14 DAY TRIAL // Watch Dogs is a fun game, but only if you experience it in small to mid-size doses. Binging through it nonstop, like a reviewer must do, exposes quite a lot of flaws and an annoying amount of repetition in terms of missions, both the main story and the side ones.
The new title puts players in the shoes of Aiden Pearce, a hacker vigilante who's going after a group of people that hurt his family, and uses Chicago's ctOS to hack into all sorts of IT systems as well as into the lives of various citizens.
In the game's world you can hack things, shoot weapons, or drive vehicles and the missions tend to include portions of all these things, with a heavy emphasis towards stealth and non-violence.
In large lines, a mission can involve players going to a location, hacking into cameras to survey the surroundings and/or wirelessly obtain access codes from one of the enemies, and then start progressing towards the objective in the enemy base. Whether it's a ctOS server or a potential informant, it doesn't really matter.
Afterwards, if you're spotted, you need to fight your way through quite a lot of enemies and end things with a chase, either on foot or with a vehicle, after some other person.
What's more, the secondary missions are mostly based on things you do on main quests. Whether it's chasing down criminal convoys or infiltrating gang strongholds, expect to do all sorts of repetitive things if you want to really complete the game.
Fortunately, there are still some more interesting things to do off the beaten path, like augmented reality challenges, in which you shoot pixelated invaders or engage in a third-person Mario-like collectible experience. There are also the digital trips, which see Aiden control massive machines like Spider Tanks or go on rampages against enemies.
However, these aren't that many and even their novelty wears off after a while, even if they're quite complex, especially when it comes to the digital trips.
Assassin's Creed 1 also suffered from such a problem, and Ubisoft managed to correct it with the great Assassin's Creed 2, while further fleshing it out with subsequent expansions.
I can only hope that the Montreal team will once again prove its worth and flesh out the rich universe that the new game has painstakingly forged.
Until then, however, remember to take breaks in Watch Dogs in order to avoid getting annoyed with the whole experience.