A triple-A game like Watch_Dogs has gotten lots of attention. You can read more about it at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, for example. There's not much I can add to the great many voices that have already spoken about it. I don't need to describe it as an open-world, pseudo-hacker romp set in a Chicago where the government has achieved Big Brother status. There's no call to bring up the solid recon, cover, and sneaking mechanics that make navigating a setpiece such fun, or the highway hacking that lets you glory in wrecking enemy cars at just the last minute. It also means I shouldn't bother describing how easy it is to mess up infiltrations, either because the controls let you down or because something unpredictable happened, and how if you can't salvage the mission you have to start over. Why should I bring up how starting over means having to restart the recon, a slow process that feels rewarding and clever the first time but like drudge work every time thereafter? Or how the many vehicular takedown missions make cars so durable that practically the only way to take them out is through the quick time events that you have to trigger; even ramming into the target from the side at full speed doesn't usually put it out of commission.

And no one wants to hear about the joy I felt, after three times failing a mission to get away from the police, where I drove full-speed up a set of stairs and launched myself into an open parking garage that gave me cover from the helicopter and let me evade capture. Or the rage I felt when, leaving the garage afterward, hitting the wrong key brought out a firearm in front of a cop and started the hunt all over again.

It's a fun game that I put more than fifty hours into, and after buying it on sale from Steam, that's a pretty good deal. I think if the gameplay had been smoother, and with fewer frustrating start-overs, it would've been the same amount of fun packed into thirty to thirty-five hours. And I would've preferred that.

Not to mention the bullshit over having to install Uplay. I hate that thing.