by Ben Mapp
It's no secret that Ubisoft had a pretty rubbish 2014, and yes - it was all their own fault. Whilst all of their games were commercial successes, which may be enough for certain other high-end publishers (such as EA), Ubisoft have always prided themselves by maintaining a strong and consistent level of high review scores. This all changed with the releases of Watch_Dogs and Assassin's Creed: Unity. As a consequence, the impending quality of all upcoming Ubisoft projects has been called into question.
It's no secret that Ubisoft had a pretty rubbish 2014, and yes - it was all their own fault. Whilst all of their games were commercial successes, which may be enough for certain other high-end publishers (such as EA), Ubisoft have always prided themselves by maintaining a strong and consistent level of high review scores. This all changed with the releases of Watch_Dogs and Assassin's Creed: Unity. As a consequence, the impending quality of all upcoming Ubisoft projects has been called into question.
Whilst it would be unfair to say that all of the Ubisoft's work in 2014 was terrible (which - by the way - it wasn't), it would be fair to say that the creative direction of both Watch_Dogs and Assassin's Creed: Unity were tragically misguided. But in order to clarify what Ubisoft got right in their efforts last year, it would be ignorant of us to completely overlook what it was they got wrong. Let's take a closer look at their first flop.
Watch_Dogs
Ubisoft Montreal
The modded Watch_Dogs running on PC First announced way back in 2012, Watch_Dogs was released to a considerably mixed reception when it finally hit the high street in May last year. Being the first step in what is planned to be a major new franchise, like with the launch of the first Assassin's Creed seven years prior, the actual game itself was never really going to score perfect marks.
Ubisoft themselves would most likely argue that the waters were largely untested for a game such as Watch_Dogs, which focused on action-orientated, third-person gameplay set within a sizeable open-world Chicago. Unfortunately Ubisoft would be wrong. Just the previous year, gamers everywhere were treated to the open-world mammoth Grand Theft Auto V. Now it was always going to be difficult for any open-world game set in the modern day to match up to a Rockstar title, even one by Ubisoft, but Watch_Dogs promised a new dynamic which - according to its developer - would be a revolutionary new addition to all games of the genre. Throughout the many demos we were introduced to 'hacking', as the game's story focused on a hacker-for-hire who could use his phone to conveniently tap into the advanced security network protecting the city, thus allowing him to use the environment against his enemies. This would give the player the ability to mess with traffic lights, road blocks, car alarms, camera systems and the like. It all sounded rather good on paper and looked pretty amazing in all of the trailers too.
As a consequence, and from 2012 onwards, the hype-train was all full-speed ahead. The annual E3 conferences only added to the growing frenzy. It was expected that people were excited. The hacking gameplay of Watch_Dogs looked like a lot of fun and also looked just about diverse enough to distinguish the game from all other open-world titles, either upcoming or available at the time (even Grand Theft Auto V).
Ubisoft themselves would most likely argue that the waters were largely untested for a game such as Watch_Dogs, which focused on action-orientated, third-person gameplay set within a sizeable open-world Chicago. Unfortunately Ubisoft would be wrong. Just the previous year, gamers everywhere were treated to the open-world mammoth Grand Theft Auto V. Now it was always going to be difficult for any open-world game set in the modern day to match up to a Rockstar title, even one by Ubisoft, but Watch_Dogs promised a new dynamic which - according to its developer - would be a revolutionary new addition to all games of the genre. Throughout the many demos we were introduced to 'hacking', as the game's story focused on a hacker-for-hire who could use his phone to conveniently tap into the advanced security network protecting the city, thus allowing him to use the environment against his enemies. This would give the player the ability to mess with traffic lights, road blocks, car alarms, camera systems and the like. It all sounded rather good on paper and looked pretty amazing in all of the trailers too.
As a consequence, and from 2012 onwards, the hype-train was all full-speed ahead. The annual E3 conferences only added to the growing frenzy. It was expected that people were excited. The hacking gameplay of Watch_Dogs looked like a lot of fun and also looked just about diverse enough to distinguish the game from all other open-world titles, either upcoming or available at the time (even Grand Theft Auto V).
Watch_Dogs running on the Xbox 360 But when Watch_Dogs finally came out, as it transpired, the hacking gameplay was not much of anything revolutionary at all. As it turned out, all you had to do was press a single button on your controller and the hacking would automatically begin on a nearby system. Whilst turning traffic lights on and off was at first amusing, and causing a block to have a power cut was initially a novelty, after a short while it just sort of wore off. Aside from the hacking, which seemed a little redundant when you realised that - as a player - you could just outrun the cops normally anyway, the game was virtually identical to every other open-world game that had come before it. Ubisoft faced further criticism over the visuals of the game too which, despite all of the gorgeousness featured in the E3 trailers, were generally subpar on both PC and last-gen systems. It appeared that Ubisoft had intentionally downgraded the PC version of the game in order to have the graphics fall in line with those on both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, perhaps in an attempt to make players want to finally invest in the next-gen systems. Ubisoft went on to deny the claims despite members of the modding community finding E3 graphics readily available within the code of the PC version (seriously - they were labelled and everything). Mods were put together in order to make the game more stable, allowing those gamers to play the E3 version of the game freely, the version which was initially advertised to everyone. This apparent poor judgement by the developers left a lot of veteran Ubisoft fans both curious and disappointed after forking out their earnings for a game which ultimately provided a less-than-promised experience.
People have made many complaints about Ubisoft games over the years but the one thing they have always kept their end of the deal on was delivering quality experiences within settings that are never normally touched upon in gaming. Assassin's Creed is the franchise most known for this, but Watch_Dogs failed to deliver on this too. By utilising a modern day setting, namely Chicago, Ubisoft gave themselves the task of taking a generic city and trying to make it unique. They failed to make it interesting or even unique, which makes Watch_Dogs stand apart from most of their other well-known projects. Personally I had the misfortune of playing the Xbox 360 version of Watch_Dogs, which had some really embarrassing graphics and dated gameplay for a game released at the back end of the generation. Whilst the future of the series is no doubt set in stone, again like with Assassin's Creed, I'd like to see Ubisoft learn from the mistakes of Watch_Dogs in their preparation for the sequel (which has been all but confirmed).
You can check out our full review of Watch_Dogs right here!
People have made many complaints about Ubisoft games over the years but the one thing they have always kept their end of the deal on was delivering quality experiences within settings that are never normally touched upon in gaming. Assassin's Creed is the franchise most known for this, but Watch_Dogs failed to deliver on this too. By utilising a modern day setting, namely Chicago, Ubisoft gave themselves the task of taking a generic city and trying to make it unique. They failed to make it interesting or even unique, which makes Watch_Dogs stand apart from most of their other well-known projects. Personally I had the misfortune of playing the Xbox 360 version of Watch_Dogs, which had some really embarrassing graphics and dated gameplay for a game released at the back end of the generation. Whilst the future of the series is no doubt set in stone, again like with Assassin's Creed, I'd like to see Ubisoft learn from the mistakes of Watch_Dogs in their preparation for the sequel (which has been all but confirmed).
You can check out our full review of Watch_Dogs right here!
Stay tuned for Part Two!
Next week we'll be covering the mess that is Assassin's Creed: Unity and discussing where exactly things started to go wrong for the game that had everything going for it.
Did you play Watch_Dogs? Were you disappointed? Or did you actually enjoy it?
Did you play Watch_Dogs? Were you disappointed? Or did you actually enjoy it?
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