1. Originality
As any cynic will tell you, entertainment is getting stale - with sequels, reboots and remakes dominating the market. They're not really telling the truth, but there's certainly a lot of brand recognition going on in video games nowadays. Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed are annualised series' that sell like the clappers and the Batman games are certainly doing well,to name a few examples. New triple-A games are relatively hard to come by now (though admittedly there's a lot more originality than in Hollywood), and that's where Watch Dogs comes in. Not only is Watch Dogs a brand new concept, but it's a nicely original one too - the general setting has been used before, but the idea of surveillance and hacking to your advantage is a new one, and it's been the reason why so many eyes were cast over to Watch Dogs when it received its first gameplay demo at E3 2012. Original ideas sell in games, just look at The Last of Us, the game that rounded up shedloads of game of the year awards last year with no brand recognition and completely new characters. Watch Dogs' status as an original property leaves room for surprises - for an entirely new and unique gameplay experience that arguably a franchise like Call of Duty can never really aspire to reach now. Expectations may be high, but Watch Dogs can still confound our expectations yet, and of course kickstart a new franchise with plenty of sequels. These properties certainly don't stay original for long. It's worth saying that while this article has been universally positive about Watch Dogs, I know as much as you about what it will be like. Of course, it could be a dull, unoriginal plodding mess that squeezes fun out of a great concept and stretches it over a paper-thin, overlong story. Like every game of course, time will tell.