@push88 ehhh yes and no? They did release a "hotfix" on day one that fixed some game-breaking bugs. But there's still major issues. For me, 2-3 hours into any play session there's always a moment where the game suddenly decides to slash the framerate in half. Nothing can fix it other than quitting the game and rebooting it.
@thecman25 @liquidbutter Yes? What's your point? Just saying the facts would be a pretty inaccurate description of how the game feels. Facts would just be "this a video game. It takes x hours to play through the main story. It has x number of missions. It has hacking abilities. You can shoot guns. You can drive cars. You cannot fly helicopters or planes. You can swim, but not underwater. It has minigames. It has multiplayer"
The moment anyone tells you how good/bad any aspect of the game is, they are giving you an opinion.
Modern open world games always peak my interest, but if it's anything like Homefront 1 it could just be intensely dramatic scripted stuff with generic gameplay
@Sevenizz It can be quite funny, but my point is that developers always sell it as a far more impressive feature than it actually is. There's huge potential for a game to be influenced by your actions. When I hear that there's all kinds of things that rush through my mind. Like a multiverse where there's radically different worlds depending on every small decision that I make. It's just never fleshed out as much as it could be.
After playing the game to completion and exploring the open world a lot, as well as the online multiplayer, with regret I have to agree with the 8/10.
The minigame don't fit the rest of the game. They feel rushed and shoved in to pad the game with content. The digital trips especially just feel like they belong in a Saint's Row game. The puzzles are a kind of minigame of their own, and there's way too many of them. When it comes to being stealthy and trying to infiltrate an area without alerting all the guards, the puzzle of strategy in jumping from camera to camera and using distractions or explosions makes you feel real pro. But when it comes to ctOS breaches hacking ctOS towers, or aligning QR codes, it becomes boring and feels far too repetitive. The hacking puzzle minigame used much throughout the main story is painfully uninspired. It's a bland Pipe Dream remake without any of the creativity of putting together your own paths.
The driving is quite strange. Floaty. Bouncy. Unwieldy. They always want to rip pavement the moment you press the accelerator and it's difficult to get any subtlety in turning. Vehicle damage is acceptable but below AAA standards. At least they added a first person view. Although you can't actually turn your head to look ahead at where you're turning. Dunno how they messed that up, they did it properly in Far Cry 3.
Stealth is where Watch_Dogs shines best. The cover system works very nicely, although a crouch mode would have been appreciated instead of their system that makes you crouch only when the game wants you to. Swapping cover to cover, moving around corners, using distractions in all sorts of ways and exploding enemies with the environment is a lot of fun. The Takedowns are quite nice too actually. Your generic baton non-lethal takedown is starts feeling repetitive quickly, but there's a lot of different takedowns with different weapons that can all feel really good. Shoved a guy away and shot him in the face with a fully auto shotgun point blank! BAM! That felt good. Even though they are scripted one button takedowns, they're still very pleasant and satisfying to watch. I wish you could do them to anyone instead of just enemies. It's not a fully stealth game though without the ability to move bodies. Even in vehicles there's stealthy activity. Evading police by hiding in your car is a very nice mechanic. The way police try to find you seems pretty smart, but hiding in your parked car is even smarter.
The story. I really wanted to love this game but the story is so hopelessly lost. Such squandered potential. The entire thing is about your sister being kidnapped and jumping through hoops to keep her alive and try to rescue her or her son. You go off on wild tangents, Some of which are interesting and not explored enough, others that are just as bland as your main objective. The characters are dull and sometimes really don't make sense. Hi, I'm Clara. I'm a French girl in your Chicago-based game. Why? Ubisoft, that's why! Not all the voice talent is bad, but Ubisoft really should have done better. The only character I actually liked was Jordi. Witty hilarious, and quite simple. He's a contract hacker/killer that loves what he does, and that's good enough for me. The way the atmosphere is set up with such a massive surveillance system, you really wish the story would explore the moral justification and worries of such a system, but the whole ctOS system is only ever addressed indirectly. There's never much exposition about its existence, history, technical workings, or moral reasoning. I was hoping that would actually be the main focus of the entire game. Instead I just got very drawn out kidnapping story. Such a let down. Even if I were to just accept the story they gave me and appreciate it for what it is, it's really not even a good kidnapping story. The writting is very clumsy and contrived. I would watch cutscenes and re-write it in my head, thinking up ways they could have delivered these story elements much better. It felt amateurish.
All the hacking mechanics are very fun. From just profiling people on the street to messing with the traffic and road traps it's powerful and feels great. Yes, I am aware there is a lot of criticism about "one button to hack", but I think that is necessary. It's a fast paced game, so the controls for hacking must be simple so you can do them quickly. It's about precision, not button combos, and it works great. The hacking ability is the most expansive in the skill tree, so it gives you great diversity with cool effect. Every hacking skill has its own unique purpose, so they aren't just throwing in as much stuff as they can to pad the hacking ability, and I appreciate the care that went into that.
Online is pretty great so far. I see Kevin has a love for the team battling decryption mode, but my favourite was the Online Hacking. 1 vs 1 hacking another player in a radius. It gets my heart thumping the moment I enter another player's game. They aren't given a notification that I'm there until I initialize the hack, so you have to be very careful in getting close enough to access their phone without alerting them to your presence. Once I got that access, I have to find a good spot to start the hack. Multi-level car parks are always the best option if you get to one. Hide behind a car (not inside a parked one), and they will have to scramble from floor to floor to find you. If you're not near one of those, a bush up against a cover position is second best. Crouch in cover inside some shrubbery. Your opponent can have his profiler open, walk up right next to you and never know you're there. Gives you quite the rush though. Sometimes it can be pretty good to just cause a traffic jam and get in one of the crowd of vehicles. I find my opponents will often find me if I'm trying to hide in a parked car, but they never expect me to be hiding right in the middle of a traffic jam inside a huge car. They'll weave around the cars thinking I'm in cover behind one. And if they do spot me, I'm in a car that's already turned on so it's an easy getaway.
"each mission or side mission or whatever else, influences the game world and influences all of the civilians who inhabit it. Everything is being influenced by how you approach the game."
I highly recommend taking that with a grain of salt. Almost all developers of any open world game will say that, but it's always very minimal and insignificant. It usually just means you hear some pointless banter from NPCs about something you've done.
LiquidButter's comments