Plenty of you know that I have been incredibly excited about the release of Watch Dogs Legion.
The evolution of Watch Dogs is a fascinating one; from a flagship (and ultimately disappointing) debut at the beginning of the PlayStation 4’s life-cycle, it has become the last big hurrah for the current gen machine. I couldn’t help but feel that it has perhaps pushed the envelope a little too far at times, but we’ll come to that shortly.
The premise is much the same as the previous games. You are a member of the hacker group DedSec, only this time you’re in London. The opening sequence of the game takes you through the backstory, where several bombs go off in London and DedSec are blamed. As a result, a shady militia known as Albion (an alternative name for the UK, for those who didn’t listen to Babyshambles) have taken over the City. You task is to identify the real bombers, stop Albion being such shits and generally do good with all your hacking skills.
The USP is the ‘play as anyone’ function, which sees you control whoever you choose, rather than a main protagonist. You can traverse the streets of near-future London looking for recruits you think will help you towards your quest to topple the private army controlling the streets of our capital. It is an interesting deviation from a tried and tested method, and whether it works or not is both critical to the game’s success, and is hugely subjective.
I read a lot of gaming reviews and it is widely splitting people’s opinions. Some see the function as a great way to develop your gaming experience, others find it a hollow gimmick with potential that is unrealized. I fall into the latter category I’m afraid. At first, it seemed the world was filled with possibilities, but on closer inspection, there is little to choose between the characters. You can choose their loadout anyway, so aside from character specific weapons (such as the viciously cool nail gun), there isn’t a lot to differentiate your experience. I found being able to call a cargo bot was handy to get to hard-to-reach places, but if you needed one for a mission, there is usually one close to hand. Their attributes are not massively important either, some characters move slower or take more damage, but why bother recruiting them? The missions used to recruit players are generic as well, but sadly that goes for the whole game.
I’m a good ten hours in thus far and I can’t honestly say I can tell the difference between a main mission and a recruitment one. They all seem to be standard; turn up at an enemy-controlled area, try to break in quietly, end up making a noise, kill everyone, rinse and repeat. I found the missions on Watch Dogs 2 more interesting, aside from the odd mini-game where you fly a drone through mechanics, or bypass security systems using the tried-and-tested puzzler. I am not against games repeating a successful formula and I don’t think innovation is always the way to a good game, but with Watch Dogs Legion I often felt that I wanted to be playing the second game in the London setting.
Moving to a positive, London looks amazing and whilst the mechanics make it feel clunky at times (I think the Getaway had better car handling), the visuals are gorgeous. The city bristles with a nervous energy and graffiti and banners paint a grim picture of the near future one could almost imagine as real. I did some in-game tourism, looking for the hotel we stayed in near Covent Garden (and obviously not finding it), as well as spending an hour going round the landmarks. It proved to be almost as entertaining as some of the bland missions.
What didn’t impress me visually were the characters, which brings me back to the play as anyone mechanic. With such an ambitious vision, there were always going to be issues, but some of the randomly generated characters are utterly bizarre. I took part in a bare-knuckle boxing match (with three move; punch, break block, block), and lost to a hard-looking bloke in a leather jackets and no under shirt. After the fight, I went to recruit him in the street, and he spoke like a middle-class thespian. I can live with these little quirks though, and I guess it adds to the cartoony aesthetic of the game.
Sadly, most of the missions don’t see you controlling whichever random London resident you have commandeered, rather you will find yourself sending in the spider drone and trying to infiltrate that way. Sure, the gadgets are fun, but it would be nice to feel that occasionally, you needed some of those skills offered by the random players (although tending to buy random clothing isn’t a particularly useful trait, nor is having a death wish). Like many of the motor vehicle you can commandeer, it feels a little empty. Yup, you read that right. I’d estimate 75% of the cars driving London’s streets have nobody in them when you take them over. What are they travelling for? I understand cars might be automated in the future but why would they be driving around without at least a passenger in the back?
I sound quite negative with my review and I do want to stress this isn’t a terrible game, but it isn’t a great one either. I spent a lot of time stumbling upon things to do without direction or steer, such as the boxing, or delivery missions, which would be much better if driving was enjoyable at all. That isn’t the game’s fault entirely, London is terrible for driving at the best of times, it certainly isn’t built for speed. The setting feels restricted though; if you go to a clothes shop you have to stand on the street and browse the range, as there are no interiors. The Underground doesn’t work either; you go to a station and simply travel from the barriers; there are no trains. After having a working underground and shops on Grand Theft Auto for example, it feels like a step back.
I have an issue with the music too; you can listen to a couple of playlists, nothing more, which dampens the overall feel of the game. Plus, when you get out of a car, the radio is still audible as loudly as it were when you were in it. It feels clumsy in places, as if the fundamentals have been omitted, or neglected. It suggests to me lots of what I would consider to be staples of the open-world genre have been removed to make way for a revolutionary new approach, the play as anyone, which heaps pressure onto that aspect of the game and, as I keep mentioning, it misses the mark.
I have seen reviewers getting very deep about the message the game is trying to get across and how it misses the mark, but frankly I couldn’t give a monkey’s chuff about that. I like gaming for the fun, not the moment it captures or the ethos it wishes to convey. I’m sure there is a deeper meaning hidden within, with Ubisoft subtly revealing their own political leanings, but I don’t see that I see a dystopian London in the near future as a playground for having some fun.
There is fun to be had too, even if it is laughing at some of the ludicrous characters. To its credit, the spread of voices and creeds is wide and reflects London very well, and whilst the dialogue is strictly second rate, I can forgive that given the scope of the project they have tried to pull off. I know that, despite my reservations, the game will hold my attention for a couple of weeks, not because of the play as anyone gimmick, but because I like the format. I like Watch Dogs, hacking cars and breaking into buildings. Sadly, I preferred the mechanics and storyline of Watch Dogs 2, which didn’t make sacrifices, such as load times.
Ah, the load times. In a review so weighted against a decent-ish game, I ought to mention the strain it places on the old PS4. I said Watch Dogs was a flagship release that missed the mark early doors on the PS4, well, Legion is surely developed with the PS5 in mind. There are bugs, numerous bugs in fact, which have caused crashing on three occasions. I’ve also had the odd instance where I tried to recruit someone who was on a raised platform outside a building. After our interaction, she dropped dead in front of me and when scanned it said I’d killed her! I’ve had cars spawning from nowhere and people too. I assume these are due to the PS4 being pushed beyond its capabilities and that with the PS5 release, we won’t see them.
The game lacks a flow, perhaps as a result of the desire to push the play as anyone mechanic. I felt the controls were muddled to; for instance a drone is raised and lowered by using the trigger buttons, but in a scissor lift those same buttons move you backwards and forward and buttons on the pad move you up and down. I found myself constantly pressing L1 to hack drones, but sometimes that needs to be followed with a triangle, whereas with cameras and some hacking you get straight to it with L1. It might be a minor issue, but inconsistent controls just seemed to fit with the inconsistency produced by not have a main protagonist.
I’ll end on a positive. When a game is released now, it is invariably the starting point, rather than the finished product. You only have to look at Fallout 76, or No Man’s Sky, to see how a game develops after release. There is an online version of Legion planned for later this year and I would imagine DLC too, perhaps targeted at slightly different mission structures to those the current game gives you. If that is the case, Legion might not be a bad purchase in six months’ time, when the price is more attractive and the content more varied.
I think if I’d picked it up pre-owned for £20, I’d be more inclined to praise the innovation and setting and forget the slightly untidy feel to the edges and generic gameplay, but I didn’t. I paid upwards of £50 for a prettier, less substantial version of Watch Dogs 2.
Maybe time will serve to prove me wrong, maybe I haven’t scratched the surface of what is actually a deep and varied game, but I can’t see it happening at all.
Rating: 65%
