Overall and Final Verdict
Though I feel as if I am far from finishing the game I can say that 10 hours into the Watch_Dogs experience I feel both engaged and interested. Side content and random fun have slowed my main story progression to a crawl but I still am having so much fun as the hours seem to tick by without me noticing. I am never at a point of wondering what to do next as much content seems to keep coming faster than you can complete it and because of that Chicago feels alive. The world Ubisoft Montreal has created pulls you in from the first moment and through all of it you really get the sense that what you’re doing matters. Character dialogue is distinct and the writing for Aiden and his many acquaintances feels unique and complex as if each character was more of a person that a pixelated puppet on screen.
Car control I feel is an area that could use a bit of an improvement. Even the most sporty and agile cars still feel and handle like oversized bricks with slow acceleration and terrible turning. As you improve your driving skills through the skill tree things start to get even weirder as cars start to get the ability to ram delivery trucks at full speed and still keep going with minimal damage.
A few graphical glitches are also present. The first, and most obvious, one seems to have to do with the layering of graphics. From time to time waypoint lines, piles of leaves and even sidewalk and road textures can find themselves being placed on top of other objects on the screen in a very jarring way that sometimes makes play impossible. A reload from your last autosave is enough to clear this up but it can be a little jarring on first encounter, especially in the middle of a mission. The second graphical issue is what has become the highly publicized “reflection bug” wherein Aiden and other NPC models actually don’t appear in reflections found in glass and windows. This isn’t as jarring as you might expect as many windows at street level are quite small and unless you go looking for this weird little issue it doesn’t take much away from the experience.
Watch_Dogs is a very enjoyable experience and offers a large amount of this for you to do beyond simply completion of the main story. In typical open world fashion you can have just as much fun walking around doing much of nothing as you can engaging gangs in shootouts and tracking down other hackers in online play. If you find yourself and avid fan of games in the mold of the Grand Theft Auto series and Just Cause 2, Watch_Dogs is a perfect addition to you collection. If you just happen to like fun, enjoyable gaming experiences you can’t go wrong here either. Watch_Dogs certainly earns our stamp of approval.
