So did we all expect this level of hatred to be levied at Watch Dogs when it finally dropped? Of course we did. What else is the mass public going to do other than point fingers at a game that had the impossible feat of simultaneously convincing hundreds of early-adopters that their glorified Netflix-machines were worth more than that, as well as providing a completely new gameplay experience that would drop jaws and hold them there? The thing is though, outside of all the bandwagon-hopping hatred and vicious lambasting of the game as 'one of the most disappointing of all time' - or that it's a shamelessly cobbled-together attempt at cashing in on all of Ubisoft's older properties with a shiny coat of paint - it's nowhere near a categorically bad game. Instead, if you give it a chance and cast off the graphical-downgrade shackles, it's pretty damn spectacular - albeit in isolated chunks, with the baseline of the gameplay remaining a frantically fun romp through a next-gen city replete with a laundry-list of gadgets, cars and weapons. Far too many people are jumping all over the comparisons to GTA V, but you have to wonder exactly why that is, as outside of the two sharing the basic aspect of an open world, they have nothing else in common. And if we're going down the iteration route and bashing a lack of innovation as a lead-in to saying a game isn't worth playing, let's be completely clear about GTA V: It was a perfected version of the GTA III template, where the only new mission type were the heist missions - of which their were only six (with one being a simple vehicular smash n' grab) featuring hardly any of the customisation we'd been led to believe in the buildup save for a couple of differing paths when playing them out. GTA V is obviously a remarkable achievement through and through, but outside of comparing the scope of GTA's San Andreas and Watch Dogs' Chicago the latter has to be looked at what it achieves on its lonesome, to which you may be surprised if all you've been exposed to is the tornado of vitriol spewing from every orifice on the internet; is quite a lot.
