First Impressions: Hack into a new world in Watch Dogs

Watch Dogs, the highly anticipated next-gen title from Ubisoft, was released this week for Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U and PC and it’s a game that I’ve been looking forward to since I first heard about it.

Watch Dogs takes place in a fictionalized version of the city of Chicago where players control Aiden Pearce, a grey hat hacker who is using his techno-wizardry skills to discover why he and his family were attacked, which resulted in the death of his niece. Using his mastery of technology, Pearce can use the CtOS system – a city-spanning network that controls nearly every function of Chicago – to do anything from manipulating security cameras, syphoning money from people’s bank accounts or stopping violent street crimes before they happen.

Pearce’s connection to the world of Watch Dogs is his smart phone. By installing backdoor programs into district CtOS systems, he makes use of a “Profiler” app which shows him information about everyone and everything around him. He can steal money from phones (which can be put toward guns, clothes, cars and more), listen to phone calls or chat dialogues which may lead to preventing a crime and much more. And while a majority of what Pearce is able to do in Chicago is related to hacking, there are tons of missions, side missions, activities and collectibles to collect, complete and discover around the massive city. Along with a large city, Pearce has plenty of skills and abilities to unlock which will lead to him becoming a more powerful vigilante.

Being that Pearce is just one man, staying out of sight and using his technological prowess is usually the cleanest way to accomplish a mission. Much of what Pearce will be doing in Watch Dogs will entail stealing data from a target or infiltrating secure locations to either steal data or incapacitate a target and often it will be easier to accomplish these missions using stealth than going in guns blazing. Don’t worry, though, Pearce has access to a wide array of weaponry (pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, grenade launchers) as well as being able to craft items like grenades, lures and communication jammers to aid in disrupting and disabling targets.

There’s also a ton of online modes, most of which revolve around invading another player’s game and stealing information from them. This can happen to you at any time as well, which means you might have to drop everything and concentrate on finding this unknown assailant. This just happened to me yesterday. I was on my way to a clothing store when I was informed that my phone was being hacked and information stolen. A shaded area appeared on my map to display where the enemy hacker was hiding and using my profiler, I would need to track him down and kill him. As the time counts down a progress bar (showing the data theft) builds, the search area decreases. Finally, with less than 10% to go, I happened upon a parked car where my nemesis was hiding and carrying out the search from. It all happened in an instant – I walked briskly past the car, my profiler went off indicating my target, I pulled out a machine pistol and lit him up before he could turn the car on or get out to run. It’s an interesting idea, to combine single and multiplayer in this manner, though I think it won’t appeal to everyone. Also, you’re penalized for turning off the “always online” component of Watch Dogs – your Notoriety will be reset to 0 going offline (which is the XP you get for completing online missions that leads to unique abilities and unlocks).

I wasn’t blown away by the visual presentation at first, though. Compared to earlier preview videos used to hype Watch Dogs, I felt like the visuals on my PlayStation 4 version weren’t anything special – looking just slightly better than GTA V looks on my Xbox 360 – and certainly didn’t have the sheen of Infamous: Second Son. After I explored more of the city and watched the game in action, I realized I was a little hard on the game at first and even though it doesn’t look as good as the early hype videos (which were probably running on high end PCs), the lighting, textures and colors are all really top notch.

Watch Dogs is an incredibly fun game that has a ton of content and will definitely keep you glued to your PS4 for weeks. There are some unfortunate design choices but overall, you wouldn’t go wrong if you wanted to pick up Watch Dogs on a whim. Be sure to look out for my full review, coming soon.