Review: Watchdogs

I have been asked quite a few times to review this game. People keep telling me that this game is amazing, or were telling me that this game is a glitch infested waste of hype. Needless to say, I had to try it out myself. And I’m glad that I did.

It’s kind of interesting that the game is set in Chicago. The city is actually called Chicago, and not some fake New York “Liberty City.” Being a Chicagoan, I tried to find landmarks around the city, but I found bupkis. I guess I couldn’t expect to find Englewood or KKC. Long shot…

The first thing I want to say is the game achieved its primary goal; I was deeply engaged. The gimmick of hack people’s phone just by walking past them and hitting a button is very cool. As an IT person, I know that shit like that is impossible but it would be amazing to be able to do. Good thing I am not a conspiracy theorist or anything like that or I would actually be wondering whether or not the government actually had cameras using facial recognition to find criminals and snoop on people fucking. I think that’s something Edward Snowden would have alerted us to.

To all the people bitching that the driving in this game sucks and that is the biggest reason this game is terrible, please shut your faceholes. It’s not a driving game. If you want a good driving experience, play a driving game like Need for Speed or Split Second. If you really want to complain about the game, it gives you enough ammo without attacking the driving. Take the hardcore human and wall love relationship Aiden has with basically anything that he uses to hide behind for cover. You can and will attribute most in-game deaths to that. The guy has a hard-on for being stuck between bullets and a hard place. Seriously, you will direct him to run away from the huge armored man that’s been giving more holes than Swiss Cheese and that can also take a whole magazine of automatic shotgun ammo to his face, but Aiden won’t even try. He hasn’t taken his dick out of this particular wall to put it in another.

If that isn’t enough for you, lets stroll down to “Online Contracts Lane” where we will find a lovely assortment of bitchmittens ready to fuck over that mission you thought you were doing because you either get profiled when you don’t want to be or hacked when you don’t want to be. Either way, you’re going to have a bad time. I just cut that feature off so that I could enjoy the game.

“But that’s an amazing feature. You don’t know what you’re missing.”

I know exactly what I am missing, Billy. I am missing a brain vessel exploding because I am trying to scan this last ctOS tower in this district and some asshole with dicks for fingers decides to give me a hard time. Yeah, that’s what I am missing. Cool story bro, have fun taking that up the ass.

Aside from the story being another “one man against the world” cliche, it is a fun game. I got to get my tech rocks off by “hacking”. And by “hacking”, I mean playing a futuristic Professor Layton puzzle with a time limit. The nerd in me was pleased.

If you want a game that isn’t Grand Theft Auto but tries to be, get it. Ignore what everyone said and get this game. I don’t care if you get it PS3, PS4, or whatever. It is worth your time and mine. So basically:

Watchdogs: A digital trip with more bark than byte.