Watch Dogs is Ubisoft’s latest open-world franchise, and it’s looked pretty good, so far. Well, one trailer or so excepted. But now we’re getting into the nitty-gritty, and honestly it makes the game seem like a mash-up between Assassin’s Creed, inFamous, and Grand Theft Auto.
Here’s the five minutes or so of gameplay footage, essentially explaining how your hacking superpowers work. It’s less Kevin Mitnick and more A Good Day To Die Hard, let’s say.
Aside from the pretty graphics, mostly of interest to me are the mechanics on display. It looks like a mix of standard stuff; tag enemies and track them, tweak the environment in certain ways, trigger traps set dynamically. It looks lots of fun but not hugely revolutionary, although with the example of “dynamic cover” you are left wondering why he doesn’t just throw a rock, and also why destroying city infrastructure is such a great strategy.
You also get a standard “slow-motion” mechanic to target and use the fun stuff, as well as what seems to be a mix of stealth and action mechanics. Considering Ubisoft has two franchises with stealth as a major component, these do look pretty good, but again nothing unique.
That said, though, it may not be shaking the pillars of game design, but damn if it doesn’t look like a ridiculous amount of fun. A nice touch is the hiding space you can use instead of trashing everything in sight. It’d be nice if this game allows for stealth run-throughs where nobody knows who you are or what you’re up to before you rain hell down on them; hopefully we’ll see more of that later on.