When the first Saints Row was released for the Xbox 360, it filled a void. There was no Grand Theft Auto for the new systems and wouldn’t for quite some time, and while Saints Row was clearly influenced by Rockstar’s creations, it did well just because it offered people all of the stealing cars and shooting people that they wanted and couldn’t yet get.
It was a perfectly serviceable enough clone, but it didn’t offer a personality of its own and when Grand Theft Auto IV finally returned, it didn’t even see Saints Row as it stepped on its climb back to the top. It wasn’t until the next few Saints Row installments that Volition lost (or found) its mind and decided to forgo the usual “man building a criminal empire piece by piece” style and just go nuts. They put the focus on ridiculous fun and eventually turned you into a straight-up superhero. They found their own niche and hit it hard, finally creating a unique, entertaining game that didn’t feel like the titles that had spawned it.
Turns Out That Neither PS4 Or Xbox One Watch Dogs Versions Are 1080p
Why bring this up now? Watch Dogs feels like it's in the same situation. Its next-gen installments fill a market that GTA has yet to satisfy and does it well—but does it do it differently enough? The answer—somewhat.
The hacking stuff that’s so predominantly featured in the marketing (which allows you to use your cell phone to hack into any of inhabitants of Chicago or the city’s infrastructure with a push of a button) sadly takes a backseat to the usual GTA tropes. There is plenty of hacking but that isn’t the focus here—it's about shooting people and stealing cars.
Watch Dogs falls victim to the same things a lot of GTA clones do, too. Why are we collecting all this money, hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars, when there’s nothing to purchase except clothes and guns? What rationale does your character have for becoming a mass murdering sociopath who runs over people and kills cops without a second thought?
Real-life Parkour, Hacking, Pranks- Ubisoft's Brilliant Watch Dogs Marketing [VIDEOS]
That last issue is the most egregious, actually. The story makes a half-assed attempt to humanize protagonist Aiden Pearce and give him a reason to become the man known by the unimaginative in-game media as “The Vigilante,” which is that his niece was killed during an attempted assassination. Aiden blames himself for her death and sets out to find the people responsible.
Then there’s the story, which takes a few dark turns as Aiden continues to get his family and friends sucked deeper into his dark life and then tries to get them all out. It even offers the usual surprise backstabbing that you'd never, ever see coming—unless you've played a game in the last decade. As with most games of this type the otherwise boring campaign takes a backseat to the sheer madness you cause. Why would you care about taking care of your sister when you can explode a city with a giant spider mech, after all?
As fun and amazing as it is (and as great as it looks on next-gen, even if it’s infuriating that a game on these systems still has some pop-up issues) you still can’t help but feel like it’s not different enough to make it stand out. That if a new GTA came swooping down to show people how things are done you’d forget this game even existed.
Maybe in the next iteration or two Watch Dogs will find its own personality and become its own unstoppable beast. There’s certainly a ton to like here, and you’ll spend hours upon hours sucked into it, exploring, collecting, and having fun with the multiplayer. It’s an immensely polished experience, it just didn’t have enough guts to try its own thing.
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Watch Dogs was reviewed from a PS4 retail copy provided by Ubisoft. The game is also available on Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, with a Wii U version hitting later this year.
