5. More Creative Uses of Hacking/Mission Structure
Perhaps one of the biggest criticisms you can levy at Watch Dogs is at the hacking itself. The mechanics can be utterly fantastic and are a bit of a technical marvel, but the way they're implemented in missions often isn't. This is primarly because the title is basically an above-average open-world game that plays it safe. Mission structure is almost identical to everything we've seen before in these games, consisting of many 'go here, shoot that' and 'go there, sneak past this' missions that are generic, but livened up (slightly) by having the ability to move stuff around with your magical phone. We will admit that some things were particularly awesome (such as blackouts and blowing up steam pipes) but the overall feel of hacking the city needed to be much more dynamic. Most missions seem to boil down to 'find this dude, hack him, beat him up with your stick, flee scene' and that's a real shame. The better missions play around with the formula slightly and challenge you to use your resources through cameras and other equipment, but these are few and far between compared to the rest of what seems like squandered opportunities. It's almost like Assassin's Creed; a lot of style, a lack of substance in missions. In Watch Dogs 2, we want Ubisoft to think outside the box and see how their game mechanics can be applied to make more 'OMG' moments that blow our socks clean off and into next week. So that's generic missions out, better missions in, okay Ubi?
Dan Curtis is approximately one-half videogame knowledge, and the other half inexplicable Geordie accent. He's also one quarter of the Factory Sealed Retro Gaming podcast.
