@ccgod Sleeping Dogs had the best reflections. Amazing game, makes me feel like I've been to Hong Kong.

I think someone at Ubi decided that FUN must trump everything in Watch Dogs. And it does. I've put in 34 hours so far & I'm still only in Act 2 in the story, running around & getting distracted by side activities is just so much fun. However, the game was advertised as having a very gritty story, dealing with human trafficking etc. & there was supposed to be a moral dilemma for the player when you see details about people & have the option to hack them. The fact that it's so easy & fast to hack people means I've often already taken their money before I've read that they're undergoing chemotherepy.

The world is very full & dense. There is stuff to do everywhere & that's why it's so easy to get distracted from the main mission. That really does create a dichotomy between Aiden Pearce, the vengeful vigilante & Dude in a Trenchcoat, my avatar for fun, theft & destruction.

Danny definitely has a point about Watch Dogs' Chicago not being memorable. In my time with GTA V, the game could put a spot on my map & I would instantly know if that was the wilderness, a poor district, the airport or the centre of town. In Watch Dogs I know where Pawnee is, mainly because there's not a lot there & I recognise when I'm driving or running around a poor district or a nice residential area but I couldn't point to most of them on the map. Ubisoft's Chicago is definitely a beautiful city (although not as good looking as Sleeping Dogs' Hong Kong) but there is something unmemorable about it.

All that being said, Watch Dogs is a great game & IMO deserving of the 8/10 scores it's getting. I'm still enjoying it & I'll be going for 100% completion, something I don't often care about in Assassin's Creed games or many other open worlds. I just hope the sequel (there will certainly be one if not more) can take a more serious route.

@Suaron_x It's just darker. Turn down the gamma on PC & you'll probably like that better.

@push88 More recent trailers showed the actual graphical fidelity of the game. they weren't taking money when they showed the 2012 E3 trailer so it's not a bait & switch like Aliens: Colonial Marines was.

@Rushaoz True, cutscenes are not the best way to compare graphics. I would have liked to see the particle effects on burst steam pipes, smoke etc.

The PC port is not incredibly well optimised either. TotalBiscuit's rig with 2 Titans can't get solid 60fps on ultra settings so there is definitely work to be done. My OC'd GTX670 basically performs like a 680 & I get mostly 60fps on high settings. Where it drops a few frames is mainly driving where the game is having to render the city coming up before me, this would have been a good comparison as well but I suspect limiting the consoles to 30fps & lower resolution probably solved this issue. There is a lot of pop in though. Cars, pedestrians, traffic lights all pop in fairly obviously if you look for it, that also would have been a good comparison.

I think whoever did this video didn't really try. It's all opening mission, they couldn't be bothered playing long enough to unlock the ability to burst steam pipes to do a decent video. Just lazy.

Been playing for 10+ hours now & it's great!

I think an 8/10 is a fair score. It plays well & looks beautiful on PC. The comments about the serious nature of the story vs the fun of it's sandbox nature are justified but what were you really expecting? Players have come to expect a certain amount of forgiveness in messing around in the sandbox & if all the havoc you caused in a multiplayer car race (remember that's part of the seamless world) counted towards some sort of morality meter or even the games existing system of vigilante/villain then it just wouldn't be fun.

In my 10-11 hours I've actually been mostly holding off story missions, there's just so much to do! If you enjoy sandbox games like GTA then you'll love this game. It's not perfect but I'm enjoying it more than GTA V.

Wait, how was that a review?

That just told us what the game is. What's good, what's missing? What have they changed since the last one? How does it compare to other games in the genre?

I heard a bunch of compliments & saw a score at the end but I don't feel like it gave me anywhere near enough information about what it's like to actually play the game. Sorry Maxwell, but I think you need to pick up your game. A game like that will probably require a lot of time commitment to play & it looks like other sources will be much more useful to me than this review.

The nemesis system looks really interesting. I honestly couldn't care less if this was LOTR licensed or any other generic fantasy so hopefully the story will be interesting enough on its own without having to recall a bunch of references to source material.

@lyncer777 Looks good but I think I'll wait for a price drop & patches.

I love pc gaming but I hate how long it takes for devs to optimise their game for the massive variety of builds available. Often the best experience is gained by avoiding new release games. To be fair, it's not just a pc issue, I made the mistake of buying Skyrim on PS3.

Those are your pre-order dollars hard at work.