After a lot of hype and waiting, I finally got my hands on Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs. The game had a lot of promise, and with the massive marketing investment, Ubisoft definitely has faith in this new IP. Their decision to delay the game last year in order to offer a better final product, left me thinking that their might me some hope for Ubisoft yet. Little did I know that the development team used the allotted delay time to throw faeces at each other at Ubisoft’s HQ rather than actually improving the game.
Audio and Video
Being available on every single console and home appliance, Watch Dogs was set to be a tit-bit weak in the visual aspect. But that being said, I definitely didn’t not expect the final product to look so bad on the Playstation 4 and Xbox One. The visuals are akin to late PS3 titles, but comes inclusive of abundant glitches and negative attributes. The game suffers from a severe case of ‘crap popping up from the ground in the distance’ syndrome, which I never thought was possible on an Xbox One or Playstation 4. The hair of the characters looks like the clip on hair from a play-mobile toy; it’s just a motionless creepy lump. The in-game physics is also very very wrong, and it is most evident during the driving segments. In more than one occasion after crashing into a wall head on, the car was flung straight up into the air leaving me perplexed and waiting to be sucked up into an alien space ship. The audio is nothing to write home about. It is standard Ubisoft sound which I can describe as average at best.
Gameplay
The gameplay is utterly boring. It’s very linear and repetitive, and the story isn’t immersive enough to make up for this. There is a tedious element of time wasting, to make the game feel longer than it really is. You have to basically cross from one side of the map to the other with each mission (which is something Ubisoft loves to adapt in their games). Character movement feels chunky, and the more often than not, the character will get stuck with an innocent passer by. The controls and gunplay don’t feel as comfortable as other games, and the environment layouts leave little to be desired.
Personal Experience
Watch Dogs is the perfect example of how marketing can manage to make a polished turd look like gold. Each aspect of the game failed to impress me, and at no point during the game I felt like I was enjoying my self. The gameplay is too repetitive, and the story line is bland. Watch Dogs really wanted to be the next GTA V, but failed miserably. When a Playstation 3 title is bigger, better, and visually more stunning than a Playstation 4 title, you definitely have a problem.