Grave Gamer News & Views — watch dogs

(Originally posted on When Nerds Attack.)

Before fiery forums and contemptuous comment sections damned No Man’s Sky as the poster boy for Overhyped Disappointment, that distinction belonged to Watch Dogs. With showstopping E3 demonstrations years before its actual release and a marketing campaign that inflated the game’s reputation into the next-gen second coming, Ubisoft’s open-world title had expectations stacked to the moon.

But Watch Dogs wasn’t the crowbar to GTA’s knee it was gassed up to be. And it certainly wasn’t the next-generation tour de force of 2014 that displayed the sheer computational power of our eighth generation consoles. It was a bog standard open-world crime game, compounded by a weak story centered on one of gaming’s worst leading men. The one concept that separated it from its peers – the ability to hack parts of the environment to your advantage – felt more like a shallow distraction than a tantamount feature. Shit, Watch Dogs isn’t even the best open-world game with “Dogs” in its title. Despite huge out-of-the-gate sales, Watch Dogs became the cornerstone of Gamestop’s $9.99 bins.

That’s why Watch Dogs 2 is such a huge surprise. Ubisoft has made a herculean effort of addressing the original game’s biggest problems. We’ve ditched the dreary reinterpretation of Chicago for a lively, sometimes uncannily accurate recreation of San Francisco. Aiden’s half-baked revenge quest has been traded up for a lighter toned but more resonant tale of rebellion against a voyeuristic big brother. We’re given a cast of characters that matter, headed up by a charming, cocksure protagonist who’s instantly likable. Watch Dogs 2 is a vast improvement over its predecessor. It’s the biggest turnaround in quality an Ubisoft sequel has managed since Assassin’s Creed II.

Watch_Dogs Goes to Hell: “Madness” Gameplay

You drive a derby conditioned muscle car in the annals of Chicago’s hellish counterpart. Your mission is to drive over the damned denizens flooding the streets. They’re not hard to miss – their fucking skulls are on fire.

I don’t know how this mini-game, one of four Digital Trips, ended up in the final game. But, like the neon-soaked lunacy that was Far...

Conan v. Watch Dogs: Dawn of Voyeurism

One of the very first reviews of Ubisoft’s uber anticipated Watch Dogs comes way of the Clueless Gamer himself – CoCo!

Okay, it’s less on the review side and more on the “mock relentlessly” side, but video games, or the struggle of video games, are always fun to watch through Conan’s sardonic viewpoint. If you take anything away from this segment, just...

Ubisoft “Had No Choice” But to Delay Watch Dogs

One of the most anticipated and hyped up titles in recent memory gained itself a spot of infamy when publisher Ubisoft and the game’s Montreal based development team decided to miss Watch Dogs’ November 2013 release date, instead delaying it a whole six months.

Tony Key, Ubi’s marketing executive, says it was a bitch of a decision to make, and the blow-back was almost immediate. “On the day we announced that, I think our stock dropped 40 percent or some ridiculous number,” Key admitted to the [a]list daily.

The company wasn’t comfortable with the product last November and, despite it being an untested IP, Ubisoft has funneled a huge amount of time, resources, and money into the project, all in the attempt to have Watch Dogs make a name for itself early in the new console cycle.

“We’re a long-term company, with a long-term vision, and Watch Dogs for us is a long-term play,” said Key. “We had no choice. We knew it was the right thing to do, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

Watch Dogs’ delay assured that the game would not ride the waves caused by the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One’s media eye-snatching releases, but Key says the move inadvertently led to even more industry wide attention than Ubisoft planned for; preorders, Key says, are up.

Though Watch Dogs has become one of the many poster children for the next-gen wave, the PS3, Xbox 360, PC, and the Wii U (eventually) will all see Aiden Pierce’s tale of Wi-Fi revenge. Watch Dogs releases May 27th, 2014.

Here’s hopin’ the push was worth it. Delays, after all, have given us gold such as the original Batman: Arkham Asylum. On the flipside, delays have also cursed us with games like Aliens: Colonial Marines and Duke Nukem Forever. Perhaps game development can be likened to cooking burgers – you want to heat the paddy until it’s evenly cooked through, but you have to be really mindful that you don’t leave the meat sitting on the grill for ten fucking years. Game devs, take heart.

Watch Dogs Launches Around the World May 27th

The gaming public is all too familiar with delays, but it sure as hell notices when the belated title is as high profile a game as Watch Dogs is.

Originally meant to run out of the gates alongside next-gen consoles – while still dishing out current-gen counterparts – Watch Dogsslipped out of its November 2013 slot and into… well, seemingly oblivion. In...