Watch Dogs: 10 Reasons The Haters Are Wrong

7. Melee Animations Are Fantastically Brutal

It seems to be a dividing factor among many third-person action game-lovers, that when it comes to dispatching your opponent up-close, many would prefer some sort of Sleeping Dogs/Dead to Rights/GTA-style melée system, rather than an instant-kill/takedown button. Whilst it's definitely a whole lot of fun braining dudes with your bare fists or an assortment of high-flying kicks in the aforementioned titles, there remains that feeling of being unprepared in many third-person shooters when the action turns to close-quarters. Watch Dogs' approach to combat can go from intense stealth-focussed scenarios, through to all guns blazing in a particular area and back to biding your time again all within a short period of time, and nothing cements that notion of a shadow-striking predator more than having a repertoire of baton-heavy thwacks to incapacitate your foes. It seems that across multiple versions of the game some of the sound effects for said animations aren't landing in time with the on-screen connection of bat-to-face, but it's nothing that can't be patched in, and even until then the vast majority of hands-on time and footage available shows Aiden dispatching entire rooms of goons in a blur of chokeholds and beat-downs.
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Gaming Editor
Gaming Editor

WhatCulture's Head of Gaming.