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First Watch_Dogs review based most likely on multiplayer beta now available

Looks like broken embargo? 7.2 is the score
Video review: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cfc_1400346978

We are all slowly making our way from GTA V to Watch Dogs, the next generation open world experience. Watch Dogs has a lot going for it – from an extensive story to interesting characters. Singleplayer shines while multiplayer seems a entirely lackluster and disposable. Even then, Watch Dogs is a title which most people will find themselves exploring for hours on end even if part of it is disappointing.

n Watch Dogs you play Aiden Pearce, a vengeful hacker against the new ctOS system in place within Chicago, painting a closer look into the real-life city where cameras dominate every street corner. His family has been murdered and he is out to get revenge on the powerful and corrupt. But Aiden is not quite a protagonist, he is something in the middle of antagonist and protagonist. He’s a guy with no real claim to good or bad, just grey.

The storyline mission structure is split into V acts, each with their own storyline flow and various quests. You can be a driver, assassinate some poor/not so poor guy, blow things up, whatever suits your fancy to get the job done of a rogue fixer. All missions take place in different districts which include the central city, the Mad Mile, scenic Pawnee, and the lowly Wards. Side-quests involve stopping crime, interfering with drug cartels, or just something easy and relaxing as playing chess with an old man or poker with a bunch of beer gutted people.All these quests get you skill points used for upgrading the 4 skill trees: Hacking, Driving, Combat, Crafted Items.


The main weapon of choice for Aiden Pearce is his ultimate cell phone, which is the central thing to his power. The whole city is linked into ctOS and Aiden can gain the power over a certain district by hacking the local ctOS terminal. The phone also provides digital trips/city hotspots, Car On Demand, and minigames that make the city a real-life video game. Once this is done, he can gain access to ATMs, street lights, steam pipes, hard stripes, L-Train hacking, power terminals to blackout the city, the works. Aiden Pearce also has weapons of course such as the IED and guns, but players can choose to be glued to their phone or just use a method of direct brute attack. These are the only two methods that work in tandem for combat mechanics and is something which Ubisoft Montreal did very nicely.

The Multiplayer
Multiplayer is where this game has its fun moments, but also lacks sorely in and one where Ubisoft misses the mark. There are virtually no cooperative game modes (like shown during E3 2012) and this is such a sad thing. We were able to play Invasion, Decryption, Online Tailing, Free Roam, and Car Races. All these modes were generic to a level. Multiplayer modes are accepted through the single-player profiler or can be launched directly through the phone layout screen. Invasion has two players, one who will enter into the other persons game and invade their phone’s database. The other player does not know someone is in his game until a “backdoor” is planted, then they are alerted. The hacker’s job is to hide and remain undetected until the backdoor is fully installed and they get away with the data of the other player. This mode was fun for a while, but even this slowly started to get repetitive even with online skills being unlocked.Decryption mode features 8 players split into two teams similar to a team deathmatch style. These eight players fight over a nearby computer file and decrypt it. Once a player has the file above his head, it decrypts slowly but can only decrypt very fast if the team stays together (something hard to do). Once the file is 100% decrypted, the team wins.
watch-dog

This mode itself felt too similar to team deathmatch and was not nearly as fun to play considering it seemed reminiscent of a capture the flag type mode. Watch Dogs also comes with Online Tailing, which is simply observing the other player. This is a mode we had a lot of fun in because it was not so hectic like the other modes, but this one also lacked a lot and had a short timer which ruined the experience. Car Races were also generic and Free Roam had nothing going for it other than an Adverserial Mode, which is simply players flagging themselves to be PVP on the server. The 5 minute limit timer on Invasion Mode and Online Tailing also feels like something which the developers have artificially placed on the experience – and the lack of true cooperative modes makes the multiplayer a hit-and-miss. Ubisoft Montreal really create a multiplayer which is seamless, but with lack of cooperative efforts it is just no good with zero ingenuity.
Conclusion
One huge caveat/punishment Ubisoft implemented is when you do turn off the Online Option, all your skills accumulated are reset to zero. You read that right. They all get reset to zero. All the online-specific skills reset to zero as punishment for not wanting to play online, something which is entirely disappointing. Either you keep getting invaded, or you get punished for wanting to play sometimes and not other times with the online mode. In our exclusive gameplay look, we show you the visual fidelity of Watch Dogs, which is something a lot of people want to see and the developers have kind of remained silent about. But not us here at WCCFtech quite simply because we got our own copy!

The visual fidelity is definitely not on point to E3 2012 – without big explosions which make sense – and the daytime looks bland and equivalent to Grand Theft Auto V (a last generation title which was highly optimized). Keep in mind, this is just on consoles after all. PC will perhaps match the E3 2012 footage, which was stated to have been run on a PC originally. Watch Dogs is a beautiful singleplayer experience with a lackluster multiplayer twist. The game is fun and has a lot of things to do for a free roam, but it just lacks as a title which delivers it all. People will want to just stick to Grand Theft Auto V on May 27th and stay in Los Santos just a little bit longer.

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http://wccftech.com/review/watch-dogs-review-hacker-hoped/
 
Kind of expected this, to be honest. Reminds of the 1st Assassin's Creed game. Great idea, but needs a sequel to really be done properly.
 
One huge caveat/punishment Ubisoft implemented is when you do turn off the Online Option, all your skills accumulated are reset to zero. You read that right. They all get reset to zero. All the online-specific skills reset to zero as punishment for not wanting to play online, something which is entirely disappointing. Either you keep getting invaded, or you get punished for wanting to play sometimes and not other times with the online mode.
What?
 

Vylash

Member
In our exclusive gameplay look, we show you the visual fidelity of Watch Dogs, which is something a lot of people want to see and the developers have kind of remained silent about. But not us here at WCCFtech quite simply because we got our own copy!

Yeah, sure you did
 

Qurupeke

Member
Ouch. A real shame. This game was actually more interesting and even more impressive than GTA V when it was announced.
 

Into

Member
One huge caveat/punishment Ubisoft implemented is when you do turn off the Online Option, all your skills accumulated are reset to zero. You read that right. They all get reset to zero. All the online-specific skills reset to zero as punishment for not wanting to play online, something which is entirely disappointing. Either you keep getting invaded, or you get punished for wanting to play sometimes and not other times with the online mode.

If this is true, then the game could just as well shit gold out of the box, and i wont buy it.

That is inexcusable
 

Acorn

Member
when you do turn off the Online Option, all your skills accumulated are reset to zero. You read that right. They all get reset to zero. All the online-specific skills reset to zero as punishment for not wanting to play online, something which is entirely disappointing.

The fuck is this shit ubisoft?
 

JayEH

Junior Member
I know what I'm getting into and that's fine. I'm sure I'll enjoy it for what it is then trade it in.
 

enzo_gt

tagged by Blackace
That online stuff is confusing. What are the online-specific skills? And if they're online-specific.. then could you even use them offline regardless?
 
One huge caveat/punishment Ubisoft implemented is when you do turn off the Online Option, all your skills accumulated are reset to zero. You read that right. They all get reset to zero. All the online-specific skills reset to zero as punishment for not wanting to play online, something which is entirely disappointing. Either you keep getting invaded, or you get punished for wanting to play sometimes and not other times with the online mode.


WHAT!@!!!! WOW, please tell me a day one patch fixes that shit............that's just fucking stupid.
 
One huge caveat/punishment Ubisoft implemented is when you do turn off the Online Option, all your skills accumulated are reset to zero. You read that right. They all get reset to zero. All the online-specific skills reset to zero as punishment for not wanting to play online, something which is entirely disappointing. Either you keep getting invaded, or you get punished for wanting to play sometimes and not other times with the online mode.

What? This is horseshit.
 

RedAssedApe

Banned
Yup. It always looked like a really, really generic and lifeless open world game. It's embarrassing that this is the kind of trash gamers are hyping up these days.

you could argue this about pretty much every open world game that has ever been released.
 
Really I wonder what the problem is..

One huge caveat/punishment Ubisoft implemented is when you do turn off the Online Option, all your skills accumulated are reset to zero. You read that right. They all get reset to zero. All the online-specific skills reset to zero as punishment for not wanting to play online, something which is entirely disappointing. Either you keep getting invaded, or you get punished for wanting to play sometimes and not other times with the online mode.

oh..

RG0BS1U.gif
 
If this is true, then the game could just as well shit gold out of the box, and i wont buy it.

That is inexcusable

My exact response. Is this basically some form of fucked up always online DRM? Ubi would definitely be taking things way, way too far if this is true and can fuck right off. They could pay me and I wouldnt put this excrement on any of my systems.
 
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