Hack Theft Auto : Watch Dogs Impressions

I refuse to type that insipid underscore

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Sadly, this is the last console generation's most enduring legacy in terms of gameplay mechanics; true interaction with virtual environments has seemingly been abandoned in favour of the aforementioned easy to understand and easy to implement catch-all solution.

Nowhere is this sad state of affairs more apparent than in Ubisoft's Watch Dogs. First shown in 2012, it was billed as something of a poster child for the then unconfirmed and vaguely defined next generation consoles, purporting to offer a living, breathing vision of a near-future Chicago reduced to the status of a mere plaything through your ability to hack into the its Big Brother-style operating system and wreak merry havoc. Being chased by the fuzz? No problem - turn all the lights in your path to green and deploy some well timed barriers to keep 'em off your tail. Short on cash? Hack into some poor sap's smartphone, steal their banking information and make for the nearest cash machine. The possibilities seemed endless.

But the finished product falls far short of expectations, and it's because pretty much any interaction with the city at large has been whittled down to simply pressing buttons and watching things happen, leaving a gaping and unsatisfying hole in the experience.  What remains panders unashamedly to the Grand Theft Auto crowd, pivoting a ton of boring extraneous activities around tedious drives from A to B to participate in equally eye-rolling story missions. And the story itself isn't exactly Dostoevsky.

Of course, if you're into that kind of thing Watch Dogs might be a worthwhile distraction, but those with a more sophisticated palette should take their business elsewhere.