Ubisoft Watch Dogs Review

Watch Dogs is a highly anticipated open-world action game developed by Ubisoft. Watch Dogs follows the story of a brilliant hacker named Aiden Pearce who promises to take revenge of his late niece from the men who is responsible for her death.

Before writing my review, I wanted to make sure that I finish Watch Dogs at least once and test all its features including different game modes and multiplayer in order to give you a fully detailed review. So does Watch Dogs live up to the hype or is it a big flop? Well keep on reading to find out what I think.

Watch Dogs Story

Among many video games, the plot of Watch Dogs was one of the stories that manage to captivate me the most. The more I played the more the game absorbed me in its storyline and the more I wanted to know what would happen next. Only a few game had that sort of affect on me like World of Warcraft, Metro 2033, Diablo and Starcraft (because I read the books). Watch Dogs doesn't have any books yet and it's the first game that managed to captivate me with its story with a medium other than books.

After our brilliant hacker protagonist Aiden Pearce loses his 8-year-old niece on a hit where he was the real target, he makes it his life's mission to find the men responsible for the loss of his niece. As players who take on the role of the vigilante Aiden Pearce, we take on a mission of vengeance to find these men and get some sort of justice for his niece.

In order to find these people we do what we do best: Hack the hell out of the city. We'll be hacking laptops to find email exchanges and hack the phones to track down new suspects to ultimately find the man who is behind all the mayhem that took apart Aiden's life.

The biggest disappointment with Watch Dogs campaign mode is that it is unfortunately quite short. Act V, which is the last act, only has 1 mission can you believe that? You also can't replay past missions which in my opinion is a big minus.

Watch Dogs Graphics

Like many gamers I will also be complaining about the graphics quality of the game. For a game that is supposed to be boasting next-gen graphics, there is absolutely nothing next gen about Watch Dogs graphics. What's even worse is that there are a lot of glitches especially on the PC platform. For a game whose launch date was postponed for 6 whole months due to quality concerns, this is unacceptable. Many high end gaming rigs, including mine, can't play the game on Ultra graphics due to glitches, fps issues and stutters. My graphics card already has 4gb which is more than what they recommend. I should easily be playing this game on ultra but it doesn't let me as the game becomes unplayable when I make Aiden turn around. This made me second guess my killer system but after reading countless complaints I found out that it was a general problem. Currently I have functions like Anti Aliasing and Vsync turned off because of glitches. GPU render is set to 1 and most extra functions are also turned off. One of the glitches was not being able to see my locator on the map/minimap. when I looked at the map I couldn't see where I was located or where I was facing. So at first it was very difficult to find missions as I had no way of saying which direction my character was going.

Watch Dogs Gameplay - Hacking

After being greatly disappointed with the graphics this is finally where the game becomes incredibly interesting. Hacking. For a game that has "Everything is connected" as core principle, naturally we can hack almost anyone's phones or laptops to find all sorts of dirty secrets about them. With the skill points we earn by completing missions or carrying out certain acts (like avoiding the police), we will be able possess the ability to hack the whole city infrastructure from traffic lights to steam pipes, from blockers to even bridges. Hell you can even hack the train. Hacking city infrastructure is particularly helpful in getting rid of enemy or police cars that are chasing you. When you hack a steam pipe at the right time you can destroy a car or the cars will have to change course to a more longer route when you raise a bridge you just crossed. You can also create traffic accidents by hacking traffic lights to slow down or take down an enemy car. You can also raise blockers or spikes to take these cars down. As you can see the possibilities are almost endless when it comes to what you can do with Chicago to make your own job easier. To put it simply, Chicago works for you. It is ultimately up to you to use it to its full potential.

Here is a devastating effect of a steam pipe explosion.

Speaking of dirty secrets, some of the information you will find on the citizens of Chicago are quite hilarious. Like last night I came upon a man who made a porn video in college. However some of the things that you find out may upset you a little especially if you just started playing and feel the need to hack into their bank accounts. As you will be low on money when you first start the game, you will most likely want to hack everyone's bank accounts to draw their money from an ATM. However, naturally you might feel a bit uneasy when you hack the back account of someone who has just been diagnosed with leukemia or someone who has been recently mugged. But after playing the game for some time you sort of become numb to information about the people you are hacking. Then after playing more and more you will realise that money is really not an issue. Currently I have so much money that I don't know what to do with. I bought all the costumes and the guns so there is really nothing else to spend it on except betting games or crafted items both of which are quite cheap.

I won't feel sorry for hacking this bloke...

We are also able to hack our enemies' gear in order to immobilize or even destroy them. Like if an enemy has grenades on him, we can detonate these grenades from a distance to explode and kill our target. However this is where RNG plays a small part because whenever you hack a grenade, your enemy will become aware and try to get rid of this grenade. Sometimes they act slower and explode, sometimes they throw the grenade at another enemy target or sometimes at an empty spot. So while you might not kill anyone with this hack there will come a time when you can actually manage to explode many enemy soldiers at the same time. 

You can also hack people to take a peek inside their phones and eavesdrop on their text messages or phone calls. Some of these conversations that you will be witnessing are also hilarious but most are mundane everyday topics. However, during some of these messages you can also come across someone who is about to commit a crime or someone who is going to drop an item of interest to a certain location. After the conversation take place the game will prompt you to press X to mark the waypoint to the location of this item or crime. You don't have to actually do this. So if you feel like doing something else you can go on and do it. Even if you press X it won't be like you have to go there as you can easily ignore it and change the waypoint to another location from the map. The packages usually include items like grenades, money and pills etc... So don't worry, you won't be missing too much if you decide not to go after that package.

Don't worry, I'll kindly pick up that package for you.

But you shouldn't forget that hacking will require battery charges. Hacking phones or cameras will not require any charges although hacking a steam pipe or disabling reinforcements will require 2 battery charges. You will start the game with a fairly low battery charge but you can increase it later on with your skill points.

Crimes and Reputation

Unlike items of interests, crimes will play a big part of the game as they are endless even when you are completely finished with campaign and side missions as well as collectibles. In order to reach 100% completion, one of the things you have to do is to stop 20 crimes. Crimes will mainly affect your reputation and reputation plays an important role in the game. Don't forget that the police is looking for you so if your reputation is low, a pedestrian who recognises you as the vigilante can easily call the police on you. But if you have good reputation, these people will even stop to take your picture or just pass by without paying you any attention.

Capture my good side please.

When you reach a crime location you open the profiler (Z on PC) in order to either find the suspect or the victim. When you find either of them you have to wait for the criminal behaviour to actually take place while remaining out of sight. The game will let you know when to intervene. However, if you act early you will spook the suspect and you will lose your chance to solve the crime cause it will have never taken place. When the game prompts you to intervene you have to non-lethally take down the suspect. Yes you can shoot him but you will get a reputation penalty for taking a life. But if you get close to the suspect and press F to knock him down you will gain a big reputation bonus. If the victim survives the crime you will get even a bigger bonus. In most crimes suspects will have some sort of blunt weapon like a baseball bat so you have a longer time frame to catch him before the victim is harmed. However, in some crimes the suspect will have a gun and can easily one shot the victim. Although this one time I got so lucky that my suspect missed his shot so the victim could safely run away while I took down the suspect and gained a huge reputation boost. If your victim has a gun, you just have to stay very close to him and intervene as soon as possible.

Once you find your suspect or victim, observe until the game prompts you to intervene.

There aren't a lot of ways to gain reputation; however, there are many ways to lose it. Almost half of the game will be played by driving or fleeing from enemy cars. As you accidentally kill and hurt civilians you will lose reputation. Especially when you accidentally run over a civilian and kill him/her you will lose a BIG chunk of your reputation so you have to watch out. Though especially during Fixer Contract missions this is easier said than done...

Reach Maximum Functionality with Your Smartphone

As a hacker your bread and butter in the game is of course your smartphone that lets you stay connected with the world and help you in various ways. Pressing the middle button on your mouse will bring out the user interface of your smartphone. Your phone is filled with information to guide and help you during gameplay, like DedSec Field Guide will give you basic information about how to do certain things in the game. Think of it as a written tutorial. You can check your progression, skills, leaderboards, statistics from your phone. By using Online Contracts App you can find online matches. If you feel like trying out something new your phone has mini games as well! Car On Demand App will help you to find the car you need to make a fast escape; however, I should note that Car On Demand App can't be used during missions. There are also other numerous functions like unlocking new songs from SongSneak app and doing Check-ins from City Hotspots app. Yes, in the game you can actually check in and become the mayor of a location if you checked in 7 times there. You can also leave out gifts like money and ammo for other players or pick up gifts that were left by other players during check-in.

You can find all you need to know from your smartphone.

Watch Dogs Skills

By completing campaign/side missions, solving crimes or simply doing stuff in the game, you will be rewarded with skill points. You can use these skill points to unlock new skills. Skills fall into 4 categories in Watch Dogs. Hacking, Combat, Crafted Items and Driving. In the game your basic hacking ability is to hack traffic lights, cameras or people's phones. But from the hacking skills, you can even unlock how to hack a helicopter or increase your battery capacity. With Crafted Items skill tree you can learn how to craft an IED among other items. As you can see from the diagram the most developed and enhanced skill tree belongs to the hacking category. My suggestion to you is to unlock as many as you can from the hacking tree first. Namely steam pipes, blockers and disabling reinforcements will be among the most frequently hacking abilities you will use so try to unlock them as soon as possible. The points that are required to unlock a skill will vary between 1 and 5. Also some skills won't be available to players until you complete a special mission. For example you will need to reach Wave 5 in a mini game called NVZN in order to unlock Auto Weapons Expert to increase your bust fire precision.

When you choose a skill, the skill tree gives you detailed information and a small video to show how that skill works.

Notoriety Skills refer to the skills that are unlocked by taking part in multiplayer. By being successful or partly successful in multiplayer, you will earn notoriety to unlock notoriety skills like nitro remaining active for a longer time that would surely help you a lot during online racing. However these skills will not be useful in single player campaign.

The skill tree is simple to use and it's very detailed. In my opinion the best feature of the skill tree is that it shows you a small short video to show how that particular skill works. The video is also supported by a detailed explanation about the skill so you know what you are in for before you unlock that skill.

Your Hideout

As a brilliant hacker while being a vigilante on the side, you will surely gain many enemies while being tailed by the police at the same time. That's why your hideout provides a safehouse for Aiden to take a breath while offering many other functions like letting you change your costumes from your wardrobe or changing the time of the day by setting the alarm clock and letting Aiden take a nap. Your hideouts also have the fast travel function allowing you to fast travel from one hideout to the next without the hassle of driving. However, your hideouts and fast travel can't be used during missions.

You can change costumes from the wardrobe in your hideout.

In order to unlock new hideouts, first you will need to unlock ctOS towers. There are 13 towers in the game and once you install a backdoor to all these towers you will also unlock an achievement. At the same time you will get 13 more hideouts you can use for fast travelling. Unlocking these towers will also allow points of interest for collecting purposes to appear on your map. More importantly unlocking a ctOS tower will enable you to hack or go on a shopping spree within that district. Simply put, if you haven't unlocked the ctOS tower in your current area, you won't be able to hack anything or use any of the stores.

Watch Dogs Map

For me the map is one of the weak features of Watch Dogs. It is rather limited to what you can do with it compared to some other games. The only thing you can do on it is to set a waypoint. For example I would love to have the ability to filter some icons to toggle them off or on. During my gameplay I was trying so hard to find the last mission for QR codes only to find out that its icon was overlapped by some other icon. Being able to filter these icons would have helped greatly.

The map needs filtering options.

Inventory

Pressing Tab on your PC will bring out your inventory that has 8 sections for your weapons and crafted items. Sadly inventory is one of the weakest points of Watch Dogs. It's clunky and very difficult to use, not to mention somewhat limited. For example grenade launcher and sniper rifles are listed as special weapons. And you can only choose one special weapon at a time. I would have preferred a different layout where I can choose the weapons to fill the empty slots rather than having the game to classify them for me. Trust me there are times where you will need to quickly switch between a grenade launcher and a sniper rifle but with the current inventory, you might die by the time you make the switch. Because switching weapons take time and I am not talking about switching from a pistol to a machine gun as pressing 2 or 1 will easily do that but I am talking about switching weapons in a given category. You need to select the section you want to change and scroll between weapons that are listed in that category.

But my biggest complaint about the inventory is how difficult it is to actually select a section. You don't choose with a cursor, instead you hold Tab to activate the inventory and move your mouse towards that certain section to choose your item. Especially choosing crafted items is pretty difficult. Most of the time you will find yourself choosing a gun instead of a crafted item. You can also equip only one crafted item at a time. I just don't understand why you can't equip jam comm and throw a grenade at the same time. 

Another strong criticism is immediately equipping the weapons you just picked up. I am after the achievement that requires me to collect every single weapon in the game. For me to do that I pick up any gun that my enemies drop. They are weak weapons as I'm currently using the best weapons in the game. However you automatically equip the weapon you just picked up. This is incredibly odd. If you were given a chance like "hold E to pick up and equip this item" or "press E to pick up this item" I'd understand it but there is not a function like that. So then again you have to go back to the inventory to equip back your previous weapon. This is especially difficult if you are already in combat at the time.

Weapons

There are many different weapons in the game. Machine guns, pistols, hand guns, grenade launchers, shotguns, uzis, sniper rifles and so on. You can purchase new weapons at the gun store or pick them up from dead enemies. Completing side missions, advancing in the story line, multiplayer and collecting will also reward you with new weapons. You will find some weapons with Spec Ops title, these Spec Ops weapons use silencer and they can greatly help you to remain undetected. You can kill an army with your Spec Ops pistol without the enemy ever finding where you are. As they see bodies piling up they will be aware that someone is there obviously but they won't find your location.

The weapon you want to purchase might be on sale!

Crafted Items

Aiden Pearce doesn't have that many gadgets at his disposal. But the few he has will definitely help you a lot. You will surely find yourself frequently using crafted items like Jam Coms, Blackout or IEDs as they significantly help you escape a tough situation. In order to craft items you need to use crafting components you will find from your surroundings like Electronic Parts, certain encryption codes that you will be hacking from people, hardware and binary compounds. The last two items can be bought from Pawn Shops. However as you advance in the story line, you will unlock Tobias' shop where you can purchase already crafted items so you won't need to worry about crafting them yourself. Now let's take a closer look at these items.

Jam Coms, as the name suggests jams the communication abilities of your enemies or civilians. You can use it on a number of situations. If a civilian recognises you and calls the police, you can use Jam Coms to block the phone call before the police are dispatched. You can also use Jam Coms to stop the enemy from calling reinforcements. This can particularly help during car chases. When you are on foot and you use the profiler to learn that an enemy can call reinforcements and you can easily hack to disable this function. However during car chases you can't do something like that and 2-3 extra cars chasing you can certainly make your job harder. Jam Coms can also stall data transfer for a time during online hacking/decryption missions. With the time you gain from Jam Coms you can distance yourself from the enemy hacker to hold on to your file a little longer. Jam Coms can also temporarily stop a police scan. This can especially help you during Fixer Contract Missions where you need to bring a vehicle undetected to a drop out location. Due to its versatile function Jam Coms is one of the most frequently used crafted items so I suggest you stock up on these early on in the game and don't hold back when a situation calls for it. 

Blackout is my next favourite crafted item. This item causes a massive blackout in the city where you will gain invisibility from your enemies until the power is back on. This is particularly helpful when you are being chased by the police or enemy drivers. Although, sadly Blackout does little to help against a police Helicopter. I should also note that NONE of your hacking abilities will function during blackout. So forget about hacking bridges or steam pipes during blackout. That's why Blackout can also be used as an alternative to Jam Coms on online missions to stall your enemy from stealing your encrypted data.

Blackout interrupts the city life for a limited time as well as your hacking abilities but you will be invisible to your enemies.

ctOS scan is another crafted item that will allow you to scan your area and tag all the non-player enemies. This is not an item that I used so far as I like using cameras to scan my area and learn about where my targets are. However, certain locations have limited camera access and you can't really see where your enemies are until you get very close to them. So ctOS scan can easily become very handy in those situations.

Apart from these defensive crafted items, Aiden of course has some combat crafted items like Lure and Focus Boost and explosives like Frag Grenades, Proximity IED and IEDS. You can use Lure to attract your enemy if your surroundings don't give you other options like car alarms. Focus Boost replenishes your focus immediately. Focus is a function I have never used before as I see it as a more combat sort of ability as it significantly slows time to let you kill your enemies one by one. I prefer to take on a more stealth approach and I love thinking about what move to make and how I could use my surroundings to take down my targets without a soul hearing. I take down the rest with a silenced weapon or by non-lethal melee combat and flee the area without getting detected so I have never needed to use focus before.

Which is why I also don't use many explosives. The explosive I used the most was IED in order to take down heavily armored infantries during certain campaign missions. They can be a bitch to kill unless you have a grenade launcher and at the time and I didn't so IED was my best bet. You can set an IED by pressing G on a location you want, then you hide and when your enemy gets close to that IED you hack it to set it off from a distance. IED can be manually activated while Proximity IED will activate itself when it senses movement when enemies move to its explosion range. Frag Grenades are your typical grenades that will take little time before blowing up.

It sure looks tempting but I'll avoid for now.

If you want to take on a more stealth approach like I did I advise you against all sorts of explosives. I don't even hack grenades on my enemies anymore as the sound attracts almost all of my enemies. To give you an example, I was on a Gangster Hideout mission that took place in a big parking lot with multiple floors and when I hacked an explosive device on my enemy, even the gangsters from 2nd floor upstairs came rushing to the 1st floor which forced me to restart the mission because I felt like I failed when my enemies became aware of me. I am a Sam Fisher (Splinter Cell) purist it seems :D Although if you don't care for this play style ( there is no special rewards or points to play a certain style unlike Splinter Cell Blacklist) you can also make interesting combinations with your crafted items like setting an IED and luring enemies to that IED to kill them altogether.

Side Missions

For an open-world game, it is quite natural to have tons of side missions. Watch Dogs is no exception. However, the versatility could have been higher as we only have side missions that can be put into 3 categories. (I am not counting DLC packs and the missions you get from collecting which I'll be talking about after this). However these missions will surely keep you entertained and they will also give you lots of rewards like new guns, cars, skill points, achievements and of course lots of money.

Fixer Contracts

Fixer Contracts are my least favourite missions among the 3 categories. However the best thing about Fixer Contracts is that they are high in versatiliy and whopping in numbers (I got the achievement to complete 40 Fixer Contracts and still have 6-7 of them active on my map so I'm beginning to think that these missions are infinite). What I mean by versatility is that you will be doing many different things to complete these missions. You will be driving a vehicle to a drop out location without being detected from the police. You will race against time to reach checkpoints in an attempt to attract police attention so that your associates can carry on with their dirty work without police breathing down on their necks. You will be delivering vehicles to different locations in a limited time without destroying them. You will be getting close to enemy cars to download data and take them down after the download is complete. As you can see there are many different Fixer Contracts. I find stealth ones to be the most exciting ones. There is just a certain rush of anxiety when I try to avoid police scanners :D

Criminal Convoys

Yellow waypoint shows the predetermined route of the criminal convoy so you can plan your strategy.

Criminal Convoys can either be the hardest or the easiest missions. You will be intercepting a criminal convoy on an already predetermined route before they reach their destination. You will know their route so you will have time to plan your attack. You don't need to take down all the convoy though. The specific vehicle or vehicles that you need to destroy will be targeted for you. However some criminal convoy missions will require you to knock down 2 enemy officers after destroying their cars. Now for me these are the most difficult missions in the game. I usually wait near a steam pipe and take them down and when the guy I need to kill gets out of the destroyed car, I run him over to quickly finish the mission. But if I need to knock him down or hell even 2 of them then it becomes a big problem. This means gun fighting in public where most likely someone will also be calling the police. You just need to create a big traffic jam if the mission requires you to knock down enemies. The bigger the traffic jam the more spots for you to take cover. Otherwise you will be in a completely open area where you won't have any chance to complete the mission. Also don't forget to use Jam Coms when your enemies call for backup.

Gang Hideouts

Gang Hideouts are rather straightforward. You go to a location where a gang set up operation. By using the Profiler you find the leader of the gang and knock him down. But bear in mind that killing your target is unacceptable during these missions and you will immediately restart the mission. Sometimes the mission will require you to knock down 2 or even 3 gang leaders. Of course there will also be many guards at the location so be careful if you are thinking of just rushing in with guns drawn. After knocking down your targets, either kill all the gangsters in the area or escape to complete the mission.

This one deserves what's coming to him...

After you complete a side mission you can check the leaderboard to see who displayed the best performance during that mission. Surprisingly I actually became first on a certain Fixer Contract mission where I needed to deliver a motorcycle to a warehouse without being detected by the police. Most Fixer Contract missions have time limits; however, missions that require you to deliver a vehicle unseen don't have a time limit. I was lucky enough to have avoided every single police scanner to reach my destination without any accidents and delays. Here is my proof :D I am Lenor118 by the way... :D I've just never been first at anything before especially on world charts so this made me quite happy! Sorry about scroll lock, I accidentally pressed it first instead of print screen :D

Yay!

Collecting

Collecting will be a major part of the game provided you didn't do any of them during campaign missions. There are tons of things to do in the city of Chicago and in order to get 100% completion as well as new skill points, more side missions, new weapons and cars; you will have to do all of them. But I assure you they are quite fun. QR codes that are left by DedSec members all around the city will give you clues to unlock a new mission (although it's probably the shortest mission ever). You will get a chance to stop the human trafficking ring as well as collect clues to find out who is responsible for all the missing person reports. You will find the drop out locations for burner phones and weapons shipment which will unlock a new side mission. Privacy invasions will give you a peek inside the life of the citizens of Chicago.

Privacy Invasions were actually my most favourite thing to do in the game. Some of the things I witnessed were quite hilarious. I'd love to share some stories with you but I don't want to take away anything from their shock value. But I assure you, you will have a lot of fun.

Multiplayer

I am not a big fan of multiplayer in general so I stick to single player campaign. However, after I tried out the multiplayer modes of Watch Dogs I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun I had. One of the most important things you need to know about Multiplayer is that only YOU will see yourself as Aiden Pearce. You will look like a regular NPC to all the other players. This is vital especially during online hacking where you have to avoid detection. If you looked like Aiden to the person you are trying to hack, obviously you would get detected in no time. But it is quite hilarious when you see a white-haired old woman in a pink dress holding a sniper rifle and trying to steal a file (true story).

There are a couple of things you need to know with multiplayer. First of all, if you have "Online Invasions" turned on from the settings, you might be invaded by a rival hacker at any time. However you will not be invaded if you are on missions. If you turn off Online Invasions, you will not be invaded. But the kick is that if you turn off Online Invasions, any notoriety points or skills you earned will be reset back to 0 and you will have to start from scratch. I've got about 2000 notoriety points now with 2 online skills unlocked, if I were to turn off online invasions I'd lose all my progress in multiplayer which is a bummer to be honest. I'd understand it if they were frozen or locked but you just lose them...

Another vital thing to point out that you can't go on a killing spree during online missions like hacking and tailing. You simply can't harm the player you are trying to hack/tail otherwise you will lose your progress during that mission and ultimately some notoriety points. This is particularly great as otherwise it would have been incredibly frustrating for someone else to just join your game and kill you. You aren't supposed to harm your opponent even if you get detected. However there is nothing to stop the player, who is being tailed/hacked, from taking revenge.

The greatest disappointment with the multiplayer of Watch Dogs is that you can't play Online Hacking/Tailing with your friends. So everything is NOT as connected as it's advertised. A lot of us have to be punished just because some people might exploit a system. It shouldn't be that difficult to remove notoriety gain/penalty during hacking/tailing sessions with friends if Ubisoft is that scared of people exploiting the system.

Online Decryption

Online Decryption is my favourite multiplayer mode in Watch Dogs. In this mode you try to decrypt the data first before all the other rival hackers. There can be from 3 to 8 players within a single online decryption game. Some variations will include data races where the file is free for all to decrypt whereas some variations will require 2 teams. When it is a team challenge, it is possible to gain a hacking speed bonus if team members stay close to the person who is currently holding the file. Data races are quite chaotic I must admit and I had the least fun in multiplayer during data races. I would spend 3-4 minute holding the file and manage to decrypt a big chunk of it only to have it stolen by someone who has never held the fire before and finish the game by holding it for only a couple of seconds. For me data races feel like mid farming in World of Warcraft's Warsong Gulch. So I prefer team challenges because they are huge fun.

Online Hacking

In Online Hacking mode your objective is to hack the rival fixer without being detected. During this mission as the hacker it is recommended to find a fast getaway car in case you get detected. Once you get detected you either have to evade your opponent or your opponent has to kill you. So escaping with a fast vehicle might save your life. It is also important to note that you can't harm the person you are trying to hack. The biggest disadvantage of online hacking mode is that you can't play this mode with your friends. It has to be some random stranger.

You can't harm the player who you are trying to hack.

Online Tailing

Online Tailing missions are quite similar to Online Hacking missions. They also put your stealth skills to the test. In Tailing missions you will need to observe a rival fixer until the timer runs out. For this duration you have to remain undetected and you also can't harm the player you are tailing. You should also keep a fast car nearby to escape if you get detected or need to evade after observation. Just like Online Hacking, you also can't play in Online Tailing mode with your friends.

Online Race

Online Races are your typical races. These races can be circuit style races with multiple laps or just a checkpoint race. In a race track you will come across bridges or other shortcuts. Taking advantage of these shortcuts will greatly help you. You can also press "G" to activate nitro to gain a speed boost for a limited time. All players start the race with one nitro available in their inventory. But when you reach certain checkpoints you will be rewarded with more nitros as well. When your vehicle is destroyed you will need to hold "E" to spawn back into the race, whenever you spawn you will also be rewarded with a nitro to close the gap. My advice to you is not to use the nitro during turns cause it will feel like you are trying to play hockey rather than racing with a car. There are motorcycle and car races; however, I haven't run into any water races yet.

Online Races are among my least favourite multiplayer modes. Driving is already too difficult as it is and to maintain a certain performance to make it to the finish line before everyone else is even more difficult. The road to complete the race is filled with dangers. Not to mention your opponent can use their hacking ability to take you down with a blocker or a steam pipe, the roads are quite busy with civilian vehicles as well. However there was this one track I quite liked. The race took place on a railroad and you were in between trains most of the time. You could hack these trains to stop or move them to punish an opponent who went off the road.

Online Free-Roam

As it can be understood from its name, Online Free-Roam is your typical free-roam mode but with an online twist. You can roam the city of Chicago with 7-8 other rival fixers at the same time. During Online Free-Roam you can also invite your friends to discover the city or take down your rivals. However, if you don't want other players to kill you, you can turn off its settings from the online options menu.

ctOS Mobile App

ctOS Mobile App can be installed on your Android or iOS devices that will let you stay connected to the game even when you are away from your computer. On this app you control all the police forces and surroundings in Chicago to stop your opponent from reaching all the checkpoints in a given time. You can raise blockers/splinters, explode steam pipes, dispatch police cars or in short anything that Chicago has on offer in order to stop your opponent.

On the other hand if you are challenged to a ctOS mobile app, you will just need to reach all the checkpoints in a given time. I tried out this app as a driver a couple of times now and in almost all of them I could easily lose the helicopter. Once you lose the helicopter the rest becomes cake. Because the only vehicle your opponent can "really" control is the helicopter. If the helicopter loses you, there is no way for your opponent to know where you are unless he/she finds you by luck.

It is great for an application like this to be developed for the mobile platforms. You can be involved in the gameplay even when you are away from your beloved PC. What's best about ctOS Mobile App is that it's got a very detailed tutorial mode and its user interface is very simple to use. It won't take you long to figure out how to operate the app.

Mini Games

For some reason unknown to the universe you feel bored of the usual gameplay and want to try out something new, you can check out some of the mini games. Watch Dogs offers many different mini games that will appeal to all sort of gamers.

You can find City Games that offer 4 unique gameplays all of which are quite entertaining (more to come with future DLC packs). My favourite one is Spider Tank where you control a kick-ass spider tank and cause havoc in the city of Chicago. The more destruction you bring the more points you will gain! During City Games bear in mind that you can upgrade your skills or gain new ones. For example during Alone City Game, you can unlock a skill to hack the power source from a longer distance.

Spider Tank mini game can actually be even more entertaining than some of the side missions.

There are also betting games you can find in various places in the city that will allow you to play poker, drinking and shell games. If you lose in these games you will lose a little money but if you win you will earn some money. Playing these games are essential in order to reach 100% completion.

Drinking games will test your button pressing reflexes.

Chess lovers aren't forgotten either. There are many different and unique chess challenges from full chess games to path or survival chess games and some of them are quite puzzling. You won't feel the time passing by as you try to earn 3 stars at the end of each game.

There are various chess puzzles that will surely keep you quite busy.

Like if these aren't enough you can also find some mini games on your smartphone.

In NVZN you will be killing insects that spawn from portals. The big insects can drop new weapons like uzis and shotguns with limited ammo.

City Life

I've played many open-world games but I've never seen a city this alive. Watch Dog presents you with the most alive free-roam cities you can find in a video game. There aren't many places to discover but there are a lot of interesting personalities. You can find people making out, eating food, chatting, dancing/singing, beatboxing, playing basketball/football, fighting over a car accident, peeing on a wall. Hell on some dark back alleys you can even find people getting blowjobs. Couples making out will also try to shoo you by saying "Move along, there is nothing to see here."

Raise the roof!!!

These people are also potty mouths. When you drive fast next to a person, you will most likely hear him/her yell "Asshole" or wondering how you could get a driving license. There are also other curse words that are frequently used. When you accidentally run into a person don't expect him to hug you. You will hear a mouthful. It's amazing :D There was this couple making out on a car and there weren't any other vehicles around so I had to take that car. The couple was pretty pissed at me for interrupting them but when they saw that I stole their car all the guy could say was "But that's my car!!!" :D

Enjoy your hot dog mate.

Nudity

Some of the things I said before in this post may raise some questions in your head about the nudity in the game. While there is no nudity in free-roam, during a very disturbing campaign mission in act 2, there will be nudity (not below the waist). While I will not be giving any spoilers about this mission, I can say that it will surely make you feel uneasy. If it doesn't, your mental state should be questioned and one day you may find Aiden Pearce on your doorstep...

Watch Dogs Gameplay Limitations

Now after covering the basics about Watch Dogs it is finally time to raise some of my criticisms about the gameplay. The Watch Dogs gameplay is filled with limitations. For example you can't accept missions or check-in while driving. Maybe I could understand it for missions but why the hell can't I check-in in my car? If you are trying to find city hotspots to unlock check-in achievement, you can't see them on your minimap if you are driving. You must come to a standstill for them to appear on your minimap. You also can't shoot while driving. Although, during multiplayer if someone else is driving the vehicle you can shoot as a passenger.

Driving is not as sleek and smooth as I'd like it to be. For off-road of course I can understand that. But even on road starting up a parked car can be a pain as your wheels will immediately start sliding.

Despite being low in numbers there are some good looking motorcycles. However you can't accept missions while driving.

You can drive motorcycles, but there aren't many to begin with. The vehicle diversity is definitely disappointing. I'd expect luxurious sports cars to be found much harder but you can find them almost anywhere. And most disappointing of them all, you can't use a helicopter. You can swim, you can use small boats but sorry, no helicopter.

Learning the ability to hack a helicopter was also a very disappointing experience. Because you can't move the camera all the way up to actually target the helicopter to hack. I'd have preferred it to be a dedicated key on your keyboard to disable a helicopter within your range. With its current state, hacking a helicopter is 99% of the time impossible (1% is an easily hackable helicopter during a certain campaign mission). Police helicopters that are chasing you will be right on top of your car at a relatively long distance meaning the camera won't bend that way for you to see it. So spending your skill points to get that skill early on in the game is completely useless. Take my advice and save it for last.

You can not customize vehicles. I'd have liked it if there was some sort of a car shop where you can change your wheels for better control or resistance against spikes or even only getting a different finish on your car would suffice. Just give me some form of customization please! You also can't upgrade your hideout. I wouldn't mind at all if there was a way for us to upgrade our hideouts with a hidden parking slot where we can park only one car inside. So our favourite car would be next to our hideout at all times. However none of this is possible.

Not being able to use helicopters is a bummer but we can at least drive boats...

We also can't be very involved in the city buildings. There aren't many buildings for Aiden Pearce to interact with. There are only your usual shops like gun/pawn/costume/coffee shops, bars and  pharmacy. The ability to ride the train is a nice touch but I'd have liked more buildings where I can interact with.

Targeting and cover systems are a bit clunky. Especially during certain campaign missions you will need to take fast covers in a short amount of time and this is exactly when you will realise the covering system is problematic (when I first read criticisms about covers I didn't believe them but when I got to that mission I was like "okay yea the reviewer was right"). You also can't change sides by using movement keys with the current cover system. You have to point the direction you want to go with your mouse and press "C" in order to take cover in that desired location. For example If I am behind a huge container and I just want to keep circling around it I have to point the other side of the container and press C. I can't just move there with movement keys. This is quite odd, of course you might need another key to change to a whole new cover but if you are staying on the same cover but merely changing corners, movement keys should have been enough. Another thing is that sometimes Aiden will take cover in a totally undesired location. Covering makes the distinction between remaining undetected or getting caught so there will be times when you might find yourself frequently cursing.

To change sides/corners during cover, you have to point towards the desired location and press C. You can't use movement keys...

Targeting causes issues especially if two hackable objects are very close to each other. You can't believe how many times I accidentally caused an explosion whereas all I wanted to do was to disable reinforcements from a guard. I even got myself killed once because I was standing on the road to hack a camera on a building in order to scan a QR code, What I didn't know was that the camera was out of my range but I thought I targeted it. In short I learned it the hard way that instead of the camera I was targeting a steam pipe which was very close to me. Well you can guess the rest of the story. The worst thing is, I wasn't even pointing my mouse towards the direction of the steam pipe as my camera was looking up in order for me to target the camera.

The examples I provided about targeting and covering only happened to me once or twice. But when it did happen it was very frustrating. However as these instances are quite extreme, there is only very low chance for them to actually happen to you too. So don't let them put you off the game.

Verdict

In the beginning of this post I asked the question whether Watch Dogs lived up to the hype or if it was a big flop. For me the game is massively fun and it is certainly the best game I played this year. Watch Dogs has a lot on offer for you to be involved in the game. However, due to some of the limitations I mentioned about the gameplay in general alongside multiplayer mode and the story mode being quite short, I'm afraid I can't give Watch Dogs the highest score. Nonetheless, despite my many criticisms I was incredibly entertained while I played the game and I recommend all of you to give Watch Dogs a chance.

Watch Dogs Final Score: 4.5/5