who up watching they dogs

♥♥♥♥ YOU UBISOFT

After a hacking job goes wrong and his niece is killed in an attempt to scare him off, vigliante hacker Aiden Pierce is on a personal quest for answers and revenge. Now eleven months after the botched job and death of his niece, Pierce will only start to scratch the surface as to why it all happened, uncovering corruption within Chicago bureaucracy, the criminal underworld and the security system the city has fallen overly reliant on, ctOS.

Watch_Dogs is a fascinating game that grew to spawn a series that plays with the idea of making the player's environment ultimately at their control through hacking on top of a mix of generic Ubisoft gameplay.

In terms of story, Watch_Dogs hooks the player with the mystery of what happened with the Merlaut Hotel job and the people involved with the death of Aiden's niece on top of introducing a great cast of characters. Aiden himself is a haunted man that continues to struggle remembering his niece in any other time in her life that wasn't the night of her death while also trying to protect his sister and nephew from his quest for revenge and his identity as Chicago's vigilante presence. Personally, i had a fine time with Watch_Dogs' plot and looked forward to each twist and turn in the story.

Gameplay in mind, Watch_Dogs has quite a bit to offer when it comes to exploring the city of Chicago and turning it into your technological playground. Blending the gameplay of most other open world "crime" games like your Grand Theft Auto's, Saints Row and Mafia series and adding the ability to hack your environment as well as the usual Ubisoft staples like towers to reveal collectables and other activities does make for a fresh take on the genre. But that's only because of the hacks.

Hacking is the name of the game with Watch_Dogs. Weather you're driving around, in the thick of gun combat or just wandering around the city, the world is at your fingertips with Aiden's phone. With your phone equipped, players can walk the streets of Chicago and highlight civilians and display their name and a random fact about them that the ever invasive ctOS has learned about them. Purchase history, a hobby they like, marriage status, political leaning, all kinds of things can be gleamed from the public. Some will also have a few dollars stashed in a bank account that you can steal from and later find an ATM to retrieve your stolen cash, others may have a car that unlocks in an app to summon on demand or a song that you can play on your media app.

But stalking the civilian populace is just one part of hacking. When it comes to the stealth and gunplay of Watch_Dogs, it can be crucial to set up traps. Go into a hostile area and find a security camera to start scanning the area, marking out enemies and plan your approach. Maybe you'll find a tougher enemy that walks by a power box or transformer you can detonate and kill them to cause some panic among their allies. Or maybe find a phone lying around to play a distraction to lure someone away and either perform a stealth takedown or kill with a silenced weapon. If things go loud? Maybe an enemy has a set of grenades you can hack to detonate, blowing them and anyone around them up. Or maybe to cut someone off from calling extra backup and surrounding you.

Stuck in a car chase with the cops or a pursuing gang? Not a problem with your hacking abilities. Throw any tails you have off by hacking a set of traffic lights and causing a mass crash, put up a barrier and have a pursuer crash into it or blow up a steam pipe from under them, there are many options the player has to shaking off extra trouble in the shortest time possible. But if you learn how to use the city to your advantage, maybe you can utilise parking garage doors to open for you to get in and close right behind you to give yourself a moment's grace breaking line of sight.

On the topic of gunplay, it's serviceable. You'll grow a complete arsenal of weapons from enemies or trips to gun stores or through certain feats for more powerful and uniquely named pieces of kit. Guns have star ratings that take into account damage, recoil and accuracy and certain weapons will come with suppressors for those silent kills. But what i'm more interested by is how the AI works in combat. If you're able to take cover and stealthily run across to another side and find cover, enemies will slowly approach where you were before and lay down suppressive fire and grenades to fish you out, giving you the chance to ambush with the slow-down Focus ability to make some precise kills or get out of the area entirely.

You can also use a variety of craftable items found on your weapon wheel for your stealthy or guns blazing encounters. Deploy scans to highlight enemies, craft and throw lures to make your own hack-able distraction devices or cause a temporary city wide blackout to completely leave your enemies in the dark (way more effective at night) for stealth takedowns, a set up for Focus killing or a quick escape from the area. If bullets are flying by you however, why not craft and toss out some grenades, hack-able IEDs or even some proximity IEDs to create traps, a communications jam to stop a reinforcement call or some pills to rebuild your Focus meter.

New hacks, weapon skills, driving capabilities and craft-able items will unlock as you level up or complete a Gang Hideout to earn skill points to invest in their respective trees. Completing missions, contracts focused on your skills with a car or stopping a convoy, invading the privacy of people's homes by accessing their cameras through unsecure ctOS boxes (some of which can be real creepy) and reaching certain feats in your 100% save file tracking Progression app will shower you with enough XP to have all the skills in the game.

Chicago is also packed with additional side missions and activities for the player to lose themselves in. Examples of the activities can include varying stakes of poker, drinking contests, shell games, chess puzzles. Both side missions and activities also have rewards on the Progression app ranging from XP to skills to vehicles and guns.

But a standout side activity are the Digital Trips. These apps which can put a user into a dream-like state have a variety of fun games to play that are all incredibly unique. Certain scores in these Trips will unlock outfits for Aiden to wear (that is if you haven't already visited one of the many clothing shops and spent some of that stolen cash).

The only thing that sours Watch_Dogs for me in the tiniest way is the multiplayer. Ubisoft is a complete joke when it comes to trying to enable you with access to multiplayer services. Early on you'll have a tutorial from an NPC "invading" your game but will be blocked from further online tutorials because of Ubisoft Connect's back-end and not really connecting your Steam purchase to your Ubi account. This either forces you to buy, open and quickly refund the game through Ubi Connect or hound their support ticket to get a Ubi Connect key for Watch_Dogs. And since Ubi Connect has achievements for engaging with the online aspects, getting it set up is already one tedious aspect... The players are another. Expect to go up against some of the most paranoid people on the planet when you invade their games to hack or tail them or get invaded by another player and go up against the most low-blow tactics known to man to hide from you. Those online achievements, the players i had to try and stomach to get them from and dealing with Ubi's support team just asks the question "Why do they love forcing multiplayer achievements to games they won't care about in five years?".

But overall, i loved Watch_Dogs. From it's story, the characters, the hacking abilities and just how alive Chicago can feel as you casually walk around and listen to people having conversations or doing freestyle rap or hanging out with partners or friends, the world feels lived in. And i cannot recommend it any higher.