About a year ago, in the wake of the next gen console announcement, whispers of Watch_Dogs sent the community of Ubisoft Montreal fans abuzz—ourselves included. For those who enjoyed the Far Cry games and obsessed over the Assassin’s Creed series, their take on a digital world ripe for the hacking was pallet whetting. Like any good gossip, information trickled out slowly; a trailer here, an article there and rumors of a release date kept us wanting more. Already convinced, I ordered the collector’s edition early this year from Amazon, my Prime membership securing a release date delivery day. (Something I’ve used successfully for each game that had to be here the day it came out.) All that was left to wait with eager anticipation for the next Ubisoft gem… Then May 27th came.
An experimental security
software called ctOS has been implemented throughout the city much to the
outrage of some and delight of others within Chicago. Our fallen hero, Aiden,
is a Fixer: a more universally skilled hacker that’s not afraid to come out from
behind the monitor and get his hands dirty. Wounded in the aftermath of a job
gone wrong, Aiden is a good man (whether he remains honorable is up to you) dead
set on retribution. You can hack into almost anything that has an electronic
pulse to gather your information and use it—the most common thing to access are
people’s cell phones, but there are also ATMs, car alarms, stoplights, security
cameras, steam pipes, among a slew of other things at your disposal. With the
skills that you develop and the choices you make, the world can be your
playground—or your punching bag. The supporting characters—Clara, T-Bone,
Damien, Tobias, Iraq, Quinn and my personal favorite, Jordi (he’s a riot,)—round
out the cast with a wide enough range of personalities for everyone to love or
hate.
Multiplayer options are Online Hacking, Online Tailing,
Online Racing and ctOS Mobile Challenge. If you’re logged into your account online,
your game is eligible to be invaded by another player at any time except while
you’re on a story mission. The story is what introduces you to and gives you
experience using all the tools that are at your disposal that are quite often
integral in the online portion of the game. That being said, Watch_Dogs isn’t
for those who don’t care to get into the role of the game. To be able to enjoy
and take advantage of what it has to offer, you have to immerse yourself fully
into the world.
This includes and is perhaps most suited to the
multiplayer experience. You’ll need to exploit your environment to its fullest;
duck into dumpsters, hide in cars, use the cameras that are littered throughout
the city. If you just barge around trying to observe or hack someone, you’ll
get nowhere—and probably shot. Conversely, when you’re being hacked or tailed, the point is not to merely book it out of
town like a scaredy cat, but to seek out your attacker and stop them. Play
the game how it was intended: stealthily.
Unfortunately this appeal is rendered moot when the basic
camaraderie of online gameplay no longer exists between strangers—which was the
only negative experience with the game after a week and half of consistent
playing. It was the same lazy attitudes that ruined AC Brotherhood online play—lack
of commitment to the role. But that can all be taken with a grain of salt and you
can just enjoy the story mode because there’s plenty to do in the massively
interactive environment.
Another option is the ctOS Mobile App for earning XP and
playing online. It’s a game companion app you can download on your phone to
play against console gamers. You’re a ctOS operator trying to prevent a criminal
(your online opponent) from getting from checkpoint to checkpoint using all the
hackable objects within the city, like roads, bridges, stoplights, steam pipes,
electrical panels, etc. There are different levels and you can challenge
particular people if you feel so inclined.
The controls and mechanics of the game flow quite
smoothly. Getting in and out of cover takes some figuring out (it seems every
game has a different take on that,) and a roll move might have been useful, but
other no real complaints otherwise. Graphically, it looks stunning. Watch
Aiden’s jacket flow while driving a motorcycle or burn some rubber in a muscle
car, you’ll notice that the particles, weights and collisions were tended to
beautifully.
On a final note, it still is the little things make all
the difference in a game. Casual references and throwbacks, tidbits and
subtleties that make the experience more memorable and fun. Body movements seem
to be more believable when reacting to the things you affect; disabling someone’s
radio causes them to cringe and topple over, explosions scatter and stun those
nearby. If a car explodes, the driver makes an attempt to stumble out and get
away instead of just sitting in the driver’s seat, dying. We are also awarded
some heroic XP for pulling someone out of their car after an explosion—it popped
up as a vulnerability that they were stuck in their car, frozen by fear. And
most fun of all, Ubisoft managed a couple shout-outs to their other games, our
favorite being the ctOS video of a kid playing AC while his dad tries to figure
out what’s going on. (“Why’s he talking to the guy he just killed?”) If you
haven’t already, go out and pick up the game. Ubisoft has impressed us again.