WATCH_DOGS - COMPLETE_EDITION:

[!!SPOILERS AHEAD!!]

STORY_AND_CHARACTERS: Watch Dogs has a very standard revenge plot that doesn't try to outdo itself in anyway. Ubisoft knew what they wanted to do and the story they wanted to tell and they do it excellently. The story follows Aiden Pearce, an expert hacker who is on the path of revenge to find the man who got his niece, Lena, killed. Most of the time, the story has very few flaws, but there are some hiccups and gripes I have with the pacing and how they treat certain characters. First, I'll start with the positives. Aiden was a great protagonist. Cool, (mostly) calm and efficient. I love the questions towards his morality towards the end, but I wish they had started to introduce these questions a bit earlier and make the player actually question what they were doing. In my case, I was already at the reputation level of 'Menace' (caused by doing negative things in the city - killing peds, killing police, etc.) and I didn't really think about the moral questions, and just kept going the way I was going, never leaving the red level of reputation. This made the ending choice of killing or walking away from Maurice kind of pointless as it only made sense to kill him by that point of the story. Damien was a very terrifying villain and always felt as if he was two steps ahead. He was slimy, scummy and cunning - everything you'd expect out of a good antagonist. I do wish he did more with his full ctOS access in the end in terms of communicating with Aiden, such as appearing on signs/screens, playing through the radio of your vehicle, etc. Jordi’s betrayal (?) was handled very well and shocked me but I can understand why - the seeds were planted in the mission where you blow up the van with the sticky bombs. Here are my gripes with the story. Lucky Quinn was just so underwhelming. No matter how much they did to make him seem menacing, it mostly just fell flat. His influence on the next govenor/senator/whatever was cool though. The story in the last few missions also felt a bit rushed. Clara’s betrayal was handled kind of poorly, and I didn’t really vibe with the way they tried to redeem her as she helped to put Aiden through all of this and put the game in motion (which is one thing we can thank her for) but aside from that she was the average deuteragonist that, to me at least, provided a worthless "will they, wont they?" with Aiden.

MISSIONS: A lot of the missions end up feeling samey by the 50%-60% portion of the story. There are some good setpieces throughout, like the prison section, but the formula boils down to the same structure. Hack someone to find someone/something => Track them => Kill/interrogate them => Call Clara/T-Bone/Jordi => Trail the next thing => Repeat. It's tolerable but it gets tiresome eventually. This game also has the infamous "Ubisoft Towers™". These are actually handled decently where you have to find ways through hacking to unlock doors to find your ways to the towers. This game also has the classic Ubisoft outposts (gang hideouts) which are... eh. They're okay and having to knock out the targets instead of killing them provides a decent challenge.



COMBAT_AND_STEALTH: Combat is decent. I mean there's nothing to really say as it's just standard third person cover shooting. That cover system, however, can be really wonky sometimes and get me killed. Stealth is the same. However there is something that completely breaks both of these - the Focus mechanic. Stealth is broken when you have a Spec Ops 1911 with Focus to slow down time and headshot every enemy. Combat is also broken when you can take out your strongest sniper and headshot everybody like you're Arthur Morgan. Focus is limited, however, so you can't always rely on it. Well, if you don't have Focus Pills to instantly restore it :)

TRAVERSAL: The parkour in this game is fucking amazing. It flows so smoothly (when it wants to) and I wish they had given you setpieces purely testing your mastery of the parkour system. I really wish Ubisoft banked on the parkour and increased the amount of tricks you could do too. But even at that. just vaulting over a small pallet of wood feels so good. I NEED MORE PARKOUR! However, there isn't really anything I can say about the other aspects of traversal aside from it being just okay. The driving is kinda slippery though.

CONCLUSION_AND_VERDICT: Yeah this game is great. Despite all these flaws, I just couldn't help but enjoy it (most of the time - looking at you final police chase and final mission). Oh and also fuck the 'guiding another person' missions. Fuck the guy who came up with the idea, fuck the guy who approved the idea, fuck the guy who programmed the idea. Fuck them in particular. Aside from that though, Watch_Dogs is definitely an experience I recommend to everyone.


WATCH_DOGS - BAD_BLOOD:

STORY_AND_CHARACTERS: I liked Defalt's connection with Raymond. I disliked Ray's dynamic with Tobias. That's about it.

NEW ADDITIONS: The R/C Car was very trivial and I really could have gone w/o it. It made literally no difference to the story or gameplay. Ubisoft realised they needed something to spice the gameplay up and that was it. It didn't succeed at it's objective.

CONCLUSION: Play Bad Blood if you liked the base game. It's just more of the same but shorter. It's like a better TLaD.