Watch Dogs Reviews
Watch Dogs is a solid game, but I feel it falls short of the mark Ubisoft set for it. The single-player experience is a decent length and there's plenty to do around town, it's just too bad I never know what the game wants me to focus on. Aside from that, the game's world is rich in fascinating points of interest for you to explore. Throw in some decent multiplayer that works somewhat seamlessly with the single-player and it's an overall solid game. Too bad Aiden is just such a cardboard prop.
Watch Dog's gritty story and dystopian near-future are paper-thin, but the amount of stupid fun you can have running around Chicago and "hacking" things more than makes up for it.
Watch Dogs is a very good game - and occasionally a great one - but not a landmark game or any sort of classic. It's a fine open-world game with a fantastically detailed setting, and one you'll happily play for weeks. In fact, with a good thirty to forty hours of content, that's probably what it's going to take.
The game won't be for folks who prefer a more straightforward action game or shooter. But if you're a fan of open world games and would like to try one with a more cerebral approach, then you'll want to hack into Watch Dogs and give the title a spin.
Ultimately, the vast amount of content that you get for Watch Dogs help inspire us to overlook its graphical shortcomings. It may simply be yet another GTA clone that didn't meet our expectations, but it still plays efficiently and offers a staggering amount of fun for players to explore every pocket of this tech-noir version of Chicago.
Watch Dogs may not be the "next-gen" game that many had the expectations for, but it is a fantastic game that is worth experiencing. Hacking is both your weapon and your toy. Enemies will cower at your feet and the city will bend to your will as you walk amongst the low-tech plebs. Unique gameplay and a beautiful living world sets Watch Dogs apart, establishing itself as a great outing and the strong foundation of a new franchise.
With Watch Dogs, Ubisoft Montreal has created an interesting, immersive and innovative new IP, which will hopefully end up marking the beginning of a great series.
Watch Dogs won't please everyone. Its shallow narrative and bland protagonist detract, but those looking for a finely-crafted open world game that eschews parody and satire for an overall darker tone will have a great time in Watch Dogs' digital Chicago.
[I]t will fray your nerves and test your mind. But won't hack its way into your heart.
Although we would have liked greater rewards and penalties, the technology powering multiplayer is impressive, and there's lots to do, from hacking rivals and hunting fixers, to searching for files and escaping a tablet-controlled police force. After an opening act bogged down by tutorials and dodgily scripted story sequences, Watch Dogs removes the shackles, takes some chances and begins to live up to its own hype. Despite its pacing issues, Watch Dogs manages to tell a worthwhile story that's backed up by some novel new ideas in both single and multiplayer.
Watch Dogs on PS4 executes fresh gameplay ideas with aplomb, marking one of the first games of this new generation of consoles to innovate within its genre. It's a slower, smarter sandbox shooter with an astounding degree of content, but despite resonant themes of technological overbearance, its poorly handled story likely won't grip you.
Watch Dogs isn't a hack job, but it isn't the next-gen revolution that many were expecting either. It's a game largely made up of mediocre bits and pieces, but is elevated far beyond the sum of its parts by its brilliantly dynamic sandbox and often gripping mission design. You'll want to see Aiden Pearce's tale through to its conclusion despite its flaws, but it's those unpredictable and sometimes spectacular moments of vigilante justice that will keep you connected to Ubisoft's latest open world.
Watch Dogs is solidly entertaining and a lot of fun to play. And while it could've achieved true greatness if it had followed through on its most ambitious promises, it is still better than a lot of what's been released this year. The hype seems already to be benefiting the sales figures. Everything about Watch Dogs tells us that we are all susceptible in the digital age.
Watch Dogs is an origin story of sorts for a vigilante killer. Aiden Pearce is to Chicago what Batman is to Gotham, or more a more apt comparison would be to describe Pearce as more of a high-tech Punisher. The story is adequate to pull players through to the end and you can play much of the game approaching situations in your own, non-violent way, but the campaign forces extreme gunplay more than we wanted.
Like Grand Theft Auto V before it, sometimes it's not enough to simply be big and well-made. Watch Dogs feels like a collection of promising concepts with nothing solid holding them together. Aiden Pearce should have been that something, but instead, he's just a character meant to sell cool looking hats in collector's editions. Perhaps that can be rectified in a sequel, but for now, Pearce is pretty big issue, and so is his propensity to kill people in boring, cover-based shooter-y ways.
Ubisoft has certainly upped its game in the past several years, with Watch Dogs being yet another display of both the publisher's ingenuity and willingness to take risks, all for the benefit of players.
These games are all crafted with more care than the actual storyline, and come complete with their own skill trees and upgrades. If I ever got bored with anything from the core game I found myself getting distracted by these for hours on end. Even if you don't play open world games, it's worth giving Watch Dogs a try just to get your hands on these experiences.Despite the fact that Watch Dogs hasn't made any meaningful impact on the genre, I found myself having a ton of fun with it. Between the deep levels of customization and the sheer breadth of content, there's no shortage of things to do. If Ubisoft can take the game's core fun factor and marry it with an actual "next-gen" experience the next time around, they'll have something truly special.
WATCH DOGS OPEN WORLD IS TRUMPED BY ITS SMART, LAYERED MECHANICS
Watch Dogs' attempts to say something serious are overshadowed by how enormously fun it is to create chaos in its impressive open world.
Watch Dogs' interconnected world is a wonderful, explosive, high-tech playground. Shame the people who inhabit it are so forgettable.