Recent reviews by Kinthiri

TLDR : Get it. The game has bugs and flaws, but they're not even close to deal breakers when adding up everything else it offers.

I went in to it with pretty low expectations. I'd heard about the bugs and the flaws. I knew there was going to be some issues with certain aspects that might take a bit to get used to. Especially the combat. This game doesn't hand things to you on a platter. And there is no "easy" difficulty for people that just want the story. You want to finish the story? Then you're going to have to learn how to play this game the way the devs want you to play it.

This isn't Skyrim or The Witcher series. You don't suddenly learn how to do something just because you got a level up. In fact, leveling up is not at all what you might expect. You advance your skills by using them. Want to get better with a sword? Practice. Want to get better at riding a horse? Practice. Want to get better at alchemy? Practice. Want to improve your blacksmithing or tailoring or cobbler skills? Practice. Everything, and I do mean everything, requires that you actually put time into them to improve your skills. And as you improve your skills, then you improve your overall main level.

Which I guess leads me to combat. The combat in this game is going to take you a while to get used to. Further, even after you're used to it, you're still going to need to practice it and practice some more. As you get better, you can use more elaborate combos, but these combos are also a lot harder to perform than something from The Witcher, for example. Melee combat in Kingdom Come is actually one of the highlights for me. It requires actual effort to learn on your part, and then even more effort to get good at. When you have to chain attack skills to do a single combo, and even then your opponent can still block it... When your ability to block attacks requires paying attention to what the opponent is doing and then getting your own timing right as well... You can't just spam a block button and then press "A" to attack like Batman and all your opponents just magically end up defeated. And you will get frustrated. This combat system will piss you off and make you rage. You'll squeeze your mouse till the plastic creaks, and you'll thump the keys on your keyboard because "F*** that damn wayfarer!" Then you'll go back to a town, find the arena there and practice for another while.

I should point out that you learn different weapons independently. So if you practice for a long time with the sword, that is not going to contribute to your ability to use a different weapon type. You can't get really skilled with a sword, and then start using a mace and expect you'll be just as good with the mace. You need to practice with each weapon you want to use. And this is especially inconsolably annoyingly true of the bow. Find a bow early in the game and start practicing with it as soon as you can. You should be "alright" with it by the time you get to the middle of the story. :-P

Everything in this game affects everything else. Don't expect to be very good at sneak skills if you're wearing armor that makes a lot of noise. But having said that, your appearance affects how NPCs react to you. Look like a beggar, get treated like one. Look like a Knight, get treated like one. Look mean, imposing, ruthless, get treated as if you are those things. Have a reputation for killing to solve problems, it will spread and NPCs will treat you in such a way. Have a reputation for helping people and people are going to be more favourable towards you. Where other games promise that your actions will affect your game world, this game actually follows through on that.

Which I guess brings me to the simulation. Everything in this game has their own life and their own behaviour and their own schedule. During the day, people go to work, or do their chores. In the evening, they might go home and hang out with their family, or they might go to the tavern and get drunk first. If a quest is available to you one moment that doesn't mean it will still be available to you the next day. Or, if you do accept a quest, but then take too long to complete it, the quest might fail because the quest giver stopped waiting for it. Then there are some quests that require you to perform actions that might affect other quests. For example, you might complete one quest by killing an NPC, but that destroys any chance of you performing a better quest that NPC you killed would have offered you later.

Questing is kind of great in this game. You can go to a tavern and ask the owner for hints as to who might need help or work done. He'll point you in the direction of a couple of places that may need some assistance. But with a few minor exceptions, EVERY quest in this game can be completed in many different ways. In fact, the replay value on this game is so high that you could play through the game multiple times and never complete almost every quest the same way each time. I have two different play throughs going at the moment, one stealth, the other full brute force, and in both of them I'm able to do the quests completely differently. And that's just how it is at the moment. My next playthrough may be completely different again.

I could keep going on and on about this game, but the best I can offer you is to forgive the bugs (they'll get fixed) and just enjoy the story (really compelling main story line) and the massive (16 sq km) open world.

Watch Dogs is... Watch Dogs
Watch Dogs is exactly what it set out to be. Whether you're happy with the result or not, it is what Ubisoft promised us. Unfortunately, that is all it is.

A lot of people are comparing Watch Dogs to GTA5. Fair enough. That is the last truly big title in the genre and, while it is only available on consoles at the moment, it is the defining series for open world games. Unfortunately, too many people can't see past the comparisons and so we end up with a situation where people want GTA5, try to play the game as if it were GTA5, and are very disappointed when it's nothing at all like GTA5.

What it is
Watch Dogs is a game focused on stealth and "hacking." That means that often it is better to take time on missions and scout them out for a bit beforehand, rather than just to running in gunning. It also means your skills progression becomes important in an almost RPG like manner.

It does have a very good shooter platform and I found the cover system to be very good. There were only a few times where it got in the way. But once you learn how to use it, there shouldn't be any issues.


Driving
The game is not a driving game. Which is sad given how much emphasis is put on driving missions. Cars perform pretty strangely and don't feel very well balanced. Handling is pretty poor regardless of the car. Its either too slow to steer or the steering is so sensitve you'll end up spinning out a lot during chases. I think this is to try and force you to use the evade tactic more often rather than try to run away.

Having said that, the evade tactics are actually pretty compelling. Pull into a dark alley, shut off the car and duck under the dash. Any persuers checking the alley will just see a car. If you get your skill high enough, they can almost be right beside you before they detect you. Often, they won't even come into the alley if you're deep enough in.

You can also use the environment to hide. I found that when the helicopter is chasing me, pulling into an under-ground garage, closing the door behind me, and hiding there is by far the best method. Police can't/won't chase you in there, the helicopter can't see you. Lots of alleys also have bollards you can use to block the alley behind you.

You cannot shoot from a car you are driving. If you're playing in multiplayer, passengers can shoot, but the driver cannot. In single player, you're the only player so you're always driving. Everyone screams that Just Cause 2 and GTA can all do this, why can't Watch Dogs? Well, the answer is simple. Ubisoft wants you to use the environment as a weapon instead.

Hacking
I really enjoy this mechanic to the game. At one point near the beginning of the game you have to hack into a CTOS site full of guards. A little difficult given by that point I hadn't actually unlocked much of the skills tree at all and fighting was pretty useless for me.

Hacking cameras from outside the target area, then jumping from camera to camera before eventually being able to hack the panel that was my actual target was quite a challenge. Doing it without having the guards know I was there was actually a thrill in this kind of game.

The hacking mechanic is not bad. It does feel a little contrived. You have a super powerful cellphone with a "hack" button that will take over any device, steal money, invade building networks, control the traffic lights, bollards, bridges, blow up steam pipes, cause city wide blackouts, or just local blackouts, identify every enemy in the area and .... The list goes on.

It is necessary to get your hacking skills up because without them you will suffer in the car. You can't use weapons, so you have to use the environment. Raise bollards, change the traffic lights so cars block the intersection. Blow up steam pipes or raise bridges. Gimp your hacking at your peril.

Stealth
If you want to play the game as a simple run and gun style such as GTA, you're going to struggle. You can do it, but you will need to put lots of skill points into the combat tree very early in the game, which will affect other skills you might prefer, such as crafting skills and hacking skills.

A key aspect of the game is that you can achieve most missions any number of ways. Sure, you could go into a gang hideout guns blazing, but I guarantee that'll make the mission damn difficult and by the time you get near your objective, reinforcements will have been called in.

This isn't Thief, but if you follow a more stealthy path, the game will give you far greater rewards. Use the silenced pistol instead of the big D50. Or the silenced SMG rather than the massive assault rifle. It can be a lot easier to sneak around an arena and take out targets quietly, one by one, rather than have all the enemies in the area descending on your location.

The game definitely rewards you if you take either a hacking or stealth based method to the submissions over a shoot-everything-that-moves kind of approach.

Story
Its very hard to like Aiden Pearce at first. He's not a compelling character. He has a very dark and brooding personality. Almost Batman-ish. He never smiles, he never actually shows any real emotion until the end of the first Act, going into the second Act.

The other difficulty is that there are all these characters swarming around, but none of them really make an impact on the game in the first Act. In the second Act you start to see some of them become a little more central to the story. The first Act of the story is not great. But it starts to pick up in the second Act.

Unfortunately, thats about as much as I can say about the story. At this point I'm over 32 hours of game time and still only half way through Act 2 on my first play through. I decided that rather than run through the game at a fast pace I'd rather spend the time to learn the game. I wanted to figure out the mechanics of the gameplay, get my character a little advanced so he has a few more useful skills under his belt. And I'm glad I've done this.

Multiplayer
This is a lot of fun. Jumping into a game and tailing someone, or hacking them without getting caught, is a good version of the ol' cat-n-mouse style of game play. The only part that has bothered me is the frequency of requests from mobile players. But I generally ignore them at the moment.

Ultimately I think the multiplayer games will be the longevity of this title. They are definitely more fun than the normal side missions thrown across the map. While the AI in the game is not bad, its still a game AI and doesn't compare to going head to head with a human player.


Bottom Line
Watch Dogs has it's faults. Actually, it has quite a few.

I'm not addressing the UPlay problems or performance issues that people have had on the PC version. I don't have a powerful machine, so when it said I should stick to Medium detail I went with it. I play at medium with the screen at 1080p. That's good enough for me. I'm more interested in the game mechanics and story.

Ultimately, if you take the game on its own merits and don't try to play it as a GTA/Just Cause 2 clone, you will enjoy the game. It is a lot of fun and there are enough extra's to do in the game that you'll not run out of things to do for a long while. Replay factor is high, I'm tempted to restart the game just to do some of the side missions (like the gang hideouts) again.

Overall I rate the game 7/10. A lot of the glitches and performance problems can be resolved with updates. If it used Steam instead of UPlay for Achievements and Multiplayer, I'd maybe even go to 8/10.

Rated : 7 / 10 (-1 for UPlay)

It's funny, offensive, and completely irreverent. Its a piss take of every genre of story, including its own history.

Its good if you just want a bit of fun, with a cooky story, with a not-completely unexpected ending.

I'm more of an RPG guy. Never really got into card games. But now I'm starting to play this and 2012 a bit more, and learning how the games work, its really growing on me. I only wish it was available on Android in the same way it is on iPad.

Gorgeous scenery and visuals. Great story line that drives the game to its conclusion. Such a simple method of play that hides such a depth of game. Learn and master all 3 characters to successfully complete the game. Sounds simple, and it is, until you realise you are all 3 characters in one. In the end, will you save the kingdom?

Brilliant dungeon crawler. Great time waster. Excellent art style that perfectly suits the mood of the game. Random dungeons means it never ends as long as you want to keep playing.