2. There's Too Much To Do, And It Ain't Interesting!
We're willing to bet (unless you were really stretched for the slim pickings on the gaming front at the moment) that after finishing Watch Dogs, most of you didn't bother with the side missions. It's like Assassin's Creed all over again; the map is packed full of so much to do that it can overwhelm you, but only about 30% of it is probably exciting. The vast majority of the time you'll be pointlessly chasing criminals (+1 for morality on that one!) and other times you'll be trying to position cameras in such a way so you can see a giant massive QR code that someone has nicely lined up from an artistic perspective. It rapidly gets old and even the umpteenth giant explosion from a steam pipe will eventually only prompt you to unleash a 'meh' response. With the possible exception of AC IV: Black Flag (which was actually interesting because, well, pirates) Ubisoft has been chucking everything they can into their AC games and hoping some of it will stick. Watch Dogs feels very much the same; they're testing the waters to see what's fun and what isn't and - unfortunately - practically every side mission pretty much sucks. An open-world game needs stuff to do to make it exciting, but we really don't believe Ubisoft has quite mastered it yet. They should really go take a look at either GTA or something such as the under-appreciated gem that was Sleeping Dogs to see how they can make an open world much more exciting. Will we see this in Watch Dogs 2? Probably not, but one can hope!
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.
