Game Review | June 2, 2014 11:41 pm

By Moo Lissa

While I had hoped to have this review out before last weekend, Watch Dogs is a tricky game to actually review. Had I reviewed it release day as I was first playing it, it would have been a very positive review. If I would have reviewed it the next day, when I started getting into the meat of the game, it would have been a fairly negative review. On the 2nd and 3rd days I was playing, I actually apologized to Evol for wasting the money. Now, nearly a week into the game, my perspective has shifted slightly from either of those black and white sides, and I can identify both the positives and negatives. Which, actually, works for this game.

Watch Dogs is a very morally gray game. It’s set in a Chicago that is very reflective of real life- people are mostly out for themselves, whether they end up helping or hurting other people is largely an afterthought. The protagonist, Aiden Pearce, isn’t a hero- although the news may call him that if you play the game that way. But let’s start at the beginning…

As I said, the setting for Watch Dogs is Chicago. As Aiden, you’re a hacker with some heavy connections, and you can make it all happen with a few buttons on your phone. Since the real Chicago is a great place to go to have your privacy invaded, it makes a great setting for a game that operates on the premise of how much data can be compiled behind the scenes of “for your protection” and what happens when hackers try to leverage the information for themselves (and yes this is real hacking, not someone leaving their Facebook profile signed in on their computer and their girlfriend logging in saying ‘U got hacked! Luv u babee!’ which is a huge pet peeve of mine).

It’s a little heavy handed with the moral of the story- what you actually give up when you let your privacy be invaded for the sake of “safety-” but it rings pretty true in these times of TSA body scans, cameras in every electronic device, and always on internet for consoles and computers alike. As you walk through Chicago, every person’s deepest secret is broadcast to you as long as you are connected to the citywide camera network. Hacking the network gives you access to recorded and stored video clips that look remarkably like what the airport body scanners show of a person. Just an outline- but with audio and labels, to let you know exactly what you’re watching.

What I’ve really taken away from Watch Dogs is just how incredibly boring people actually are. People’s secrets are sometimes interesting- works as a prostitute, runs a child porn ring, etc, more often than not they’re of the run of the mill variety- has good credit, recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s, has a third nipple… And walking around reading about people gets boring fast, and then goes to flat out depressing. Hacking phone calls is the same way. Women talking about their abusive boyfriends, siblings fighting over who has to take care of an infirm parent, even making fun of dates, it all is like a big life simulator that decided not to gloss over the monotony. I don’t know if it is just the result of only wanting to input a certain amount of text and record a limited number of conversations, or if it was a conscious decision to show how conspiracy nuts overestimate how interesting they actually are, but in a city of nearly 3 million people, there were only a handful of different people. It was a little alarming that it seemed like every third person I came across had just found out they had cancer. Seriously, someone needs to start testing Lake Michigan’s water.


The main story of the game is kind of a mixed bag. You have Aiden, and his emotional story of trying to get revenge on the people who set in place a series of events causing the death of his niece, but on the other hand, he's really just a dick who is willing to lie, kill and destroy lives to absolve himself of the guilt he feels for his role in the situation. Even while he condemns people for okaying a hit on him even if it means taking out his family, he’s targeting the niece of a guy who may know something about someone who knows something about the reason he was a target in the first place. He’s ok with killing someone to take their place in an auction just to get close enough to someone else and clone an rf chip they wear all the time. Aiden is "the vigilante," stepping in and stopping robbers and purse snatchers, yet he hacks everyone in town's bank accounts and jacks all their money. The hypocrisy is real, and while the game does address it a bit (there’s a little self-awareness shown when Aiden slaughters dozens of people right in front of his 10 year old nephew, but it doesn’t last long) it also goes out of its way to free you of those silly feelings of guilt by making every person you have to kill a bad guy. Every single security guard that is employed by the company that monitors the cameras throughout the city is a criminal. A terrible criminal who rapes or murders, has gang ties, loves torturing animals or whatever else. And it pops up on your screen as you’re targeting them all for takedowns. Don’t worry as you’re hacking an explosive that a guy is wearing to blow him into pieces- you will not see that he’s a family man who rescues shelter dogs, who is supposed to take his 4 kids to a baseball game next Saturday- he’s a sadist. He probably doesn’t even have a family. Evil people don’t have families! This actually runs contradictory to the rest of the plot, which underscores how gray everything really is in life, and how even the good make bad choices.

Another point of confusion with the plot (for me, anyway) is the relationship between Aiden and his sister and her kids. What the heck is up with that? There is a scene that shows a family tree for Aiden on a computer screen, and a line goes from him to his sister, then down to her kids. I don’t know if the developers have never drawn out a family tree before, but people connected by lines quite clearly mean they’re married. And as the game progresses, even though people keep saying things like “it’s easy to see you’re siblings” and “He’s stubborn like his uncle,” the whole game plays like they’re a couple. Besides that, she and her kids all have his last name, and a father is never mentioned. I don't know anyone who has 2 kids, 5 years apart, and didn't give either of them their father's last name! It was a few chapters into the game before I even caught on to the fact that Nicky was supposed to be his sister, and I can’t believe I’m the only one.

Visually, Watch Dogs is a beautiful game, but I understand the detractors that speak against it. While it is a next gen game, it just doesn’t look too much better than an end cycle 360 game. The difference is that, while the pretty games of last gen (such as GTA 5) struggled with graphics and glitches in places, Watch Dogs remains uniformly smooth, even during large explosions or when a lot is going on at once. The characters in gameplay are puffy and they all kind of look the same. The movie sequences are gorgeous, but often interspersed with pixilation to underscore the hacking theme. I get it, guys, it’s about video surveillance and remote computerized storage of events. But unless Aiden is a cyborg (omg... is Aiden a cyborg??), the fact that his memories come back like a broken VHS tape is kind of irritating. The aim was probably to show off the effects, but it was a tad overdone.

My other issue with this game stems from growing up in a Chicago suburb. I love Chicago, and think it’s one of the the best, most beautiful cities in the world. Growing up, I spent a lot of time in the city, but aside from the skyline I couldn’t really recognize anything in the game. I found (I think) the bean in Millennium Park, but it wasn’t really the bean, although the structure of the park seemed pretty close.


The loop was pretty accurate, but the neighborhoods were mashed around and spread out, the ethnicity of nearly every area was messed with to avoid being entirely one race, and entire areas (again, the ethnic ones) were left out. Landmarks were renamed, I’m guessing for monetary issues, and although I walked around Navy Pier, I didn’t see the Ferris wheel. I’ve actually come across a reviewer from a Chicago paper who raved about the authenticity, but it really felt to me that I was driving through a generic, fake video game town that wanted to seem vaguely Chicago-ish. When we drive through Chicago or my brother visits and sends pictures, I get that nostalgic feeling and think “that’s home.” I was hoping to feel that way playing Watch Dogs, but it was just missing. As I said, they got the skyline pretty accurate, and some locations that the most time is spent in, but in other places, they altered or totally left out buildings and cheapened the feel (throughout the rest of the review, I'll place a few more comparisons and let you decide for yourselves).

Jonathan Morin, the creative director for Ubisoft, claimed to a Chicago blogger that they made dozens of trips to Chicago, and even hired Chicago-born voice actors for every voice in the game, but as someone accustomed to the Chicago accent, I think he’s overstating how much attention they really paid to details. For one thing, every pop machine is labeled “soda.” What? For another, instead of the slightly nasal, elongated vowels I grew up hearing, I detect a faintly Canadian accent in many of the voice actor’s voices. I’m not talking about the Hispanic voice actors they hired or the African-Americans who each have their own accents, but as far as the white Chicagoans go… Nah. The main voice actors are definitely not Chicago-born, which is most obvious with Clara’s accent (she is played by Canadian actress Isabelle Blais), but Aiden (Canadian actor Noam Jenkins), Jordi (Canadian actor Aaron Douglas), Even the ill-fated maniac Crispin (Canadian actor Julian Casey) are also- actually, let me just stop there and say nearly every voice with credits (not an extra) is Canadian. It makes sense, the game was made in Canada. I’m willing to bet a large number of the extras are Canadians as well, with maybe a few native Chicagoans thrown in as cops or the evil security guards for good measure. So the authenticity takes another hit, although I’m not sure how much that would stand out for people not from the area. Since I never actually heard an accent in my own voice until I left the area, I wonder if Chicago residents are even up in arms over it.

Either way, it’s just a minor issue… especially when you take into account how mediocre most of the voice actors are in Watch Dogs. Like the music that fills the game, the voices just weren’t good- aside from Jordi and T-bone who are my 2 new favorite characters in video games. Seriously. Love them. Also, slight continuity issue- it cracked me up to hack someone’s phone and have them call in a hit against me in perfect English, but when I knocked the phone out of their hands, they screamed “AY, DIOS MIO!” and ran off begging for their lives in Spanish. It probably comes from only hiring a handful of extras and just using the same voices regardless of the characters that were actually speaking, but it reminded me of my ex in-laws, who suddenly couldn’t understand a word of English if you were saying something they didn’t want to hear . At least they got the genders right!


The gameplay itself is pretty effortless and enjoyable. I love the hacking minigames, they’re fun little puzzles. The fact that you can pretty much take out most of your enemies without pulling out your gun is a fanatastic addition that I enjoyed. A game where the point is stealth, but you’re not without a weapon? Great! As you progress, you earn skill points that let you level up your hacking, driving, crafting and combat abilities. Points are pretty easy to come by, so it isn’t long before you’ve got a more resilient character. Combat itself is pretty fun, although the cover system can get old fast, as you try to differentiate between “corner” and “cover” on the fly in a mad dash to get there before the guy who is looking at you, puzzled, actually becomes alerted. Plus, if you have too many things on the screen at once, it can be hard to set off the correct one. Quite a few times I tried to detonate a bomb only to set off the steam valve behind the guy and alert him to my presence. There’s no save feature, which puts you basically at the mercy of auto save (you can force an auto save by fast traveling to a hideout, but that option is not available during missions), and in at least one incident made me choose between proceeding with the story how I actually wanted to do it, or progressing without having to do the mother f$%$ing quest ONE MORE F&%^ING TIME!!!! Which, haha, I hate to admit it but I did sacrifice my vision just to get through the quest.

Besides the main story, there are quite a few side quests in Watch Dogs. They’re mostly repetitive- stop a bad guy from doing a crime, take out a gang and knock down a target, take out a car in a gang convoy, etc, but they earn your character a little reputation- and the leeway to run over a handful of civilians in your wild police chases without being seen as a bad guy. Turns out, the citizens of Chicago are willing to overlook a multitude of sins if they think you’re committed to preventing little old ladies from getting their purses stolen.


And now that I’ve brought up police chases, I’ve opened another soapbox can of worms. The police chases are just like every other open world game out there. If you’re reported for a crime, you’ll be hunted down. Unlike a lot of games, the citizens of this Chicago all have cell phones and they’re all itching to call the police on you. Stealing a car from someone can have them calling the cops, as can wandering around town with a gun in your hand (easier to do accidentally than you’d think, since tapping the left bumper pulls out your weapon and holding it opens the crafting menu), driving into a pile of people, breaking into a car, and shooting someone who is calling the police to report you. It drove me crazy at first, because I started playing this game right off a Thief Jag, where LT was run. Well, in Watch Dogs, RT is run, and LT pulls out your gun. Good times. If you can avoid police scanners (which will definitely end up taking you far from the area you’re trying to reach) you can get away without a police chase, but if the chase is triggered, prepare for quite a few unpleasant minutes at the beginning of the game. The cops anticipate your moves, following you on turns you didn’t even know you were going to do at that exact moment, plowing through hacked traffic lights to catch you in a giant pileup, or heading around a trap you trigger without a second thought. If you manage to get away, they’ll often send a helicopter after you, which will dog you to the ends of the Earth and back (unless you buy a grenade launcher right away and keep it handy, heh heh heh). Once you upgrade your hacking skills a bit you can take out cars that are following you by erupting steam vents in the street, or raising blockers, and hack helicopters to give you a few seconds to get away, and it gets much easier to shake them- and a lot more fun.


For me, the biggest down side to this game is the multiplayer. It was integrated into the game, as a phone app rather than a separate experience. There are different objectives- races, hacking games, etc- and since you actually have to choose them to play them, they’re an enjoyable addition to the game if that’s the kind of thing you’re into. The fixer contracts, though, can be quite a chore if you don’t like having your game interrupted. Basically, they allow a hacker into your game to hack you, and you have to drop what you’re doing and hunt them down. As previously mentioned by a few of our members, the game seems to be exploitable by hiding in cars, which will often read as “NOT the hacker” even when it is. While it’s really just a 90 second mini game that doesn’t do too much harm, it can get annoying when people just keep entering your game nonstop. To keep people out of your game, you can turn off multiplayer, which will reset some of your skills, or be careful to keep people from reporting you when you hack them. The bounty that results from the report will trigger other people to join your game, and preventing the bounty has been the most effective way I’ve found to avoid my game being interrupted. But maybe you like the surprise and constant variation that comes from having a game open to being barged into at any time. If that’s the case, the MP will be right up your alley and go ahead and disregard everything else I’ve written about it! But- I mean- not about the rest of the game. Don’t disregard that.



TL; DR VERSION!!!
All in all, Watch Dogs is a fun game with an interesting plot that brightens up a tired genre with the refreshing ability to hack everything around you. The graphics are on par with the best looking graphics from the end of the 360 cycle, but don’t struggle with frame rate or pop in issues like GTA 5 did. There are parts that are so bogged down by the mediocrity of everyday life that it starts to become depressing, but there are literally hundreds of hours of gameplay to pull you out of that slump. The game constantly blurs the line between the good guys and the bad guys, and going down the thought path of “man, what if I was really doing this stuff to these people?” doesn’t end in a happy place unless you’re a maniac, but realistically all games are the same way, without the glimmers of self-awareness that Aiden struggles with throughout the plot. The multiplayer is an enjoyable addition for those who enjoy playing with other people, but there is plenty to do alone on the fake streets of Chicago. The generic feel won’t bother anyone but a real die hard Chicago fan, although the Canadian voices may seem out of place to anyone with an ear for it. Worth a pick up for anyone who likes these types of games, and I definitely feel like I am getting my $60 out of it, but it’s not the graphically explosive, groundbreaking game that is going to change the face of the entire genre that it was promised to be. Probably one of the most fun games out for the Xbox one at this point, so if you’re struggling to justify your launch purchase, get you some Watch Dogs.


And I will leave you with the coolest thing this game has brought into my life. XD

PLOT- 8/10
GRAPHICS- 9/10
AUDIO- 6/10
GAMEPLAY- 9/10
OVERALL- 8/10

Credit to Nicholas Stewart photography and Stewie2552 for the comparison photos. There are more on Stewie's imgur account if you're interested.

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