Watch Dogs - Everything Is Connected - Connection is Power (All Consoles)

[SuperStingray]

So I just finished the game. My thoughts haven't changed a whole lot. All I can say is Ubisoft Montreal really needs to learn how to cut the fat. Every time I watch the 15-20 minute credits sequence for an Assassin's Creed game I think about what percentage of those people spent a good two years of their life programming a part of that game's enormously bloated roster of features that I either didn't care about or completely got in the way. Watch Dogs had a similar problem; the core hacking mechanic has A LOT of potential that completely went to the wayside for things like drinking games and a mostly nothing-new multiplayer mode. The infiltration missions were easily the most fun and allowed for the most Deus Ex-y moments.

As for the story, similar issue- it has a good core theme, but too all over the map to address it in any meaningful way. The writing was always unoriginal, boring or hamfisted, but on the plus side, it's rarely all at once. Nothing is great, but nothing is irredeemable either. The Viceroys were so stupidly powerful and over-the-top urban that they felt like they belonged in an inFamous game but damn if it wasn't satisfying to take apart their organization. Lucky Quinn and his disgusting sex-trade operation didn't get the attention they deserved, but his death scene was satisfying and made a clever use of the hacking mechanic as a weapon. Nicky and Jackson were very predictable and more of a plot device than characters but they did get a proper sendoff where I did actually feel empathy. Also, Jordi is one of my favorite game characters in a while. He's a self-aware sociopath; a heartless hitman who takes pride in his work. It was really entertaining to hear the ways he distanced himself from the moral abyss that is his job, like anthroporphizing explosives and dismissing Aiden giving him a reason for hiring him to snipe a group of thugs as "smalltalk." It was a shame that he ruined the ending sequence for no good reason, though. Other than that, the cast was kind of bland, but with no bigger offender than Aiden Pearce. Beyond his utter lack of personality, he's perhaps the greatest example of terrible ludonarrative dissonance gaming has had in a long time. He just has no self-awareness whatsoever. He wasn't unwarranted for wanting revenge for the car crash that caused his nieces death, but he lost any justification the moment he created one himself to simply get away from a gang or the cops. Sure, the game points this out by the end but it feels half-assed, thrown in there at the last minute to create the illusion of character development rather than a looming sense of guilt that grows like a cancer on your conscience as Spec-Ops: The Line masterfully did. Pearce just feels like a huge power fantasy. A chance for the player to play roles usually reserved by the villain. The hacker. The kidnapper. The manipulator. The chessmaster. And it could have worked if he actually WAS portrayed as a villain or at least becoming one. Pearce could have been gaming's Walter White if they attempted to give his moral code the attention it deserved, but instead he's just a forgettable asshole.

In summation, shows potential, don't believe the hype, wait for a price drop and get it for a console unless your computer is from the future.

[Doctor MK]

The Wii U version is still alive, reconfirmed for Fall 2014:

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2014/06/ubisoft_reconfirms_watch_dogs_for_fall_2014_release_on_wii_u

 

Hooray, I guess? I wish I could be more excited but knowing it's going to be more akin to the PS3/360 versions is making me extremely hesitant

[Willsy]

I'll probably have the PS4 version by then though. But it's great to see that people who only have a Wii U will still be able to play it.

[Gabz Girl]

Not surprised at all that the end credits are more than 20 minutes long. They've been doing this since Assassins Creed Brotherhood and it's one of many things that annoys me about Ubisoft today.

 

Hooray, I guess? I wish I could be more excited but knowing it's going to be more akin to the PS3/360 versions is making me extremely hesitant

 

How do we know it's going to be like the PS3/360 versions? Have they confirmed it or something..? Oh God no please...that's the one version I want to get and considering the Wii U is more powerful than both PS3 and 360 I'll be majorly pissed off with Ubisoft.

 

Anyway, I'm glad Watch Dogs sold well for a new IP, but I'm still dissappointed it wasn't what it was hyped up to be. The whole hacking mechanic could've had so much more potential but now, it's just another sandbox game with pretty (ish) graphics. I guess it's fun and all but the E3 2012 reveal made it look bloody awesome. D: Not to mention the apparently mediocre plot and characters and an unlikeable Aiden Pierce. yay.

[Doctor MK]

How do we know it's going to be like the PS3/360 versions? Have they confirmed it or something..? Oh God no please...that's the one version I want to get and considering the Wii U is more powerful than both PS3 and 360 I'll be majorly pissed off with Ubisoft.

 

Pretty sure they said in an interview somewhere that the Wii U version would technically be closer to the PS3/360 versions than the PS4/Xbox One versions.

 

What that quite entails, we shall see, but it's not a good sign.

[KrazyBean]

Watch_Dogs is teaching your kids to hack the public! So says Glenn Beck...he also goes on with the whole "video games are dangerous" crap.

 

 

ReviewTechUSA's opinion on this

 

[PSI Wind]

Oh wow, I didn't know all I had to do was press X on my controller to hack anything!

[Willsy]

Just thought I'd put this in here, since it's bloody brilliant:

By now we’ve all heard of Ubisoft Game, and if you haven’t, then you’ve been living under a rock. Ubisoft Game is the latest in a long line of titles from Ubisoft, and with a bigger budget than ever before and no less than 75 of Ubisoft’s 193 global studios working on it, there’s no doubt that this year’s Ubisoft Game is going to be the big one.

You can play Ubisoft Game on basically any platform of your choice, but we’ve been reviewing it on a next-gen console, because that’s the platform it was made for.

Ubisoft Game is the story of Main Character, a gruff or sassy white man who is really good at parkour, killing, and killing while doing parkour. One of the most iconic features of Main Character is the way he dresses — Main Character’s sense of style and flair really comes across in his tailored outfit, which makes him look distinctive and features a number of clear symbols that can be easily used in marketing and merchandising.

The game takes place in a big open world, with lots of people and maybe even animals living in it. That sounds like it should be a paradise, but it’s not — a Bad Thing has happened and Main Character is right in the thick of it. Or maybe he’s the only one who can stop it? The story in Ubisoft Game is a bit uncompelling, but that’s okay, because there’s just so much to see and do.

When the main story starts, it’s a bit slow and scripted to begin with, but it’s not long before you’re out in the open world doing your thing. Ubisoft really know how to do an open world, and the jungle sections in particular of Ubisoft Game are just amazing. Those guys and gals really know how to do jungle. There’s also some really impressive AI on display, keeping the wildlife and/or people moving and creating a living, breathing ecosystem around you. You can drive cars or possibly horses and run over people too, which is good. This may make guards attack you, which is bad.

A key mechanic of Ubisoft Game is that control points on the map need to be ‘captured’ to unlock particular areas. Each control point is a challenge and gives you influence over that particular area, and allows you do your parkour or whatever without being attacked by the bad guys. When you’re not capturing control points with your Good Parkour Skills, you don’t have to go and do the main story, although Main Character’s skills don’t unlock until you do which is kind of annoying. There’s lots to see and do. Ubisoft Game is filled with side activities such as This Gambling Game, Beating Up Enemies Until You Are Told To Stop, Looking For Collectibles, and Tailing Somebody Somewhere For Some Reason.

You can also do the thing which works offline with your companion app, which you can download. Once you’ve got the thing, you can use your companion app to do it, on your tablet or smart phone! It’s neat and impressive, but does it add much to the game? We’re not sure.

You’ll want to come back to the main story though, because that’s what Ubisoft Game is really all about. The main story introduces a number of people who aren’t the Main Character, and most of them are pretty forgettable but there are one or two in there who are genuinely more interesting than the Main Character, which is strange. Anyway the main story also has a lot of stuff to do, although there’s a lot of really stupid instant-fail stealth missions where you have to reload over and over again, and it seems like Ubisoft kind of ran out of ideas near to the end. The main story goes for approximately 400 years and it probably didn’t need to be that long.

There’s a lot of combat in Ubisoft Game. From the initial trailers we thought maybe there would be more to the game than combat, but truth be told you’ll be spending a lot of time just shooting or stabbing people, possibly while doing parkour or in stealth. That combat is great fun so that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s about time for Ubisoft to realise that not every game needs to be packed with as much action as possible.

The message of the main story seems kind of lost unfortunately, which is a shame because Ubisoft have clearly put so much money and effort into polishing Ubisoft Game. It feels like they were afraid to really make a statement in the main story, and Main Character just isn’t an interesting enough White Man Who Is Good At Killing to really deliver on the game’s potentially edgy premise. Main Character often does things which are just as bad as the bad guys in the game, and this double standard isn’t really addressed by Ubisoft Game at any point in the narrative.

Ubisoft Game comes in about 4,027 different editions depending on where you buy it and what phase of the moon you’re in at the time, so it’s hard to know if any of the mountains of DLC, Unlockable Extras, Side Missions and Add-Ons for Ubisoft Game change anything significantly about the main story. What we can tell you though is that Ubisoft Game has some neat easter eggs that also make references to other Ubisoft Games, which is nice.

We also took Ubisoft Game for a quick spin on PC, and it’s a mixed bag. Sometimes Ubisoft Game is good on PC and sometimes it isn’t, and this Ubisoft Game follows the same pattern. It’s definitely meant for a controller though, unless you’re doing some shooting. That’s much better with a keyboard and mouse. For those of you wondering — yes, Ubisoft Game uses Uplay. Sorry.

All in all, Ubisoft Game is a game that Ubisoft have made. You’ll play it if you like that sort of thing, and in fact it has already sold 250 million copies.

Ubisoft also make some absolutely incredible smaller games like Rayman Legends, Child of Light and Valiant Hearts: The Great War, but nobody plays those so whatever.

http://games.on.net/2014/06/ubisoft-game-the-review/

If someone makes me laugh, they deserve a cookie. This guy deserves 10.

[Doctor MK]

Nintendo have uploaded a CG trailer for Watch Dogs on their YouTube channel:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6k0yXUA6fc

 

Nothing we haven't seen before already, but this at least reassures us that the Wii U version is actually coming!

[Badnik Mechanic]

Ubisoft... how do you fuck up this bad?

 

So you remember the original texture and lighting effects that Ubisoft showed back in 2012 & 2013? Before the downgrade?

 

Well... yeah those files are still on the disk, at least in the PC version!

 

The Worse, creator of the mod on Guru3d: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=390114

 

Has made massive discoveries/improvements. He has discovered that almost all of the shaders and improvements seen in 2012 and 2013 are still in the game files, such as the e3 2012 explosions. For now he has managed to implement dynamic shadows from headlights, the increased rain density, increased NPC density, as well as 2012 e3 bloom and lens flare.

 

So you might be thinking 'Watch Dogs runs like arse on the PC.... why would I do this when it would run even worse.

 

Nope! 

 

It runs better with these files! There's even a fix for the normal stuttering which occurs in the final release.

 

ncluded in this mod(not all features are available yet):

-Changes to the default fog values
-Enabled bokeh DOF for the main cameras
-Stuttering Improvements
-E3 2012 Bloom
-Performance Improvements
-Enabled Headlight Shadows
-LoD Changes
-Reflection changes
-Added 3 new cameras to the game(closer, normal, further)
-Rain changes(High quality rain drops, properly reacting to light, etc)
-LensFlares(WIP)
-Lighting changes(TESTING AND WIP)
-Civilians density changes

And many more things.. SOON.

[SuperLink]

So... long story short, modders can make the game run better with files that are already in the game. And Ubisoft.. didn't do this? Even though it apparently would have taken fuck-all time to do?

 

Incredible.

[Badnik Mechanic]

So... long story short, modders can make the game run better with files that are already in the game. And Ubisoft.. didn't do this? Even though it apparently would have taken fuck-all time to do?

 

Correct.

 

And this is just the first release of the mod, who knows what else is in there.

 

But apparently, prior to this discovering, driving at full speed from one side of the city to the other on PC resulting in tons of stuttering.

 

Now it's completely gone.

 

A few screens.

 

 

 

Headlight shadows are back

 

 

Post rain daytime.

 

[Celestia]

So you remember the original texture and lighting effects that Ubisoft showed back in 2012 & 2013? Before the downgrade? Well... yeah those files are still on the disk, at least in the PC version!

 

Well, maybe--

 

 So you might be thinking 'Watch Dogs runs like arse on the PC.... why would I do this when it would run even worse.

 

Nope! 

 

It runs better with these files! There's even a fix for the normal stuttering which occurs in the final release.

 

What...what could have possibly been their reasoning here? It's like I'm reading a parody news site responding to the controversy over the noticeable downgrade in this game's graphics with a joke article about how they purposefully made the game look worse for no particular reason just to screw with everyone...but this is, apparently, real life. It actually happened. What.

 

......yeah, SL summed it up.

 

Incredible.

[KrazyBean]

Ubisoft always makes crappy PC ports anyway. It's gonna happen to Far Cry 4 and The Division.

[Gabz Girl]

What the hell Ubisoft? Were you just too lazy to actually put the E3 2012 effects into the game even though it would have significantly improved it?

At least now we know that what we saw in 2012 was not full of bull shots!

[pppp]

 

I...huh.....Am I even alive? Is this reality?

 

The lack of logic is giving me brain damage

[Mando-Whirl-Wind]

They obviously didn't want the console versions to suffer because the PC was leaps ahead  of it, so they neutered it even more, but the irony in the long run is that it will sell better with these improvements now I might get it with that mod in a year when its a fourth of its current price

[Sami]

I guess they wanted near parity with the console version. Dumb.

[Mando-Whirl-Wind]

I guess they wanted near parity with the console version. Dumb. Ubisoft

 Remember, we are talking about the company who delayed a completed game release during a dry spell for a new console, for 5 months for a multiplat release, and the console it was originaly for still got the best sells

[Candescence]

Another gorgeous shot. But yeah, holy crap, it's astonishing what a big difference this makes: WTF, Ubisoft.

 

[KrazyBean]

Man that's pretty. I might actually get this on my PC when it's on sale and when more mods roll out...then again when GTA V hits PC I'm sure loads of people will ignore this game, let's be real here.

[Solkia]

Damn, that's gorgeous.

 

Though I'm not sure why this should sell me on the game. All I've seen of the game is gunning people down.

[KrazyBean]

You could play it stealhy if you want.

[goku262002]

Jesus wow, thats soo dumb to do that but I'm glad that at least theirs a good version of Watch_Dogs.

[Frogging101]

What the actual shitting fuck? what.

I can't.

I just can't. What the fuck. Why. How? How could they do this? Why would they do this? Is this a joke? Is this a mistake? Did they do this on purpose?

And yet it's been 3 fucking weeks since release and the PC patch isn't even released yet. I literally cannot fathom the apparent mind-boggling stupidity that I'm seeing right here.