How do we judge games these days? More than ever, I find that they’re often judged outside of truly relevant context, such as “how much was it hyped?” or “who developed it?” A game’s quality should stand on its own regardless of these kind of factors, albeit a particularly outstanding Indie game or a major flop from a major studio are both more surprising, given their respective roots. That being said, how a game plays it how it plays, regardless of who made it, or how much it was advertised beforehand, etc.
A more relevant contextual factor is “what other games exist in this genre”. Games tend to be judged based on other games in their field, particularly previous games in a series, should it be a sequel. The most notable contender for Watchdogs is unquestionably the Grand Theft Auto series. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to talk about Watchdogs without at least giving a polite nod to Rockstar’s golden child. You’d also be remiss not to mention similarities between Ubisoft’s former projects, notably the Assassin’s Creed series, albeit not in the same exact genre.
Given those considerations, I like to consider Watchdogs both as a standalone game, and as it stands up to its main competitor in the field, as well as its relationship to Ubisoft’s former endeavors.
First of all, I’d consider Watchdogs to be Ubisoft’s first foray into a very competitive genre. After all, Rockstar has had a long-lasting and dominant lock on the sandbox run/drive/shoot market for the past decade and then some. While there are certainly other entries into this field along the way, none of them enjoyed the consistent and repeated successes of the Grand Theft Auto series, and GTA V is as or more popular than any of its predecessors, ensuring their continued standing in this arena. While Ubisoft certainly has its experience in open world games a la Assassin’s creed, the world and game mechanics of Watchdogs was inherently going to be more like that of GTA than their previous entries. And as a first attempt into a competitive and mostly inexperienced market (for them), I’d say it was a smashing success.
Ubisoft tried a great many things with Watchdogs. To put a general summary on their efforts and use a baseball analogy, there were many swings, mostly hits, and a few misses (maybe a couple of foul balls as well). From a basic, no-frills mechanics standpoint, Watchdogs is as solid as they come. Its driving physics aren’t identical to GTA’s, though they are very similar, and its gunplay (especially with slo-mo) is visceral and fun. I also found the game to be surprisingly challenging at times, and enjoyed the experience. Where GTA’s fighting can often leave you feeling like a demi-god (as long as you have a good weapon and some body armor), Watchdogs trades your ability to drop foes in a single headshot (ALWAYS a good decision, in my opinion) for a pretty unforgiving damage model on the receiving end. Early in my Watchdogs playing I tried to charge down a foe behind cover, who promptly popped out and shot me dead inside of a second or so. It’s hard, but it’s at least fair both ways.
I should also mention, in addition to basic shooting, that I also found the cover system surprisingly good. And while we’re on the subject, it would only be fair to note that I passionately hate cover systems 99% of the time. This one, however, doesn’t feel all that clunky – I don’t have to execute a three button combo with a half spin just to get on or off a wall. And they do a great job of allowing virtually anything to become cover – even non-static entities like cars and whatnot. In short, the mechanics involved actually help make the driving and shooting aspects seamless. When a car chase ends in a shootout, and you can immediately hop from your vehicle, take cover, and go to town without getting screwed over by cumbersome mechanics… It’s definitely a boon to the game’s overall quality.
Driving is also very satisfying, and not without a higher degree of challenge than your average GTA mission. For instance, without your hacking tricks, evading cops and other foes is considerably harder than their GTA counterparts. They aren’t particularly great at knocking you off the road (though it happens), but they aren’t easy to lose by simply turning tight corners and driving fast. They tend to use every bit of their cop car speed to give you a run for your money. I found that without some sort of hacking trick or flying off a ramp, etc. it was very difficult to get away from them. Even when you do manage to evade their initial search, they can continue to scan for you for quite some time, depending on your warrant level.
Before going on, it’s important to ask how much all of the above mentioned comprises in terms of the game’s overall presentation. In other words, in a driving/shooting game, how much of the game’s overall score should reflect those elements as a standalone evaluation? To me, I’d say somewhere between 60-80%. And on that scale, the game scores very near the top of that spectrum. Not a full 80/80, but close.
As for the rest of the game…
There have been numerous, sometimes vocal, complaints about the story. Personally, a story is always second to a game’s mechanics, and while most of my “top [insert number here] games of all times” list would mostly contain games with great stories, not a single one of them had anything less than great mechanics to go along with it. Deus Ex had an amazing and intriguing story… but it also had some of the best RPG shooter mechanics ever. That being said, a story is not unimportant. Otherwise we’d just repeat the same thing with the same mechanics over and over again (Diablo III rifts, anyone?). I’d give the story a solid B rating. It’s somewhat edgy, but not mindblowing by any means. Neither is it the worst thing I’ve ever seen by a long shot.
The things I would really say counted against the game are the peripheral additions, aka “features”. In what was almost certainly an attempt to continue their GTA comparison, the developers included a respectable variety of weapons, some clothing selections, various other accoutrements, and an economy to support them. However, as you get further in the game, you start to realize that a lot of these (except for weapon selection, which is good), are either very tacked on, or are only self-serving at best. Let’s take these one at a time.
The weapons of the game are pretty cool. They went with a good selection of your standard fare – AK 47’s, Mac-10’s, some AR-15/M4 variants, MP-5’s, M1911’s, etc. – as well as some more exotic may-not-really-exist things, most of which are fun to play, and vary at least somewhat from one gun to the next. However, the system of obtaining weapons is perhaps way too easy compared to the somewhat challenging missions they accompany. Any time you complete a challenge, or simply pick up a gun off a fallen enemy, that weapon is yours for forever. I was very confused when I first picked up a pistol I didn’t want, then wasn’t able to re-buy my old silenced 1911 from the gun store, even though it said “Available”. Five minutes later, I was shocked (and somewhat embarrassed) to learn that I could simply select it from my weapon “wheel” any time I wanted. The same thing went for all other weapon types. Yes, your character is walking around with thousands of pounds worth of firearms, concealed neatly under his trench coat. I actually found this level of handholding very off-putting. At least in GTA, you can only hold one of each weapon type. Choices are good. Forcing people to make them is even better. And to compound all this (though at this point it would have just been escaping the pigeon-holed mechanic by breaking the cage), you don’t even lose your guns when you die. So to summarize, you can carry every gun in the game at the same time, you don’t have to rebuy them when you acquire a new one, or when you die.
A somewhat lateral complaint, but I wish they had taken more of a cue from their Assassin’s Creed roots, and made Aiden a little more parkour-capable. Maybe not quite as much as any of their AC protagonists, but at present it’s not very hard to find things he doesn’t want to crawl up or jump over, even when it feels like he should.
The game also introduces a somewhat silly “Hey, don’t steal a car! Order one instead!” mechanic. It can help you if you’re desperate and trapped in a remote location, but they tend to deliver the cars in locations where there are other cars already parked, so if you can make it to where it’s left, you could have just run there and stolen one anyway. The issues with this feature are further compounded by two other things: first, the game’s economy, which I’ll talk more about in a minute, and secondly, by the fact that there’s no point.
Ultimately the system is pointless. Like GTA, there are no shortages of cars, even fast cars, lying around, and you can very quickly acquire a skill that prevents their alarms from being set off when you steal them. If you steal a car from or directly in front of its owner (which is rare, unless you go ripping people out of their vehicles), you will occasionally get the cops called on you, but that’s really the ONLY downside. The game does have a reputation system that will penalize you if you kill civilians in the course of your vigilantism, but stealing doesn’t affect this meter at all. So you’re left with: A. Steal a car with little or no consequences or, B. Waste time and possibly money ordering a car. The first option is almost always less painful and faster, so it leaves you wondering why they’d even invent the system with no consequences for not using it. It’s kind of a neat idea, but not completely fleshed out.
Clothing feels the same way. There are a few outfits in the game, and I use the word few very literally. But they’re really not so much different outfits, as simple re-skins/recoloring of the outfit you’re already wearing. I don’t know if this was out of sheer laziness or what, but they’re not really fooling anybody with it. The least they could have done is allow you to customize what your character looks like to other people when in online sessions, but alas, they didn’t even do that.
And speaking of online sessions, the results were a bit unpredictable here too. Some are fun, some are just pointless. The individual 1v1 mode, for instance, sounds a lot of fun in theory. However, the system is so painfully biased against the hacker, that there’s little chance of success, and ergo little reason for engaging in the mode in the first place. The hacker has to stay within a very small area for a very long time, while the defender gets to run around and find him. Unfortunately, the hacker isn’t allowed to defend himself, while the hacked can simply put a bullet in their head the moment they find them. It could have been a more interesting game of cat and mouse, but the way they approached it, it’s really only fun if you’re the one with the gun.
Free roam and group vs group, on the other hand, have tons of possibilities, and are already a blast. Huge home runs on these modes.
Back in the single player world, we’re left with a half-finished feature in the form of money/economy. You get money for completing missions, and some off of fallen enemies, but your main source of income is robbing people via hacked ATM accounts. However, as I’ve already covered the lack of use for money in terms of guns (in the long run at least), and the almost completely pointless nature of buying cars, you’re left with no reason for earning the money. Hideouts are simply given to you, guns are easy to come back, and cars can be stolen. There is no real estate to buy, no skills to spend money upgrading, etc.
But all in all, I’d call the game an overwhelming success, and agree with an 8-9 rating that dubs it so. The core mechanics are very convincingly pulled off, the game looks are runs amazingly, and is fun to play. They ended up half-assing some mechanics, but not really anything that took away from the core experience, so while it might not be the best game ever, it’s still a great game, and worth playing if you enjoy the GTA series.