I know that video games aren't Hubski's biggest deal, or at least not for the people I follow. Understandable, it's a very immature medium and you need to have an incredibly high tolerance for inane fucking bullshit just to get by. Gaming culture can be absolutely vile from time to time, and if you didn't grow up with it, I won't fault anyone for not wanting to take part.
I have played maybe 3 hours of the game. I may or may not play more.
Let's give a little backstory. I really like Ubisoft games. They are what I consider "solid" on most fronts. They are rarely revolutionary, but they are usually quality products with some degree of creativity. They do plots other than "MILITARY GUY DOES MILITARY THING TO VAGUELY BROWN PEOPLE" and I appreciate that. Military Guy needs a goddamn break.
I really liked Assassin's Creed 4. It might actually be my favorite game of 2014, because it was really goddamn fun. It was not the most amazing game, it's not as respectable or poignant as The Last of Us or The Walking Dead or The Wolf Among Us or dozens of other games, but it's fun. I would play it after working a job I had grown to really hate, and it always got me in a good mood. You had sailing songs, the collectibles weren't an unnecessarily long grind to get, and even though it wasn't the highest resolution in the world, the art direction was really solid.
For being so fucking close to Assassin's Creed 4, Watch Dogs lacks the best goddamn part of the franchise. It is completely and utterly miserable to play. I don't know if it gets better and I really honestly don't care.
Instead of the traditional AC style stealth system they have a cover system, where your character locks on to cover and can move by pressing the X/A button in order to move to a different position. The problem is this interferes constantly with precision movement. Why? Why put that in there? It makes movement awkward and uncomfortable, and in a game that has stealth elements, awkward and uncomfortable movement is kind of the worst thing to have.
There's more than just this flaw, like the driving (fuck the driving), but this game is just tedious. I looked at the ship upgrades in AC4 and I wanted to fill them up because I enjoyed the vanilla ship combat. You have to unlock bullet time in this. You unlock your abilities by grinding out experience. What the fuck happened there? I liked the material system in AC4, it was grinding sure, but it was grinding by doing my favorite part of that game and you could power through it no problem. In this, I've got to do endless missions to save people in a city I don't give a hot fuck about.
Also, for the promises that were made surrounding this games graphics, it looks awful. It's like the worst part of Assassin's Creed and Far Cry, it's that flat Ubisoft cutscene look, where nothing has depth or weight.
If you're jonesing for a game, just pick up Transistor. That game is great! It has it's flaws but they're small. It's fun. It's 5 hours and you've finished a cool little story in one of the best looking games of this year.
Fuck.