Sunday, June 8, 2014

fuck WATCH_DOGS

WATCH_DOGS is a game for dudebros. Steeped in manly male manmeat, the man character is a gruff take-no-prisoners antihero who will steal your money and shoot you if you're black. He might be one of those pansy hackers who would normally be sat behind a computer sucking on Mountain Dew and pissing into the bottle after it's empty because nothing can tear them away from their screens, but he wears a stylish hat and a trenchcoat, plus his voice is deep and gravelly, so you know he's a tough guy who don't piss in no bottles. But he's not really a hacker anyway, he's got an app on his cellphone which turns it into a magic wand, it lets him turn on all the traffic lights at an intersection, steal money from some bank accounts, steal any car including ones that look like they were produced before the internet existed, or pop steam tunnels in the road that conveniently disable cars but never ever stop spewing out cubic tons of steam.

In WATCH_DOGS, your man character will beat up gangsters, shoot fixers (which is an obscure way of saying hitmen), collect massive amounts of weaponry that all fit underneath his stylish trenchcoat, construct rudimentary explosives and mp3 players that are the size of a fucking light switch yet somehow will never be able to construct a portable camera or drone, and spy on any citizen, all in a way that totally doesn't rip off any other open world games with better storylines or more interesting casts of characters.

You'll meet Jordi Chin, a badass Asian hitman who should be the character you are playing but you're probably a white male and playing an Asian doesn't get you to pay $60 for games so he's relegated to smartass sidekick and for some stupid reason likes the man character and does favors for him. Jordi is the most interesting and likeable character, but since you're not playing him that means he will probably betray the man character in the second to last mission.

You'll work with Clara Lille, the goth hacker who serves as the nerdbait stand-in plagiarized out of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo but without all of that uncomfortably pesky rape storyline, or any storyline really. The man character's search for the hacker who is responsible for his niece's death will almost assuredly lead to her judging from the way she's always looking at Aidan like he's a walking dildo that she feels guilty about not cleaning.

There are other characters in this game, but they're so one-dimensional it actually hurts my psyche just thinking about writing about them. There are some missions you will probably enjoy playing, especially if you like getting chased by cops for 30 minutes at a time, or trying to disable somebody's car so you can knock him down to the ground with your nightstick while he's surrounded by a fucking platoon of soldiers with body armor and assault rifles, or playing poker where the computer opponents will say things like "Too rich for my blood" as they raise the pot because apparently they are all mentally disabled, or playing drinking games which are really just contrived quick time events.

I played the demo for Super Time Force for less than 10 minutes and had more fun than I had playing WATCH_DOGS for four hours. In summation, play something else!
But you won't.

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