I'll give Ubisoft this, at least: Watch_Dogs is a new IP.
And in an industry wallowing in crippling fear of anything remotely fucking new, that's
impressive on its own terms.
Even if the game is a 'New IP' in name only.
In actuality?
Whether it's the driving-heavy, open-world cover-based crime drama of Grand Theft Auto,
the free-running parkour of Assassin's Creed, or the online PVP world invasion of Demon's
Souls, there isn't a line of code in this ever-lovin' game that can be credibly construed
as 'new'.
For a title being fallaciously touted as 'the first true next-gen experience', Watch_Dogs
sure-as-fuck comes across as a slapdash frankenstein hybrid of a half-dozen games whose only shared
attribute is that they are - without exception - old enough to be cheated on by Ashton Kutcher!
And the last-gen affectations are far from reserved for the derivative gameplay!
Even on its 'lead' platforms of PS4 and PC, Watch_Dogs is awash in prohibitively-compressed
textures, 'streamlined' poly counts on character meshes, and not one fucking phylum of plant
life that isn't a tree... that can bost even the most rudimentary fucking collision detection!
What's that?
Need to sprint through a flower bed?
Well, flip... a fucking coin, pal!
Because, depending on how the game designers were feeling that day, there's a 50/50 chance
those bushes are either a brick wall... or a fucking ghost!
And that might seem a quibbling item of minutiae to complain about, but these are the sort
of advancements that would have signified the arrival of 'the first true next-gen experience!'
But instead of a bold step forward for Ubisoft, and gaming at large, Watch_Dogs is yet another
triple-A tech demo holding pattern haphazardly cobbled together out of parts from other triple-A
tech demo holding patterns!
Instead of being the game that single-handedly legitimizes the supremacy of PS4 hardware...
we get a game that I wouldn't be at all surprised to see running on an original fucking Xbox!
In theory, this game has more hacks than Jimmy Fallon's writing staff.
In practice?
Hacking is 'useful' in the same way that PewDiePie is 'insightful'.
You mean to tell me that Deus Ex: Human Revolution - a game that is in no way, shape or form
to be construed as being about hacking - features an in-depth, surprisingly strategic computer
hacking mini-game, but Watch_Dogs; a game whose transparent and exploitative ambition
is to sloppily service every solitary 'Anonymus iz Lejun' douchebag in a fedora and a cheeto-caked
Guy Fawkes mask features the wildly complex act of 'Push X to Hack'?!
You literally built your entire game - and the accompanying obnoxious advertising campaign
- around the (theoretically) innumerable applications of this singular feature!
A mechanic that is, quite literally, the lone distinguishing attribute that differentiates
this slapdash shitfest from being a glorified Grand Theft Auto clone... and it all boils
down... to moving some fucking pipes around... and depressing the square button!
Fuck right off, Ubisoft!
Look, it's not exactly privileged information that I happen to love stealth.
Hell, I can even excuse transparently tacked-on stealth mechanics; I love Morrowind, and that
game's stealth was slapped together in an afternoon with crazy glue, chewing gum and
turds.
But Morrowind is a game that offers far more than a lobotomized stealth mini-game.
It's a game where subpar combat and subpar stealth are made excusable by the fact that
they lend depth to the game's true strengths: Role-playing, customization and exploration.
Watch_Dogs?!
Watch_Dogs is a driving, shooting, hacking, and sneaking game.
That is... literally it.
Which is why when the game's shooting is more cover-based than the Battle of the Somme...
when the mere act of accelerating a vehicle kicks so hard into Michael Bay shakeycam the
pre-order bonus is a bottle of fuckin' dramamine... when the hacking system is thinner than Yves
Guillemot's hair...
proportionately shitty stealth mechanics become an unforgivable affront.
As for the story - WHAT fucking story?
Oh, you mean the thing the game designers give such a phenomenal shit about that they
force the player to take an extended break from it to play online...
literally WRITING THEIR HAMFISTED MULTIPLAYER INTO THE STORY?!
That fucking narrative?
Mind you: A story about hackers in a world run by a supercomputer could have worked!
All it needed was some early '90s CGI and one of Angelina Jolie's nipples!
But the odyssean saga of Captain Charisma and Miley Cyrus' ongoing quest to exchange
sexually-frustrated dialogue in parking garages...?
Yeah, we probably could have given that one a fuckin' pass without losing the framework
for the next Great American Novel.
'Gratingly Naive' doesn't even begin to characterize Ubisoft's Disney Channel depiction of the
'hacktivist' subculture.
Not to mention how hard it is to ascribe nobility to an asshole who - on the way to chase down
a street mugger - simultaneously empties the bank accounts of 12 fuckin' cancer patients!
There's that Robin Hood spirit!
Maybe raise some revenue for the Merry Men by pimping Maid Marion out to Guy of Gisborne!
Worked for Lindsay Lohan's parents!
If you simply must play an open-world parkour crime-drama with the word 'Dogs' in the title...
do yourself a favor: Swap the 'Watch' out with 'Sleeping', and save yourself 50 goddamn
dollars and a metric assload of unfulfilled hype!
I'm RazörFist.
God - fucking - SPEED!