Watch_Dogs wasn't worth the wait

You know what? There just isn't a lot to say about Watch Dogs. The best way to describe it is hollow.

At some point - perhaps - there might have been a good idea in there but all we've got in a very banal storyline (which doesn't even include the titular Watch Dogs) and the usual growly, angry and very stupid protagonist (although, obviously his stupidity is what's required to push the plot along) atop gutted GTA gameplay (and we're talking maybe Vice City and that's being generous) with a bunch of random stuff lifted from Assassin's Creed (including actual animations) tossed into the mix, with the addition of the hacking stuff which is mostly mini-games or used to make-up for the inability to fire weapons while driving (hence being sub-GTA as that's something it added several titles ago).

In fact, it's more likely that you can't shoot and drive as that would make the already somewhat extraneous hacking pretty much entirely irrelevant given that about half of your hacking abilities are for stopping cars. In actual combat, it's really only useful if the mooks are near the ubiquitous explodable items that are apparently integral to Chicago's infrastructure... and as soon as you go exploding something - there goes the element of surprise. Which means that - if you're playing on the highest difficulty, where all it takes to kill you is some harsh language - you're going to want to hold off doing that and just go for KOs or stealth kills if possible.

There ARE some interesting ideas used - finding the QR codes by getting the right camera... Using cameras to track down boxes... but the hacking mini-game itself gets old pretty fast... and really, it feels as if the game would have been better had it concentrated on large mission areas, rather than a whole open world. The experience is just so diffuse and while the game is pretty, it feels unfocused... although, with such a bland storyline - that's hardly surprising.

The worst part being that the game seems certain it has this complex mystery plot and when it finally does reveal what set in motion the events of the game, it's such a let down (and especially if you listen to the audio logs) that it makes it that much worse. It also has the bland main character - so we can all pretend we're him - who is surrounded by far more interesting characters... who really don't get nearly enough screentime.

Needless to say, the biggest question there is to ask when it's all finished is - what did they spend those extra eight months on? It certainly wasn't polish.