Watch Dogs

Watch Dogs relies on unfiltered girth to entertain. Another victim of cross-gen releases, there’s nothing particularly ‘new-gen’ about the game, but there are plenty of good ideas and a lot of activities to keep you busy. The fundamentals for a truly special game are in place – but as was the case with Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry, it now falls to the sequels to fully realise it.

The game is a sort of inverse of Grand Theft Auto 5: triumphant in ambition but faltering in execution. Nowhere is this more apparent than in those NPC bios, which can’t seem to decide if they’re funny or serious.

Settling for less, in the game's case, means settling for the usual open-world bag of tricks polished to a high shine, with a downright gluttonous variety of activities to do them in.

Never once does Watch Dogs raise a finger to show the rest of the world which way to take the genre. Instead, it is somewhat of a Best-of across a multitude of thematically and systemically similar games. A highly polished, and entertaining, cross-section through all things 'open world'. I'd lie if I said I hadn't gotten a few really satisfied sighs out of it. But sometimes that's just not enough.

It's a game that reaches a baseline of enjoyment – and that baseline is fairly high – and doesn't raise it further. The mission loop is too samey – drive here, hack a few things, sneak/shoot out – and multiplayer is too throwaway to really affect much. You'll undoubtedly enjoy your time with it, but it won't linger long in the memory.

A highly enjoyable GTA clone but one that doesn’t quite have the panache of Rockstar’s best or the inspiration to make the most of its otherwise enjoyable gameplay concepts.

Imaginative, cleverly integrated online play helps to bolster Watch Dogs’ less exciting single-player offering, which fails to capitalize on its ambitious hacking concept in any truly memorable way.

Watch Dogs doesn't have that promising kernel. It certainly entertains, but mostly through borrowed concepts, and the central notion that could have made it stand out - the hacking - is the most undercooked of all. It doesn't get anything horribly wrong, but nor does it excel at any of the genre beats it so faithfully bangs out. It's good, and yet that always feels like a criticism when a game comes weighed down by this much hype.

The focus on setting up Watch Dogs as a new franchise will pay off in the years to come, but it does come at the main game’s expense.

Ambitious, yet under-cooked attempt at a revolution. The flaws are fixable, though, so keep an eye on this series.

It has an excellent premise – hacking, revenge and conspiracies – but it then proceeds to not do much with it. The story and gameplay starts to blend into the same generic formula we have seen in other open world action adventure games. This doesn’t mean Watch Dogs is a bad game; it is a decent well-made game that is also just (here comes that word again) generic.

Here we have a game that borrows too heavily from others – entertaining as those mechanics may be – robbing it of its own unique identity. The hacking rectifies this somewhat, providing that differentiating hook, but even that’s not enough to elevate Watch Dogs above the sum of its derivative parts.

Watch Dogs is a game with a high budget that has some really good ideas. Unfortunately it also comes with a lack of focus and many pointless mechanics. Although Ubisoft understand the potential in the concept of hacktivism they aren’t using it in any meaningful way. And instead of a comment to society, Watch Dogs is a pretty shallow action game that we have seen many times before.

It is a genuine shame. There is a real sense of creative energy crackling at the edges of Watch Dogs and a mechanical aptitude in its systems that make it enjoyable enough to play. Parts of the game irritated me greatly, but I rarely found it less than entertaining, and there were moments that brought a real thrill. Watch Dogs immediate success almost guarantees a sequel, and Ubisoft have plenty of strong points with which to build upon. But I would also like to see more conviction in their own ideas, rather than avoiding difficult questions and settling into a pattern of familiarity.