Post by Tig on Dec 21, 2015 18:35:46 GMT -5
I went into Ubisoft’s Watch_Dogs (WD) with a mind that couldn’t be more open. I had waited over a year before buying it on PC because of the poor reviews and criticisms it had received after release. I picked it up on sale at Steam and thought there was no way it could be anywhere near as bad as everyone was saying. First, I love open-world games, especially modern urban environments, having played GTA 4 and 5 so many times I can navigate them with my eyes closed. Second, I love stealth gameplay as well as hacking simulations and mini-games, and thought this would be a wonderful blend of Deus Ex and Ubi’s own Assassin’s Creed. I started this game completely willing to forgive the shortcomings cited by others and wanting to just get lost in good game. Well, I have finished the main story line and logged 40 hours in the game and, sadly, I find myself sitting on the elevated hate train with the rest of the critics.
WD is set in the near-future in almost real-world Chicago where the main character, Aiden Pearce, free runs about hacking into cameras, phones, traffic lights, and whatnot, getting an edge on life. His niece was killed after he was involved in a failed attempt to hack into a bank and you spend the next six chapters (four actually) guiding Aiden about in a convoluted revenge plot. Running amok in Chicago and nearby Pawnee (a fictional lake town) will take you among some of the most beautifully structured objects and character models I’ve seen. There are more unique pedestrians and more details to the structures, vegetation and random street objects than I have ever seen in a game. The suburbs are packed with middle and upper class houses with back yards filled with children’s toys or trash. Pawnee is sprinkled with heavily detailed trailer parks, hunting cabins, saw mills and mom and pop businesses along a scenic lake backdrop. Downtown is bustling with winding streets and alleys, hustling pedestrians, and el trains that shake the earth as they rumble past towering skyscrapers. Trees and grass blow in the wind along with random debris and litter and the sun glistens off some of the best water effects in any game.
But notice I said “structured” and not “rendered”, as in overall appearance. True to the biggest criticism you’ve no doubt heart about WD, the graphics were indeed watered down from the E3 demo for the actual release. Proof of this is in the screenshots still visible on the Steam store page. Even with the graphics cranked all the way up on my rig, which was still playable, all of the textures still retained this basic, clean, and flat look to them. It’s very hard for me to describe but the world textures lack the “touch me” feel found in Skyrim or any of the Assassin’s Creed games. Indeed, even the first Assassin’s Creed and GTA 4, which were released almost 8 years ago, have more grit, better shading, and a much better color palette than WD, and there is no exuse for that in a $65 game. WD looks almost cartoonish with its base color tones and I’m wondering if Ubi shouldn’t have just gone ahead and made it a cel-shaded game like Borderlands.
The story itself is as bad as the texturing. We’re in a futuristic setting where the technology created is clearly overtaking our lives. Issues such as privacy, freedom of speech, unreasonable search and seizure, totalitarianism, corruption, and even human trafficking are all elements in the background yet the plot revolves around revenge, nothing more. There are no philosophical discussions on control vs. free will as in Assassin’s Creed. There’s barely a footnote of “this is where we’re headed, America” to be found anywhere. It’s almost as if the story tellers didn’t even play the game and had no idea where it was being set. Either that or they just weren't very good, a high possibility considering one character dies for no apparent reason and a "plot twist" appears at the end that has absolutely no consequence.
Surrounding all this technology is supposed to be the exciting world of “hacking”. According to PC Gamer magazine in 2013, game developers consulted Internet security firms for a taste of real life hacking and security issues. Apparently they used all that time to learn the words “back door” and “hack” as nothing else you or I don’t already know about computers seems to appear in the game. The “hacking” in the game is nothing more than the old water pipe puzzles you could play for free on flash websites, guiding a blue current from one end of the screen to the other by rotating valves. Everything is automatically done for you when you hit the Q button; there is no code to decipher, nothing to type in, there’s no HACKING to be found anywhere!
WD is chock full of side missions and seek-and find points on the map to get you to tour about and be distracted from the bland plot, but these are just as easy as the main story itself. Everything you’re supposed to “find” is marked right there on the map, and there is less searching and brain power involved than there is just driving from point A to point B. Some of the hacking missions give you a voyeur’s eye through a webcam or security cam into people’s private lives, often revealing humorous albeit juvenile situations, but none of these are really worth the effort of driving to an arbitrary spot on the map to unlock them.
Whether you’re following the story or side missions, touring the grand scale of Chicago itself is a pain. Whoever was in charge of the vehicle physics has obviously only driven one sort of vehicle their entire life. Larger sports cars and muscle cars float about the streets as if driving on air and slowing and stopping usually results in numerous crashes. Even exotic sports cars, which are usually known for better handling, drive about as if their back end weighed nothing. Side swiping a car resulted in either no damage or the side of the car caving, while nosing a fence results in random denting on the hood. Despite the vast number of cars available, a la GTA, I stuck to motorcycles for maneuverability, and the in-game option of having cars delivered to me was almost entirely wasted as I just rode around on the same thing all the time. There were plenty of side missions for racing but why bother when driving is that much of a chore?
Combat and mission gameplay are not much better. I noticed about halfway into the game that almost every single mission is the same. Infiltrate area, hack point A, download or observe something, withdraw. Sometimes you could do the entire thing in stealth mode, utilizing camera hacks and causing distractions for your enemies as you move behind them, but often, due to the story taking over, a gunfight does indeed erupt. Even then, it’s all the same. The same solider characters, and there are only a few, are modeled in every scenario in every mission. Snipers, light soldiers or thugs, guys with better armor and more powerful guns, then the walking tank with super body armor and a big machine gun. You can take them on head on if you wish which was actually fun at times considering you carry a ridiculous amount of guns on your person, supplemented by grenades and proximity mines. Other times you can use blackout hacks that kill the power and cut the lights, or cause electrical boxes to explode and either distract or take out enemies. Aiden’s parkour abilities certainly come in handy for finding cover and quick hiding spots, but the cover system causes him to stick to objects as if they were flypaper.
There is a key for “focus”, which is another word for bullet time, and a multitude of options to upgrade it, but I must say I cleared the entire game without ever using that function a single time. Even playing on the hardest setting, this game just isn’t that difficult. If the fighting gets too heavy you can always… just run. I’m not kidding. Not once, not twice, but repeatedly throughout the game I just picked a direction, ran past everyone, and fled until the mission cleared. It was even easier if there was water nearby because enemies apparently can’t swim nor do any of them know how to drive a boat. Helicopters can be hacked and defeated so, in a manner of seconds, anyone following you can be quickly shaken just by hitting the river. If you’re on dry land, however, harrowing street chases do ensue, causing some of the more fun moments in the games as you hack street lights to get the enemy tangled in intersection collisions and engage pop-up traffic barriers to take them out. There is a hack you can upgrade to that causes the most realistic steam explosion in the middle of the street I’ve ever seen which throws enemy cars in the air. Why the rest of the game can’t be that detailed is beyond me.
I hate saying it, I don’t want to say it, namely because the sheer amount of structural detail that went into the game map almost gives me a reason to love WD’s setting, but as a game, Watch_Dogs sucks. There are games almost 10 years old that are more challenging and almost graphically more appealing. I don’t know what the developers’ budget was, but I bought this game for sale at $15, and I really can’t even recommend it at that price.
WD is set in the near-future in almost real-world Chicago where the main character, Aiden Pearce, free runs about hacking into cameras, phones, traffic lights, and whatnot, getting an edge on life. His niece was killed after he was involved in a failed attempt to hack into a bank and you spend the next six chapters (four actually) guiding Aiden about in a convoluted revenge plot. Running amok in Chicago and nearby Pawnee (a fictional lake town) will take you among some of the most beautifully structured objects and character models I’ve seen. There are more unique pedestrians and more details to the structures, vegetation and random street objects than I have ever seen in a game. The suburbs are packed with middle and upper class houses with back yards filled with children’s toys or trash. Pawnee is sprinkled with heavily detailed trailer parks, hunting cabins, saw mills and mom and pop businesses along a scenic lake backdrop. Downtown is bustling with winding streets and alleys, hustling pedestrians, and el trains that shake the earth as they rumble past towering skyscrapers. Trees and grass blow in the wind along with random debris and litter and the sun glistens off some of the best water effects in any game.
But notice I said “structured” and not “rendered”, as in overall appearance. True to the biggest criticism you’ve no doubt heart about WD, the graphics were indeed watered down from the E3 demo for the actual release. Proof of this is in the screenshots still visible on the Steam store page. Even with the graphics cranked all the way up on my rig, which was still playable, all of the textures still retained this basic, clean, and flat look to them. It’s very hard for me to describe but the world textures lack the “touch me” feel found in Skyrim or any of the Assassin’s Creed games. Indeed, even the first Assassin’s Creed and GTA 4, which were released almost 8 years ago, have more grit, better shading, and a much better color palette than WD, and there is no exuse for that in a $65 game. WD looks almost cartoonish with its base color tones and I’m wondering if Ubi shouldn’t have just gone ahead and made it a cel-shaded game like Borderlands.
The story itself is as bad as the texturing. We’re in a futuristic setting where the technology created is clearly overtaking our lives. Issues such as privacy, freedom of speech, unreasonable search and seizure, totalitarianism, corruption, and even human trafficking are all elements in the background yet the plot revolves around revenge, nothing more. There are no philosophical discussions on control vs. free will as in Assassin’s Creed. There’s barely a footnote of “this is where we’re headed, America” to be found anywhere. It’s almost as if the story tellers didn’t even play the game and had no idea where it was being set. Either that or they just weren't very good, a high possibility considering one character dies for no apparent reason and a "plot twist" appears at the end that has absolutely no consequence.
Surrounding all this technology is supposed to be the exciting world of “hacking”. According to PC Gamer magazine in 2013, game developers consulted Internet security firms for a taste of real life hacking and security issues. Apparently they used all that time to learn the words “back door” and “hack” as nothing else you or I don’t already know about computers seems to appear in the game. The “hacking” in the game is nothing more than the old water pipe puzzles you could play for free on flash websites, guiding a blue current from one end of the screen to the other by rotating valves. Everything is automatically done for you when you hit the Q button; there is no code to decipher, nothing to type in, there’s no HACKING to be found anywhere!
WD is chock full of side missions and seek-and find points on the map to get you to tour about and be distracted from the bland plot, but these are just as easy as the main story itself. Everything you’re supposed to “find” is marked right there on the map, and there is less searching and brain power involved than there is just driving from point A to point B. Some of the hacking missions give you a voyeur’s eye through a webcam or security cam into people’s private lives, often revealing humorous albeit juvenile situations, but none of these are really worth the effort of driving to an arbitrary spot on the map to unlock them.
Whether you’re following the story or side missions, touring the grand scale of Chicago itself is a pain. Whoever was in charge of the vehicle physics has obviously only driven one sort of vehicle their entire life. Larger sports cars and muscle cars float about the streets as if driving on air and slowing and stopping usually results in numerous crashes. Even exotic sports cars, which are usually known for better handling, drive about as if their back end weighed nothing. Side swiping a car resulted in either no damage or the side of the car caving, while nosing a fence results in random denting on the hood. Despite the vast number of cars available, a la GTA, I stuck to motorcycles for maneuverability, and the in-game option of having cars delivered to me was almost entirely wasted as I just rode around on the same thing all the time. There were plenty of side missions for racing but why bother when driving is that much of a chore?
Combat and mission gameplay are not much better. I noticed about halfway into the game that almost every single mission is the same. Infiltrate area, hack point A, download or observe something, withdraw. Sometimes you could do the entire thing in stealth mode, utilizing camera hacks and causing distractions for your enemies as you move behind them, but often, due to the story taking over, a gunfight does indeed erupt. Even then, it’s all the same. The same solider characters, and there are only a few, are modeled in every scenario in every mission. Snipers, light soldiers or thugs, guys with better armor and more powerful guns, then the walking tank with super body armor and a big machine gun. You can take them on head on if you wish which was actually fun at times considering you carry a ridiculous amount of guns on your person, supplemented by grenades and proximity mines. Other times you can use blackout hacks that kill the power and cut the lights, or cause electrical boxes to explode and either distract or take out enemies. Aiden’s parkour abilities certainly come in handy for finding cover and quick hiding spots, but the cover system causes him to stick to objects as if they were flypaper.
There is a key for “focus”, which is another word for bullet time, and a multitude of options to upgrade it, but I must say I cleared the entire game without ever using that function a single time. Even playing on the hardest setting, this game just isn’t that difficult. If the fighting gets too heavy you can always… just run. I’m not kidding. Not once, not twice, but repeatedly throughout the game I just picked a direction, ran past everyone, and fled until the mission cleared. It was even easier if there was water nearby because enemies apparently can’t swim nor do any of them know how to drive a boat. Helicopters can be hacked and defeated so, in a manner of seconds, anyone following you can be quickly shaken just by hitting the river. If you’re on dry land, however, harrowing street chases do ensue, causing some of the more fun moments in the games as you hack street lights to get the enemy tangled in intersection collisions and engage pop-up traffic barriers to take them out. There is a hack you can upgrade to that causes the most realistic steam explosion in the middle of the street I’ve ever seen which throws enemy cars in the air. Why the rest of the game can’t be that detailed is beyond me.
I hate saying it, I don’t want to say it, namely because the sheer amount of structural detail that went into the game map almost gives me a reason to love WD’s setting, but as a game, Watch_Dogs sucks. There are games almost 10 years old that are more challenging and almost graphically more appealing. I don’t know what the developers’ budget was, but I bought this game for sale at $15, and I really can’t even recommend it at that price.