Watch Dogs Reviews
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 an unmitigated triumph, that's for sure. Considering the game is a new IP, it does a lot of things incredibly well and lays the foundation for a franchise that has the makings of being a potential Assassin's Creed beater. Despite a few puzzling design decisions and an almost glacial start to the campaign, Watch Dogs is worthy of your time. There's no doubt about that.
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.
The fact that Watch Dogs has come out as second-best against the juggernaut that is the Grand Theft Auto franchise doesn’t mean it’s a bad game; it’s quite the opposite. It’s quite a great achievement for a brand new IP to come out and be as good as it is and to also try to do some new things on such a large scale. Its multiplayer is by far one of Watch Dogs‘ stand out components and this is where you’ll start to see some great videos floating around online from the community as they invade your game. Watch Dogs has dozens of hours of content and will certainly keep you entertained its world and what’s on offer.
Is Watch Dogs the genre defining experience we were expecting back in 2012? No, it isn't even close to that. Is it a bad game? Not by any stretch of the imagination. It is a fun and entertaining experience that does have a couple of faults, but is more than worth your investment of money and time.
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 makes up for a snooze-worthy story with heaping amounts of smartly designed diversions scattered around its gorgeous open world.
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.
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.
Content to be normal, Watch Dogs speaks more potently to the intellectual chill within its industry than it does to any oppression without.
Watch Dogs is a fantastic entry in the free roam genre. Not without areas to improve, Watch Dogs is a unique base that Ubisoft will build a new franchise on.
Watch Dogs refines stealth action in an interconnected open world that's worth exploring.
Watch Dogs is here and it's good but not great.
Buy it if you can tune out the story for an interesting take on the open-world genre.
Decent, but not great. Watch Dogs is certainly worth playing, but it's not even close to living up to what's been shown off since it was announced.
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.
Ubisoft Montreal should certainly be applauded for trying something new within the bounds of the genre - hacking in Watch Dogs is genuinely innovative, despite the threat of gimmickry - however, Watch Dogs has ultimately failed to live up to its hype. It's good, but it could, and probably should, have been great. The underlying irony of Watch Dogs is the fact that the game itself suffers a bit too much from an identity crisis.
Imaginative, cleverly integrated online play helps to bolster Watch Dogs' less exciting single-player offering, which fails to capitalize on its ambitious hacking concept in any truly memorable way.
Watch_Dogs delivers on all fronts providing the player with intense gameplay mechanics and an intriguing mission structure.
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.