Watch Dogs: All Bark, No Bite
The ambitious Watch Dogs: Legion manages to give a few fun hours but falls short of a groundbreaking experience
By Tyler Lilly
The ambitious Watch Dogs: Legion manages to give a few fun hours but falls short of a groundbreaking experience
By Tyler Lilly
Ubisoft's latest entry, Watch Dogs: Legion, is an ambitious title that manages to deliver a fun experience, but a relatively shallow one. The main hook of the game is the “play as anyone” feature. In simple terms, you can play as anyone you find on the map including enemies. You unlock the character by doing a small favor for them called recruitment missions. In theory this is a really cool system, but in practice it feels a bit too simple. The recruitment missions feel repetitive and most characters feel bland. The characters also do not all feel that unique like what was promised.
This system is also the main aspect that holds the story back for me, as every character feels lifeless and way too similar, causing all the emotional beats to fall flat. You can see sparks of greatness in the writing through your AI companion, who is an enjoyable sidekick and easily the best character in the game, though this doesn’t carry over to the rest of the dialogue. The game’s villains are a mixed bag. Three of them feel shoehorned in and are not the most interesting or well thought out. The other two, Mary Kelly and Nigel Cass, are considerably better and actually feel like real mecing enemies. The overall plot is pretty mediocre, as it boils down to a simple fight the power story with a slight mystery element that never really captivated me.
One aspect of the game I liked was the open world. Your sandbox is a futuristic version of London where everybody has a smartphone and hundreds of drones light up the sky. The city feels alive in a way that a lot of open world games don't. You see people protesting the new armed forces, vagrants asking for change, street performers doing their thing, and a bunch more tiny details that really make the world come to life.
The open world works well with the gameplay which I believe is the strongest aspect of the game. The gameplay loop is just a simple third person shooter with an aura of goofiness that has been in both the previous watchdog games. There are also a lot of creative ways to complete each objective, outside of your usual duality of stealth and combat. For example if you have recruited someone with a guard uniform you could just walk into the compound, get what you need and walk out like in the Hitman games, though this approach doesn't feel as robust or thought out as it is in that game. This is just one of the many ways you could complete objectives, which adds to the game's replayability. Overall, I liked the creativity the game allows, but I feel like it could have been developed further.
I did have a few technical issues with the game. I probably played for 25 hours or so and I have experienced over five crashes. Some of this might be due to the fact that I am playing on an older PS4, but I have heard similar things from other people who have been playing on new consoles. This was annoying, but it didn’t entirely kill my gameplay experience. A few new patches have decreased the amount of crashes in my experience. I also experienced a few glitches, but most of them were just textures not loading or weird physics. This didn’t really bug me, but I know that some people get more frustrated with glitches.
Overall, I liked the game as a simple fun joy ride, but realize that it in no way is a flawless masterpiece. If you are a fan of the gameplay in Watch Dogs 2, or are interested in the “play as anyone” mechanic, then I would recommend checking it out. If not, then I would maybe suggest picking the game up on a sale as it does deliver a few hours of quality fun but may not be worth the $60 it is currently going for.
This system is also the main aspect that holds the story back for me, as every character feels lifeless and way too similar, causing all the emotional beats to fall flat. You can see sparks of greatness in the writing through your AI companion, who is an enjoyable sidekick and easily the best character in the game, though this doesn’t carry over to the rest of the dialogue. The game’s villains are a mixed bag. Three of them feel shoehorned in and are not the most interesting or well thought out. The other two, Mary Kelly and Nigel Cass, are considerably better and actually feel like real mecing enemies. The overall plot is pretty mediocre, as it boils down to a simple fight the power story with a slight mystery element that never really captivated me.
One aspect of the game I liked was the open world. Your sandbox is a futuristic version of London where everybody has a smartphone and hundreds of drones light up the sky. The city feels alive in a way that a lot of open world games don't. You see people protesting the new armed forces, vagrants asking for change, street performers doing their thing, and a bunch more tiny details that really make the world come to life.
The open world works well with the gameplay which I believe is the strongest aspect of the game. The gameplay loop is just a simple third person shooter with an aura of goofiness that has been in both the previous watchdog games. There are also a lot of creative ways to complete each objective, outside of your usual duality of stealth and combat. For example if you have recruited someone with a guard uniform you could just walk into the compound, get what you need and walk out like in the Hitman games, though this approach doesn't feel as robust or thought out as it is in that game. This is just one of the many ways you could complete objectives, which adds to the game's replayability. Overall, I liked the creativity the game allows, but I feel like it could have been developed further.
I did have a few technical issues with the game. I probably played for 25 hours or so and I have experienced over five crashes. Some of this might be due to the fact that I am playing on an older PS4, but I have heard similar things from other people who have been playing on new consoles. This was annoying, but it didn’t entirely kill my gameplay experience. A few new patches have decreased the amount of crashes in my experience. I also experienced a few glitches, but most of them were just textures not loading or weird physics. This didn’t really bug me, but I know that some people get more frustrated with glitches.
Overall, I liked the game as a simple fun joy ride, but realize that it in no way is a flawless masterpiece. If you are a fan of the gameplay in Watch Dogs 2, or are interested in the “play as anyone” mechanic, then I would recommend checking it out. If not, then I would maybe suggest picking the game up on a sale as it does deliver a few hours of quality fun but may not be worth the $60 it is currently going for.