Watch Dogs Review: The Future At Your Fingertips
Game Reviewed: Watch Dogs
Date Released: May 27th, 2014
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: [Reviewed: PlayStation 4] PlayStation 3,Xbox One, Xbox 360, PC
Genre: Action-Adventure
Rated: M for Mature
For a brief moment imagine the world we live in. Now allow yourself to embark on a digital trip as Aiden Pearce, a man with nothing to lose and revenge on his mind. After the city of streets of Chicago takes from you Aiden seeks to take down every corrupt individual tied to the tragic murder of his niece, Lena Pearce. Welcome to Chicago, Illinois; welcome to Watch Dogs.
In Watch Dogs you play as the vigilante, Aiden Pearce, who has the ability to control ctOS security systems in a moment’s notice. You’re able to freely navigate throughout the entire (fictionalized) city of Chicago manipulating traffic lights, steam pipes, spikes and much more.
As for Aiden’s character, his personal life is a mystery. He’s a low key hacker that attempts to keep himself out of spotlight. The only briefly mentioned backstory to Aiden is his work with Damien Brenks at the Merlaut Hotel, an upscale casino hack job gone wrong.
With the help of Clara Lille, everything is literally controlled with the push of a button. With Aiden’s smartphone you have the opportunity to profile every citizen within the city, hack their bank accounts, and locate crime activities and more. Further benefiting you, the phone can access special vehicles, music, special side objectives, online contracts and various multiplayer modes.
Aiden’s hacking skills are fully upgradeable as you perform special abilities and complete objects for skill points. Watch Dogs at times allows you to choose your preference of playing style between proceeding strategically or straight forward.
As aforementioned, Watch Dogs has a massive open world environment. Each area looks realistic from downtown Chicago to the urban streets, all the way over the small country back 
roads in Pawnee. Cameras are also your best friend in Watch Dogs when scoping an area and unlocking doors, finding ways to attract guards to infiltrate highly guarded areas and stopping potential crimes in the city.
With well over 20 hours of gameplay to complete the campaign itself, there’s still much to do in Chicago. Prepare to “get a life” outside of hunting down the corrupt and enjoy a game of chess, poker, digital trips, online races, online contracts and more
Watch Dogs unfortunately has a few noticeable issues. There were multiple times through the campaign where Aiden jumped into a glitch which forced me to restart my checkpoint due to my character to become immobile. Even worse, when taking down enemy vehicles, the system was horribly flawed. One perfect example would be where Aiden used an 18 wheeler going full speed to T-bone an SUV. As I rammed the vehicle it blew u instantly from the impact. The target in the vehicle however managed to still get out without a scar and shoot at me. Almost every chase results in the same scenario.
Visually running at 30 frames, Watch Dogs looks stunning. The game mechanics were well noticed from simply looking at the reaction of the citizens as they were running, sneezing, posing to take pictures or even while seamlessly being invaded by another online player in the middle of your campaign. It was all genuinely a breath of fresh air, utilizing the true capabilities of New-Gen consoles.
Who Aiden is remains a full blown mystery to the world, giving Ubisoft the opportunity to further develop Pearce’s story. The gameplay is absolutely phenomenal from beginning on forth. With all of the upcoming DLC and content already provided, arguementively Watch Dogs delivers a much more expansive experience than Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V. Straightforward; it’s currently the best action adventure open-world game available.
Gameplay: 4.5/5
Visuals: 4.75/5
Controls: 4.5/5
Audio: 5/5
Replayability: 4.75/5
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