Ubisoft the creators of the popular Assassin’s Creed series are up to their old tricks again with the highly anticipated “Watch Dogs” game, a GTA meets “Hackers” crossover.
In “Watchdogs,” you play Aiden Pearce, a vigilante hacker. Aiden has the ability to hack into most things around the city of Chicago, Illinois where the game takes place. The capability to hack into mostly anything gives Aiden a variety of ways to complete his missions.
Although before Aiden can hack into the population’s bank accounts and cell phones he must take out the government’s anti-hack stations. There are several ways to go about this. You can go into the situation guns ablaze and dispatch all guards by force or you can sneak around and find an alternate way to complete this task.
In addition to his prowess of hacking, Aiden can also slow down the course of time in order to take more precise shots with his guns or to spring traps on his enemies. You can use the manipulation of time to cause traffic lights to change to cause traffic accidents or raise barricades to stop cars that follow you. Use the city’s infrastructure to your advantage and deliver justice to the streets.
Watch Dogs keeps track of whether you kill an enemy or take them out in a non-fatal way. Each enemy you kill will affect the way the public looks at you. If you kill people constantly, the news reports will cause people to fear you and report your locations to the authorities. On the other hand if you let your targets survive, the blow-back will be less hostile.
Aiden can also hack into people’s phone and gain information on them, whether they have a history of violence or if they have diabetes. You can use these traits to predict if someone will commit a crime. Since you can hack into most things around the city you can also use the Chicago PD’s database to predict where crime will happen.
The mini-map in the game will alert you to where a crime might happen and with a full arsenal of gadgets and tricks such as hacking into a camera to view the area you can scout the scene and either prevent the crime or watch it happen and ignore it.
Aiden can also hack into the band accounts of civilians and withdraw money from their accounts at an ATM. If you travel to the rich part of the city and find someone with a huge bank roll you can take some of that money for yourself in order to upgrade your weapons or buy new gadgets.
With over 65 different vehicles there is a slew of ways to avoid the police or just get around in style. A top of the line physics system brings the high-octane action to the player like never before.
The advanced A.I. in the game will cause repeated missions to have a new feel each time- the NPC’s read traffic patterns and will take different paths each time to get away from Aiden. Characters will notice cameras that are used to spy on them and if your notoriety becomes high store owners will see reports of your vigilante justice and alert the police of your presence.
Even with all these feature there are many more which have not been spoiled yet. The large scale map of Chicago which includes realistic monuments and famous areas along with the multitude of people who inhabit the city create a grand experience.
Watch Dogs is set to release November 2013 on PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and the Wii U.
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