly was fun for a few hours but it begins to wear very quickly when you notice how copy and paste sections are. I was enjoying exploring Chicago in the beginning, doing the side quests along the way to story moments, but towards the end all I was enjoying was the story. Its good it was enjoyable, but I had to ignore half the game for it, which is never a good thing.
But we’re not done there, because they addressed all these issues, in the Bad Blood DLC.
You play as a side character from the initial game Raymond Kenney, who has his own guilt driven demons after causing a blackout that killed 11 innocent people, similar to Aiden’s struggles throughout the main game. While Aiden continually shifted blame and wouldn’t let anything go, Ray accepts it and moves forward, creating a nice parallel to the main story. It doesn’t hurt that Ray is a lot more light and humorous making him more fun to follow throughout the story.
The combat is made more entertaining through including many more hackable environments that you fight your way through, and it spices up the side content too. It integrates multiple pieces of side content into story, playing into fallout of the main game. It brings back Defalt who didn’t get their chance to shine in the first game, being written out very quickly, and fleshes his character out further than it could before.
The side content that doesn’t play into the story, combines previous side content from the base to make more engaging missions with simple changes. Things like two targets in gang hideouts, preventing players from charging in and running off, instead making them carefully consider how to approach.
Basically every major issue with the game was addressed making a DLC which I genuinely believe is a gold standard of what it should be. Seeing issues people have taken and addressing them to make an improved version. If you already have watch dogs play Bad Blood.
That Generic Nerd 