By Will Greenwald Hacking is a complicated and highly technical process that requires an extensive knowledge of high- and low-level programming languages and the patience to bang your head against a wall for days to see how the paint starts to chip. Hollywood hacking is typing really fast for a few seconds to get into government databases. Watch Dogs hacking is pressing a button to make things explode. Ubisoft's Watch Dogs ($59.99) takes the idea of messing with computers and runs even further from reality than Hackers did, putting you in an open-world Chicago with a smartphone that can do everything from remotely stealing money to blowing up transformers.
This Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PC game (we tested the Xbox One version), makes no effort to convey realism and very little effort at genuine pathos. Still, it's so varied and enjoyable that it hardly matters. Watch Dogs isn't a serious story about vengeance, it isn't serious commentary about technology, and it certainly isn't a serious simulation of hacking. It's just a fun sandbox game that gives you goofy technology powers on top of the usual driving and shooting. Watch Dogs is so polished and entertaining that it succeeds despite itself. Some players have reported performance issues and bugs in the PC version of the game. We have not experienced those issues in the Xbox One version we reviewed, but PC users should be aware and watch for any patches and bugfixes released by Ubisoft.
Magic Hacking
You play Aiden Pierce, a con man who owns a magic cell phone. Doctor Who fans are familiar with the Doctor's sonic screwdriver, a technological device that effectively works like a magic wand, doing anything the plot requires. Aiden's cell phone is like that only sillier, because there are no time-traveling aliens to justify it. It can do nearly anything, like scan peoples' faces and cell phones to determine if they have anything worth stealing, hijack cameras, open doors, and blow up steam valves. It's a smartphone in exactly the same way the TARDIS is a car. The explanation is that you've hacked into "ctOS," a city-wide computer network that is wired up to all of Chicago and that controls everything, invades peoples' privacy without their knowing, and gives the game the flimsiest veneer of social commentary.
Most hacks consist of holding the X button until the icon fills up. At most, you'll have to solve a very simple puzzle of rotating circuits to unlock sections on a board. That's it. It makes hacks incredibly fast and accessible, but it also makes them not really hacks. Aiden isn't the master hacker he's portrayed in the game. He's the world's most gruff-voiced script kiddie.
It's as far from realistic hacking as you can get, but realistic hacking is deliberate, tedious, and time-consuming. Watch Dogs consists mostly of Aiden running around, driving, and shooting, just like in a Grand Theft Auto or Saint's Row game, and sitting at a computer for hours at a time would really spoil the flow. The magic hacks Aiden pulls off add to his flexibility when exploring and fighting his way through Chicago, complimenting the action as if he had super powers, not computer skills. He can jump from camera to camera to survey a gang hideout before moving in, trigger distractions to draw enemies to specific areas, cause blackouts, and even set off the explosives certain gang members and security guards inexplicably carry around on their person. When on the run, he can even trigger traffic lights, roadblocks, and spike strips to disrupt police and gang members chasing him.
Action and Narrative
Aiden has a pretty full bag of tricks at the start of the game, but as he completes different missions and finds collectibles he can level up and use skill points to give himself even more ridiculous tools. He learns to craft lures, jammers, bombs, and EMPs with different components he finds or buys throughout the city. Aiden also learns to hack objects to give him even more strategic options when fighting, and he gets standard upgrades to his health, damage, and driving ability. Besides the main skill tree, Aiden unlocks perks and items by finding collectibles or doing side missions, and if that's not enough he can simply purchase additional weapons and vehicles (and outfits, even if they're all different skins of the same baseball cap and jacket).
The traffic accidents you can gleefully cause (with self-indulgent, Burnout-like slow-motion replays of the crashes) are some of the best examples of the bizarre disconnect between the game's story and how it plays. Aiden is a vigilante going after the people who ordered an attack on him that resulted in his niece dying in a car crash. So, naturally, you can set off far more horrific crashes while running from cops, with no consequences. You can also slaughter entire IT centers' worth of security guards because they're bad in a strictly informed-by-the-plot sense, with no consequences. At most, you'll get a penalty in your vague "reputation" if you randomly kill civilians, and that only happens if you directly shoot them or run them over. Pile-ups are totally fine.
This disconnect is made even more unintentionally hilarious by Noam Jenkins' performance as Aiden Pierce. After his niece's death, he affects a gruff, raspy voice that sounds like a cross between David Hayter as Metal Gear Solid's Solid Snake and Christian Bale as Batman. It becomes especially amusing when he narrates everything he does, from hunting criminals to going to his nephew's birthday party. I laughed harder at Aiden rasping every line short of "I am the night!" than I did at the numerous visual meme jokes and random, amusing profiles of civilians. It doesn't help that Aiden's outfit consists of a baseball cap and a big dumb coat that makes him look like Darkwing Duck getting ready to go to a Cubs game.
Every serious beat in the game is undercut by that silliness, but this doesn't hurt the fun. If anything, it makes it more enjoyable because of our natural and sociopathic desires to wreak havoc on consequence-free sandbox worlds. This isn't The Last of Us. It isn't even Max Payne. It's a game about a nerd with a silly voice who fights crime, and it knows it. You run around Chicago, hack phones and doors and generators remotely, and get distracted constantly by collectibles, side quests, and humorous asides.
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