Located in Chicago is Aiden Pearce, just your average IT Specialist who is naturally normal and has no particular purpose in the world but he manages to find himself coming across some interesting secrets which leads to danger for him and his family. These secrets ultimately lead to a death, the death of his niece and this is where we start our story; Aiden is on a quest for revenge and will stop at nothing to get answers.
Welcome to the futuristic city of Chicago that technology fanatics will have dreamed off, everything is connected by a centralised figure (the ctIOS) and you have the power to alter variables in a multitude of different ways at a press of a button on your smart phone. It’s quite amazing that such a simplistic concept in Watch Dogs works so well with seamless control and slick movement with an easy control system which both rewards and is accessible.
Altering many of the features in the game is where true skill in watch dogs comes from, many times throughout the game you are involved in police chases, take downs and escaping scenes and you need to use the ctOS to control aspects to help you escape or stop a foe, doing this requires precession timing and this is the only complication a player will face as the controls are ludicrously simplistic with slick movements which slide into the gameplay with ease.
These hacking features are relatively simplistic but the game does offer the player a challenge in the form of hacking puzzles which require you to complete a stream of data from one source to another but change the direction of it, some can be difficult with the timing but the majority only offer an extra hurdle to jump over in missions rather than something to test out your IQ.
On the whole the story is quite diverse and tries to flex watch dogs as a game to show you what the city can do at a push of a button, but within the story you come across some interesting characters and exciting plots. Aiden, you virtual vigilante isn’t particularly interesting but blends everyone together nicely, some of the characters you come across made me laugh as explore their worlds as much as your own, keep an eye out for Tyrone, what a guy. The plot is somewhat disjointed and at times hard to follow as you pick and drop characters throughout without actually realising there purpose till later on in the story. The sad thing is that I think there is simply too much going on at once to have an effective storyline that works fluently but the story at times was gripping and had me focusing on that rather than the additional side missions.
So diverse is the game that in the progression screen there are 185 missions which includes, main campaign, and side missions; consisting of removing gang hideouts, preventing criminal convoys and general crimes, as well as protection contracts. Alongside those we also have Investigations which looks into areas such as; Human Trafficking and missing persons as well as other criminal areas. So a lot to sink your teeth into once the main story is over.
Accompanying the vast variety of single player options is the rather impressive take on multiplayer that Watch Dogs offers to the player. One of the main modes is the chance to enter another player’s single player Chicago and attempt to hack them; from there the player who needs to prevent the hack must find and kill the hacker. Sounds simplistic and is but it comes with a challenge, hiding is often impossible and the thrill of the chase seemingly isn’t get old after quite a few attempts myself. Next to this is the online racing which is your typical street racing feature that you might find on something like GTA.
Another mode is the Mobile Challenge; the console player is challenged by a player on a tablet to get some one point in the city to the other whilst the Tablet player is controlling the rozzers (police). I’ve never seen any in-game police be so persistent and unrelenting than in Watch Dogs, they simply do not give up and will stop at nothing to end you, certainly one mode for those looking for a challenge. Explore Chicago with your friends in the Free roam version of the multiplayer, other gamers bring their versions of Adian together and the result is all out war, extremely good fun and you can essentially make up your own missions here with your mates if you have the imagination for it!
Online tailing gives the player a chance to test out their private detective skills through entering another players Chicago and following them, ending with an exciting escape from the scene which also adds to the tense setting. The final multiplayer mode is the Online Decryption game which offers players the chance to work as a team to download a file and decrypt it whilst being attacked by fixers (enemies trying to download the file). All these modes add massive value to the game, I found it increasingly amazing how players could simply walk into your game with ease without you even noticing until they hacked you. Essentially if they don’t even attempt a hack you could never know they were there in the time limit they have!
Whilst these modes don’t earn the player any in-game cash they do earn you the skill points needed to unlock skills which Aiden possesses. Again Watch Dogs shows off an array of deep parts of the game with a wide variety of skills to unlock ranging from being able to hack trains and bridges to taking less damage from explosions, through gaining these skills you can greater appreciate the depth which watch dogs has to offer and it’s amazing how much there is to offer in this game.
If you’ve seen watch dogs before you would have seen the digital trips which the game offers throwing Aiden into an alternate version of Chicago, these can be ranging from Ubisofts dead rising rip off Madness where you have run down as many zombies as possible collecting souls to the famous Spider tank trip which has been widely published on multiple websites. The spider tank is by far the most fun and provides a more memorable option from an already deep class of features!
They say information is power and in watch dogs this is certainly the case, every individual has some sort of different information to them which is different to the next and this epitomises the entire game for me, such a level of detail and features which offer the player numerous ways for you to enjoy your stay in Chicago, even the city itself has been directly recreated from reality with minute detail which sets watch dogs ahead in the market.
Although there is pilferers of features in watch dogs once you’ve done one type of side mission you tend to have done them all, some are pretty similar to the previous one and in some cases the mission is so easy it was almost no point in you having to do it. Graphically the game isn’t a showstopper but performs well and consistently enough for you to notice things but not say how bad or amazing the graphics are.
From moving from a mission back into open world the game does sometimes struggle and often gitters its way back in normality, nothing a patch won’t fix but when you delay a game for a period of time like Ubisoft did you sort of expect this type of thing to ironed out. The sad thing about watch dogs is that once you complete the game and its multitude of features I can’t really see myself picking it back up again and completing it again, the main story was interesting but the distinct lack of emotion in Aiden is disappointing and as he features 100% of the time it’s a sad recurring theme that you have to put up with.
With the online features and the side missions included there is a lot to play with in watch dogs and Ubisoft has done a good job of tying the concept together in the end after a ropey first few gameplay hours. For the player with time to burn watch dogs can offer you that outlet to let your imagination run wild but can sometimes like the fun factor that GTA brings which I would regard as the closest type of game to watch dogs. That being said I am a fan of watch dogs and in a short amount of days I racked up some serious time faster than most Xbox One games I have played since launch. The lasting question though it will we talk about watch dogs as a great game of the Xbox One, the answer I believe will be no but a sequel is almost certainly on the radar (after watchdogs smashed Ubisoft ’sales in 48 hours record’) and that may just have some legacy in what I believe is an interesting concept.
