Sliced Gaming Feature: Watch Dogs Preview

Watch Dogs is a newly announced IP from the award winning development team of Ubisoft Montreal made famous by franchises such as Far Cry, Splinter Cell and Assassin’s Creed. Today we will look at what to expect from their new IP which we can only assume will become another token series in their library. Watch Dogs looks like a GTA style game at first glance, but the more you pay attention the more you realise it is a game unlike any other.

From what we’ve seen, you have control over the city’s systems such as traffic lights, electricity, raising bridges, and we assume much more in the final game. This is used to not only lure in your enemies but also to escape from them. You also have certain levels of control over people in the game. You can scan them to see what sort of information the government has on them, and the game will also measure their threat level which will help you avoid or prepare for an attack.

At E3 there was a live demo behind closed doors which played out similarly to what was shown at Ubisoft’s press conference, and from what we understand the game’s missions are fairly scripted, particularly the kill scenes, but you do have the chance to attack enemies from different angles.

Your character is very athletic similar to what we’ve seen in the Assassin’s Creed series. You can jump fences, climb buildings, and assumably run along rooftops as you track your way through the game. What will be interesting to see if there are upgrades to your character, such as being able to run faster or jump further. This would help a lot if you don’t want to always be jumping in a car to escape the police/enemy.

The game will take advantage of Smart Glass on Xbox 360 where you’ll be able to use your tablet or mobile phone. You can use this device to check on people that you’ve scanned in the game and do things like hack their bank account, or manipulate their phones, etc. You can also use Smart Glass to check on friends stats, how far they are through the game, and what type of way they’re playing the game, for example they may just be running and gunning or they may have found a cool way to hack certain things, and this will show up for you which is helpful if you can’t figure out a way to get past a certain mission.

Another thing we learnt at E3 is Watch Dogs will support co-op play. Whether this is just unique missions or for the entire game as a jump in/jump out type of multiplayer remains to be seen, but it looks like you can use random people in the game which the co-op player almost possesses like Agents in The Matrix. It will be interesting to see if all this comes to fruition and ...

No comments have yet been added, feel free to add one by clicking below...