Platform: PS4

Release Date (NA): May 27th, 2014

Developer: Ubisoft Montreal

Publisher: Ubisoft

Genre: Action/Adventure, Third-Person Shooter, Open World

Nerd Rating: 8/10

Reviewed by and_delinquents 

Watch Dogs is an open world action game that allows you to take control of Chicago through the most advanced integrated computer system in the nation. You roam the open terrain as professional hacker/vigilante Aiden Pearce. With the ability to cause car wrecks, start blackouts and hack people’s bank accounts you have everything you need to be the perfect criminal. On the other hand with the ability to spot potential crime and find gang hideouts you have what you need to be the hero of Chicago.

When I popped my disc in just after the midnight release of Watch Dogs I played a solid three hours of the main story line. While going from check point to check point you cross bridges, stop lights, highways and back roads all the while smashing into just about every pole, tree, car, civilian or fence there is.

The biggest complaint I’ve heard about Watch Dogs is that driving is nearly impossible. In my opinion I wouldn’t say that its impossible, I would say that it is difficult but very real. If you’re driving at 90mph and you expect to be able to make any turn without hitting the breaks first you’re sadly mistaken. You’ll most likely go through that wall or fence, smash into that other car, end up in the water or plow into a crowd of unsuspecting citizen (which is kind of fun some times). So if you intend on buying the game, before complaining about driving please remember: USE THE BRAKES. It’ll help in the long run.

The game play is very enjoyable. When you’re not sticking to the main missions you can do side missions, play online or you can just free roam. Be careful when free roaming, though. If you decide to go on a rampage and kill every civilian you see you’re bound to get a bad reputation. If you have a bad enough reputation people will call the police on you if they recognize you and you can either kill them before they finish the call (which almost always ends up with someone else calling the cops) or you can hightail it out of there and hope you can find a bridge to jump before the cops get to you.

There are a few different online modes that you can play on Watch Dogs, the main ones being:

Online Hacking: Hack your opponent as you enter their world. Find them within the given time and establish a back door. Do your best not to be seen or profiled by them. Walk with civilians or hide out in a parked car, but make sure not to leave the designated area. This is my favorite online mode to play. I prefer to find my target, sit in a car and watch as they run around trying to find me. This online mode is very fun and I give it a 9/10

Online Tailing: Online Tailing has a lot of the same aspects of Online Hacking when it comes to finding and hacking your target. The big difference in this game mode than the other is that you have to tail and follow your target without getting caught. I found this extremely difficult as every person I see goes as fast as the car they’re in lets them. It takes it very hard to tail someone when they’re going off road or pushing 120mph. I give this mode a 5/10. It can be fun but otherwise a little frustrating.

Decryption Combat Mode: This game is a team based game mode (maximum of 8 players) where someone has to hold a file and the other members of their team have to protect them from the other team as they can steal it. The first team to hold the file and decrypts it 100% wins. I enjoyed this game mode to an extent. The only complaints I have about it are that other players kind of go off and do their own thing, but other than that the game play is fine. I give this game mode 7/10.

All together I give the online game modes 7/10. They can be pretty fun but can also get to be pretty frustrating at times.

The most recent thing I discovered on Watch Dogs was the mini game “Digital Trip.” You find a dealer or open it up in your Mobile App and buy a trip. You have to choose between four trips to take and once you do it sends you into a completely different world. The options for the Digital Trips are Madness, Alone, Psychedelic and Spider-Tank. Each one takes you to a different place and you get a whole different game from each one.

In my opinion Psychedelic was the best one. You’re thrown around in the air and you have to bounce off of these multicolored flowers until you reach the end. While bouncing around on these flowers you get to listen to some horned instruments  set the mood for your game play. In Madness you get thrown into a car that looks like it was sent straight from Hell. Your objective in Madness is to hit as many people as you can and take their souls from them with your demon car. The sky turns red and you get a time limit on collecting as many souls as it tells you to. In Alone you start off with the message telling you to “restore all the generators to light the city.” There are no other people in Alone. There are only soul sucking robots with red lights on their faces that follow you while you try to turn on all the generators. If you’re in their light you’re going to die. When you go into Spider-Tank you’re put in an actual Spider-Tank. You get to ride around in this gigantic metal spider and completely demolish cars. With the Spider-Tank you can walk around, fire a heavy machine gun, scale buildings, jump super far and fire bombs. Spider-Tank pits you against the police, and its pretty easy to tell who would win in the scenario generated for this map.

I would definitely recommend getting Watch Dogs if you enjoy playing open world action/adventure games. You can spend endless amounts of time running around the city of Chicago even after finishing the main story line. There will always be things to do in Watch Dogs, especially with upcoming DLC and all the mini games it has. In Watch Dogs you get to drive cars, boats and motorcycles, you can hack into any security camera, load up your arsenal by hacking people’s bank account, and use an entire city as your very own weapon.