Review: Hackers run the show in fun, flawed ‘Watch Dogs’

Imagine a world in which your every move is being monitored, recorded, and neatly filed away, readily available to those with access to the system, legal or otherwise. As if! Couldn’t happen!

Thankfully, we have video games to tackle such a far-fetched fantasy. Watch Dogs (Ubisoft, multiple platforms, $59.99) tosses players headfirst into a tech-heavy Chicago teeming with surveillance cameras, uber hackers, and thuggish criminals. It’s Grand Theft Auto if Edward Snowden wrote the script.
It’s also one of the year’s most anticipated games. But like the denizens of its virtual city, Watch Dogs knows it’s being watched, and in turn plays it a little too safe.

You’re Aiden Pearce, a hacker out for revenge after a hit-gone-wrong puts his niece in the grave. Donning his iconic baseball cap and trenchcoat, our hero takes to the streets of a near-future Chicago monitored by an omnipotent program called the ctOS. The ctOS controls just about every city function, making it a potent weapon for someone with a serious vendetta…and the right cell phone.

Indeed, you’ll spend most of the game staring at your insanely powerful handheld (leaked iPhone 6, maybe?), which you’ll use to alternately terrorize and protect a city dominated by the connective tissue of technology. At the press of a button you can tap into nearly any device, listen in on phone calls, read private texts (note: Chicago is filled with perverts), steal ATM pin codes and even jam communication altogether. You can just as easily access the city’s infrastructure, raising and lowering bridges, toggling traffic lights and blowing up steam pipes. You’re a creepy voyeur, a concerned citizen and a god-like city controller all wrapped into one.

You’re also kind of a jerk. Though stopping a thief or running over a few too many innocents will affect your overall rep, it’s difficult to not feel dirty playing Watch Dogs. Stealing money from some nice old lady because she happened to be walking around with a phone? You do this constantly and suffer no consequences. With great power comes absolutely no responsibility, I guess.

Still, exerting control over an entire city’s electrical grid can be intoxicating. You gain new abilities over time; by the halfway mark of the game you’ll be disabling police choppers and blacking out chunks of the city. Watch Dogs is at its best when it puts you in situations where you really need to leverage your power over technology to succeed.

Example: you need to access the security room of a locked-down building. First you distract a guard with an electronic lure, then find some cover and hack an overhead security camera. You use that camera to hop over to another camera, opening up the line of sight to another guard who happens to be carrying an explosive device. You trigger the explosive, sending more guards his way, and then quickly hack the door panel, effectively clearing the path before you without moving an inch.

It’s not just for stealth, either. The game’s countless car chases are diabolically thrilling thanks to your control over the grid. Pursuing cop won’t get off your fender? Raise a set of tire spikes at just the right moment to give him a flat, or flip the traffic signals and watch him get sideswiped. This sort of thinking-man’s action is the stuff of Watch Dogs, and when it gels, it’s enormously entertaining