Review: ‘Watch Dogs’ Makes You the Cyber Bully of Chicago

Imagine a world in which your every move is being monitored, recorded, and neatly filed away, readily available to those with access to the system, legal or otherwise. As if! Couldn’t happen!

Thankfully, we have video games to tackle such a far-fetched fantasy. Watch Dogs (Ubisoft, multiple platforms, $59.99) tosses players headfirst into a tech-heavy Chicago teeming with surveillance cameras, uber-hackers, and thuggish criminals. It’s Grand Theft Auto if Edward Snowden wrote the script.

It’s also one of the year’s most anticipated games. But like the denizens of its virtual city, Watch Dogs knows it’s being watched, and in turn plays it a little too safe.

You’re Aiden Pearce, a hacker out for revenge after a hit-gone-wrong puts his niece in the grave. Donning his iconic baseball cap and trenchcoat, our hero takes to the streets of a near-future Chicago monitored by an omnipotent program called the ctOS. The ctOS controls just about every city function, making it a potent weapon for someone with a serious vendetta … and the right cellphone.

Indeed, you’ll spend most of the game staring at your insanely powerful handheld (leaked iPhone 6, maybe?), which you’ll use to alternately terrorize and protect a city dominated by the connective tissue of technology. At the press of a button, you can tap into nearly any device, listen in on phone calls, read private texts (fair warning: Chicago is filled with perverts), steal ATM PIN codes, and even jam communication altogether. You can just as easily access the city’s infrastructure, raising and lowering bridges, toggling traffic lights, and blowing up steam pipes. You’re a creepy voyeur, a concerned citizen, and a godlike city controller all wrapped into one.

You’re also kind of a jerk. Though stopping a thief or running over a few too many innocents will affect your overall reputation, the game’s morality system is underdeveloped. It’s difficult to not feel dirty playing Watch Dogs. Stealing money from some nice old lady because she happened to be walking around with a phone? You do this constantly and suffer no consequences. With great power comes absolutely no responsibility, I guess.

Still, exerting control over an entire city’s electrical grid can be intoxicating. You gain new abilities over time; by the halfway mark of the game you’ll be disabling police choppers and blacking out chunks of the city. Watch Dogs is at its best when it puts you in situations where you really need to leverage your power over technology to succeed.

Example: You need to access the security room of a locked-down building. First you distract a guard with an electronic lure; then you find some cover and hack an overhead security camera. You use that camera to hop over to another camera, opening up the line of sight to another guard who happens to be carrying an explosive device. You trigger the explosive, sending more guards his way, and then quickly hack the door panel, effectively clearing the path before you without moving an inch.

It’s not just for stealth, either. The game’s countless car chases are diabolically thrilling thanks to your control over the grid. Pursuing cop won’t get off your fender? Raise a set of tire spikes at just the right moment to give him a flat, or flip the traffic signals and watch him get sideswiped. This sort of thinking-man’s action is the stuff of Watch Dogs, and when it gels, it’s enormously entertaining.

It’s too bad, then, that Aiden is also so fond of shooting at things. When hacking cameras and opening locked doors fails you — and it will — you’ll fall back on an AK-47 or a grenade launcher or a sniper rifle. All too often Watch Dogs devolves into a GTA knockoff as you hide behind cars and rain bullets upon those who may or may not deserve it. The cover-based combat system is solidly built, at least.

I can’t say the same for the game’s wonky story. Go here, shoot this guy, steal that thing, talk to your sister, hey look, another guy who’s mad at you — the central plot is slow to start and never really picks up steam. Apart from your hilariously dry partner Jordi, the characters are entirely forgettable. Even Aiden is an unlikable snooze, another in a long line of stubbled, gravelly voiced heroes with chips on their shoulders. Give him a cowl and a utility belt, and he’s a dime-store Batman with a phone.

The upside is that you can ignore the story for days because Watch Dogs is absolutely crammed to the gills with content. A few hours in and the game’s map of Chicago will be littered with icons denoting side missions, mini-games, random criminal acts, hacking opportunities, and much, much more. Wanna chase down coins in augmented reality? Take drugs and bounce on a giant flower? Forget avenging your niece — there are Other Things to Do here. I appreciate the variety, though I would have also appreciated some editing.

It’s got multiplayer, too, cleverly woven right into the main game mode. In addition to frantic online games of high-speed keep-away, the game breaks new ground by letting you invade another player’s game — and get invaded yourself. Trying to stay hidden and steal data from another live player is wonderfully tense, and it’s terribly unnerving being suddenly stalked in your precious single-player game (don’t worry, solo players, you can turn this off). For a game about privacy issues, it’s an inspired mode.

Playing through Watch Dogs proves that it’s also a little too inspired by other open-world games, however. It desperately wants to do new things — and occasionally does in spectacular fashion — but can’t quite muster the strength to break from the mold. Cool phone, though.

3.5/5 stars

What’s hot: Hacking the city; tons to do; clever multiplayer
What’s not: Dull plot; feels derivative; unlikable characters

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