Of course, stealth isn’t always an option and you will be forced to shoot a bunch of people in the face. The shotgun is good for that, and the assault rifles are actually quite sexy. The gun fights in Watch_Dogs can get pretty intense. AI seems a bit smarter than GTA police, too; so you really have to stay on your toes and use your surroundings to your advantage.
Speaking of gun fights, does anybody bleed anymore? I’ve shot a million police and gangsters and hackers: Nothing more than a few drops of blood and a microscope needed to see it.
Since we’ve already opened the file containing something the Deacon E doesn’t like about the game, we might as well download the entire secret archive and open it. There are several minor things in this game that piss me off in a major way. First, the driving. For most, the driving “just takes some getting used to”. However, after 7 straight days of playing ’til my eyes bleed and my knuckles swell, the driving still sucks. Let’s go with a personal scale of 1-to-10, with 10 being simulators like Forza and 1 being Crazy Taxi. Watch Dogs is about a 5. I put GTA around an 8 and Burnout about a 7. There isn’t enough destruction when you crash your car into other cars or walls, and cars bounce in big collisions like floats at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Furthermore, while I was training to be a professional hacker, I somehow forgot how to shoot a gun while I’m driving and lost the ability to jump.
WTF!?
There are cops and gangsters shooting at me from their cars and I can’t shoot back. Probably because I’m texting. On top of that, it’s 2014 and I’m playing on an Xbox One. How am I not able to jump over stuff or dive out-of-the-way of bullets? This isn’t Goldeneye on N64; jumping should come standard. I found myself several times stopped by ankle high barbed wire, unable to proceed. Why? Oh…because I don’t know how to jump.
Hack into the cities mainframe and alter the traffic lights? No problem. Jump 1 foot in the air? Oh..ummm…I can’t. Sorry.
Still, Watch_Dogs is an amazing game; one of the very, very few that I’ve enjoyed playing for hours upon hours. It easily lives up to the hype of being one of the most anticipated games of the year and I expect the multiplayer mode to extend the life of the game far beyond the single player campaign. Indeed Dogs puts the power of digital chaos in the palm of your hands, and the open world gives you more than enough space to use this power and seek out your own vigilante justice.
Ubisoft’s Watch_Dogs, for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, 360, Ps3, Wii U, and PC, in stores now.