Watch Dogs

[Kenadian]

The Cynical Brit has published a rather in depth review.

[video=youtube;IBb2BIVrV7M]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBb2BIVrV7M[/video]

 

[Shilka]

I watched this whole review, and I can agree with him (although the pop in problem he's having I'm not really experiencing, perhaps because he's trying to squeeze as much as possible out of it graphically, which I can understand with his rig).

If you're able to look past all the hype it's a solid, good game for sure.

 

[little P]

Good honest Review Shilka. I'm (finally) going to spend an hour or two in the game now, I wish I had more time for gaming but at the moment I have precious little free time. But looking forward to logging on now and seeing what I can see. I second your findings of not encountering all these so called "pc problems". It runs smooth as Scarlet Johansson's front bottom for me too.

 

[Solo4114]

Ya but Solo I've known you for years and I've never seen you get excited about anything lol.

Not that that's a bad thing because you're probably far more realistic in you approach to software purchases.

Personally, I'm more willing to hear how my friends feel about a game than anything any review says.

I do find that I get far less disappointed by games these days. I also almost NEVER buy games at full price and never buy them when they first release (with a handful of exceptions) anymore.

I used to follow pre-release hype for games pretty closely but just got burned so many times that I figured "screw it." I now wait for a good couple months to see what people have to say after the shine is off the penny, so to speak. It's at that point that people really start noticing things like bugs, balance issues, etc.

I'll say that the game does look intriguing in a general sense, but not at the $60 price tag where it currently is (at least, not for me). Almost nothing gets me to shell out that kind of money anymore, though, what with the umpteen sales that Steam, GamersGate, and Amazon offer, let alone buying used console games at GameStop or whathaveyou.

As for the reviewer thing, I tend to ignore the glowing reviews, and focus more on the negatives ones. If the stuff they complain about doesn't sound too bad to me, I'm more interested. When it's more serious, I take note.

Well, I must admit I'm pretty impressed with my first evening of play.

The open world is very large, I decided to go on a tour along the outer edges of the map in a circle, and it took me hours... and that's just going around the edge of the map, barely scratching the surface of everything that lies within. The attention to detail is awesome, there's heaps of diversity and plenty of things around that spark your interest.

The game itself is running super smooth for me, so it makes me wonder why people with much beefier pc's then I have complain about the game running crappy on even low settings, I wonder if they have their drivers updated... I'm running on high, and it's smooth all the way, the game engine seems to work great for me, and the lighting, weather effects etc are impressive. Rainy nights are very atmospheric and simply look awesome. As with scenery, little details keep impressing me, like a small coke can being blown around the floor by the wind, and the destructibility of the environment, either by explosions, shooting or running into it with a vehicle.

A friend of mine is a PC tuner, and plays EVERYTHING on ultra-mega-super-fantastico settings. He had issues with this, too, and apparently a bunch had to do with the shadow settings alone. But only at "Ultra" or whatever the absolute highest level is for graphics. When he dropped it a notch, everything worked fine. My guess is the bleeding-edge PC gamers are finding that the game simply can't run at the top level for all settings, and are having to drop them a titch.

The driving at first I thought was crap, but after getting used to it some, I'm now handbreakturning my way through the city with relative ease, and that's driving with keyboard. I do understand the initial criticism about it, but seriously, all it takes is some getting used to, and having the sense not to want to take 90 degree corners at full speed and you're good to go.

That was one of the most concerning parts for me. I HATED GTAIV because of the godawful controls (driving and on foot), and just gave up on it about 1/3 of the way through. It sounded like this was similar (e.g. "Driving a battleship on ice."). I hope it's not that bad, though.



Anyway, with games of this sort, I tend to think it really comes down to whether you find the activities in the game fun in and of themselves. I enjoyed the Assassin's Creed games I played because it was just fun doing the stuff you do in it. I enjoyed Sleeping Dogs for similar reasons. The stories are decent, not amazing. But the game play is just fun and smooth usually. I'm hoping the same is true with this one if/when I eventually get around to it.

 

[Kitlope]

I'm gonna give this game a try.