It's been almost 10 years to the day since Watch Dogs released and honestly? It's aged relatively well.
Well, for me it has anyhow.
That's mostly because when I first played it, I was still an impressionable teen hot off the heels of playing GTA for the first time with the 5th game and chasing that open-world sandbox high. Thankfully, Watch Dogs delivered just what I needed, and I proceeded to spend the next month doing every possible thing there was to do in it.
Now, ten years on and going into this again, there was some concern that my love of Watch Dogs was mired in teenage me being much more easy to please. Thankfully, that hasn't been the case, and Watch Dogs is still a good time.
Now, I will acknowledge off the bat that this game has a messy reputation and was kind of the Cyberpunk 2077 of its time (for entirely different reasons) for not delivering on the shiny next-gen visuals it had promised in pre-release material, even though the PC version smoothed this over somewhat, thanks to mods. That said, I would be lying through my teeth if I said that I gave a single shit about any of that, now and especially back then, though I obviously understand the outrage.
To give the elevator pitch, Watch Dogs is a cyberpunk thriller starring tall, dark, and handsome hacker-man Aiden Pearce as he uncovers those responsible for his six-year-old niece's accidental murder after an electronic heist gone wrong. To do so, Aiden must parkour, drift, shoot, beat the shit out of people with a nightstick and make like Jonny Lee Miller and 'hack the planet'. It sounds like I'm making fun of the overall premise, and I kind of am, but it's mostly light ribbing, as Watch Dogs does deliver a thrilling and fun story with a solid cast of characters, despite its ridiculous premise.
Near-future Chicago is also a decent GTA-like sandbox city to run around in, despite the mixed bag of side content on display here. For every cool puzzle where you have to find a hidden QR code in the environment, there are frankly too many 'criminal convoy' missions where you have to stop a motorcade of criminals from reaching their destination by whatever means necessary. It sounds like something that could be fun, but much like a lot of the side stuff in this game, there are between 3 and 20 too many instances of this with next-to-no variety between them.
Otherwise, when you're not on a mission, just roaming around the city, visiting the shops, doing parkour challenges, and so forth is a pretty good time, especially since you can listen to the licensed soundtrack through your phone even when you're not in a vehicle, which is a small touch I greatly appreciate. The citizens of Watch Dogs' Chicago are also quite impressive to watch and interact with; dare I say, perhaps even more so than GTA 5's NPCs? Perhaps that's part-and-parcel with the game's profiler function, which gives you basic stats and information on every single civilian in the game, with surprisingly little overlap, or so it might seem.
Many people take issue with Aiden Pearce as a protagonist, mostly being too edgy, try-hard, and too much of a sadboi, but honestly? I kind of liked that about him, although I definitely do not disagree with those descriptors. True, perhaps they overdid it at points with the flawed, morally-grey protagonist they built here, but I do like him as someone who perceives himself as a morally righteous modern-day Robin Hood type but who, in reality, is closer to Batman in that he uses his trauma as an excuse to brutalise people in the name of a flimsy moral compass.
For these reasons and more, I was not disappointed with Watch Dogs, having been away from it for around a decade, and despite it and Ubisoft's shaky reputation in the eyes of many, it, despite its flaws, is still just as fun and enjoyable now as it was to a teenage me back then.
8/10
Well, for me it has anyhow.
That's mostly because when I first played it, I was still an impressionable teen hot off the heels of playing GTA for the first time with the 5th game and chasing that open-world sandbox high. Thankfully, Watch Dogs delivered just what I needed, and I proceeded to spend the next month doing every possible thing there was to do in it.
Now, ten years on and going into this again, there was some concern that my love of Watch Dogs was mired in teenage me being much more easy to please. Thankfully, that hasn't been the case, and Watch Dogs is still a good time.
Now, I will acknowledge off the bat that this game has a messy reputation and was kind of the Cyberpunk 2077 of its time (for entirely different reasons) for not delivering on the shiny next-gen visuals it had promised in pre-release material, even though the PC version smoothed this over somewhat, thanks to mods. That said, I would be lying through my teeth if I said that I gave a single shit about any of that, now and especially back then, though I obviously understand the outrage.
To give the elevator pitch, Watch Dogs is a cyberpunk thriller starring tall, dark, and handsome hacker-man Aiden Pearce as he uncovers those responsible for his six-year-old niece's accidental murder after an electronic heist gone wrong. To do so, Aiden must parkour, drift, shoot, beat the shit out of people with a nightstick and make like Jonny Lee Miller and 'hack the planet'. It sounds like I'm making fun of the overall premise, and I kind of am, but it's mostly light ribbing, as Watch Dogs does deliver a thrilling and fun story with a solid cast of characters, despite its ridiculous premise.
Near-future Chicago is also a decent GTA-like sandbox city to run around in, despite the mixed bag of side content on display here. For every cool puzzle where you have to find a hidden QR code in the environment, there are frankly too many 'criminal convoy' missions where you have to stop a motorcade of criminals from reaching their destination by whatever means necessary. It sounds like something that could be fun, but much like a lot of the side stuff in this game, there are between 3 and 20 too many instances of this with next-to-no variety between them.
Otherwise, when you're not on a mission, just roaming around the city, visiting the shops, doing parkour challenges, and so forth is a pretty good time, especially since you can listen to the licensed soundtrack through your phone even when you're not in a vehicle, which is a small touch I greatly appreciate. The citizens of Watch Dogs' Chicago are also quite impressive to watch and interact with; dare I say, perhaps even more so than GTA 5's NPCs? Perhaps that's part-and-parcel with the game's profiler function, which gives you basic stats and information on every single civilian in the game, with surprisingly little overlap, or so it might seem.
Many people take issue with Aiden Pearce as a protagonist, mostly being too edgy, try-hard, and too much of a sadboi, but honestly? I kind of liked that about him, although I definitely do not disagree with those descriptors. True, perhaps they overdid it at points with the flawed, morally-grey protagonist they built here, but I do like him as someone who perceives himself as a morally righteous modern-day Robin Hood type but who, in reality, is closer to Batman in that he uses his trauma as an excuse to brutalise people in the name of a flimsy moral compass.
For these reasons and more, I was not disappointed with Watch Dogs, having been away from it for around a decade, and despite it and Ubisoft's shaky reputation in the eyes of many, it, despite its flaws, is still just as fun and enjoyable now as it was to a teenage me back then.
8/10