At the E3 2012, the high-spirited Ubisoft wowed everyone with its stunning gameplay trailers of Watch Dogs. The graphics and gameplay were top-notch, and countless players were fascinated by it. Though the game, which was officially released in 2014, had a lot of cuts in graphics and gameplay, causing widespread controversy and dissatisfaction among players, Watch Dogs still archived good sales thanks to its unique and novel open-world hacker role-playing gameplay that is still not outdated even today. The protagonist Aiden Pearce, wearing a baseball cap, a flowing wind coat jacket, and holding a baton, has become a classical image in the history of modern video games, attracting countless players to follow suit. However, problems such as monotonous and repetitive game content, the extremely short main storyline, poor compatibility, and optimization, etc. made it difficult for Watch Dogs to make further progress, which ultimately became a pity.


Players will be in a cold and dull Chicago, which is highly connected to the Internet of Things through the CTOS system and has no privacy at all. The various forces here are intertwined. The protagonist Aiden Pierce is a vigilante-like grey hat, who gradually uncovers the true face of the city and past events on his journey of revenge for his niece, and eventually reflects on his own behavior and revenge. Watch Dogs also has a reputation system that changes dynamically based on the player's behavior. Whether it is doing evil or punishing evil and promoting good, it will have a direct impact on the player's gaming experience. The game's tasks mainly include driving, chasing, puzzle solving, infiltration, and gunfights. Some scenes are performed with excellent effects and a strong sense of immersion.

The hacking capabilities in the game are visualized as intrusion interactions with various high-tech smart devices and mobile phones, ranging from eavesdropping on calls, manipulating traffic lights and roadblocks, lifting bridges, disrupting communications, transformer explosions, city blackouts, and hacking into bank accounts to obtain funds. Though it is far from real-life hackers, Watch Dogs still brings players the pleasure of high-tech crime in this open game world, where they can do whatever they want and be omnipotent in an unprecedented way, could be considered one of the game's biggest highlights. Watch Dogs also has many game mechanic designs that are more favorable to players, such as highlighting collectibles in the scene when scanning; using intuitive route instructions to guide players' map marketers and mission objectives; calling vehicles at will, and having a short loading time and convenient map travel function. The game itself also has a rich number of mini-games and collectible items for players to explore. The online mode emphasizes tracking and invading between players, which is extremely interesting.


The game uses a lot of macro-blocked glitch art effects in the main menu and at the beginning, which has no artistic sense at all in that case. It looks poor to modern netizens and seems to be counterproductive. The game at the highest quality setting is quite good in terms of long-range performance, but the modeling is extremely rough and difficult to be appreciated by players nowadays. The movement of every character in the game is full of weird stiffness, and the enemy's AI logic is also relatively weak. Although most enemies can be killed with a single headshot, the game often has weird aiming deviations, which is extremely obvious in the NVZN mini-game. Driving is an important part of Watch Dogs game content and mission design, but the overall driving feel of the game is extremely slippery, the tires often slip, making it difficult to adapt, and the experience brought to players is a disaster. In terms of plot, the main quest of the game is too short, accounting for less than 50% of the game's content, and the plot progresses very quickly. The narrative and character creation are a bit perfunctory, and there is a tendency to be clichéd and mediocre. Even at the end the game plot still leaves too much blank, which is obviously paving the way for its sequel.

Watch Dogs itself is the most typical Ubification of cookie-cutters, filled with a large number of monotonous checklist tasks, collectibles, and map markets. These seemingly rich game contents are mostly filler and test the player's tolerance. As an important part of the game's collectibles element puzzle solving is mainly carried out by switching sights between cameras and searching for specific paths. They are often extremely hidden in Watch Dogs, and can only be reached through environmental facilities in the corners like forklifts. Though some of the designs can be said to be ingenious, they require players to climb up and down and strangely use their imaginations. Coupled with the time limit, the experience brought to players is terrible, with no fun or sense of accomplishment. The excessive number of puzzles further worsens the situation. In actual combat, players often still rely mainly on infiltration and gunfights, the bloodless hacker tactics have not been well integrated into the game.

Watch Dogs is also slightly lacking in some details. For example, players cannot shoot while driving, the perspective in the game will also prevent players from getting a clear aerial view. There is no pedestrian on a motorcycle in the game at all. The uses of funds in the game are extremely limited and are too easy to grab so they will overflow in large quantities in the middle stages, which is a slightly unsuccessful design; some completely random song collection for the achievement in the game is a major failure, in the PS era it was called "one of the worst trophies" by many console players already.


Beneath the hacker surface, Watch Dogs is still the most typical Ubification core. The design of every aspect of Watch Dogs makes it difficult for players to play it again, the game's constant compatibility issues on the modern Windows operating system make it extremely difficult to have a smooth experience. Even today, Watch Dog's optimization is still average. Despite this, Watch Dogs still has its unique highlights. For many people, it has a unique sentimental blessing. It would have been absolutely amazing when it was released. Looking back, Ubisoft has produced so many creative and eye-catching games, but now they are becoming more decadent and heading towards destruction. It may be difficult for us to see a work like Watch Dogs being born again, but at least it is still here.

It is necessary to mention that due to the forced output of 5.1 surround sound, the overall volume of the game will be extremely low. The game also may be random crash without any signs. Most importantly, the Steam version of Watch Dogs cannot access the online functions, requiring players to purchase the game again on Uplay or contact Ubisoft service for one. However, the response efficiency of it is extremely low, with no substantial progress in half a month for me. Players who don't want to waste time on these could consider choosing the console version or the Uplay version of the game.

In Watch Dogs you play as Aiden Pearce who is a hacker in the first smart city which is completely connected to one network, in Chicago. After a failed hacking job, Aiden lose his niece in a car accident which suppose to be targeted Aiden and now he wants to take revenge and learn who put the hit on him.

The premise of the game is really unique, as you get an open world map of Chicago and able to hack basically everything in it, from traffic lights, bridges to citizens. You can still do the usual city open-world type of things as well. The graphics is pretty good for it's time, the controls seems unusual at first but after some time you can get use to it. There are lot of side content for the game, which can easily make the play time twice as long. The overall story premise is good, has it's own twists and most of the characters are well written. Multiplayer is still active and playable till this day. Soundtrack is pretty alright.

One thing which really bothered me is the driving in this game, it's hard to get used to and annoying to control the vehicle. One other problem in the single player is the protagonist character. You get characters in the story who are decently written, but Aiden is a weird one to root for throughout in the story, especially if you take account what he does throughout the game. It does not feel right to like this guy. Finally, some of the side content has too many collectibles which does not make them unique, or the side content just simply not fun to play, for example the ctOS breaches, they are inconsistent.

But there are issues with the multiplayer aswell. There is a racing and decryption mode in the multiplayer and these are pretty much dead, has barely any players and the driving physics is still not good at this game. The modes where you can be invaded or invade others are active, however the game has no anti cheat system so you could find some cheaters in the game. They are somewhat uncommon tho, but it is annoying when you have to deal with them and you are aware that you have limited ways against them. The invading games modes are fun by the way, however they are unusual PVP game modes, so you have to understand how to play them, otherwise you will quickly lose interest and the game does not help you to understand how to play these as best as possibly can. Also, if you want to enjoy the single player it can be annoying to be invaded by others in your own session, but luckily you can opt to go offline in the settings if that bothers you.

To be honest, I did not expect Watch Dogs to be this great, because even though it has it's own problems and the multiplayer is basically a niche thing which only some can enjoy, the base game is pretty good. I can definitely recommend to pick this one when it's on sale.

ahh, the old ubisoft... with a decent story, good graphics, a weird control scheme and a beautiful gameplay; the game does not bore. npcs feel alive, side missions are fun but the main missions are gorgeous. one of the rare games where i do the side missions after i finish the game just to enjoy the mission design and the gameplay even more.