Game and MC so peak that Ubislop forgot how to make proper games. Aiden is the tuffest protagonist of the series and the story is absolute cinema. He got the sauce. Playing again in 2026 reminded me how amazing this game was back when it released. They should definitely bring him back for Watchdogs 4 (if it ever happens).

You had to be there to play this game on console release. 🥲

It's been a long time since I played Watch Dogs, about 12 years ago, on my now old and dusty Nintendo Wii U, one of the very first games that made me familiar with mature-rated games and complex storylines.
In this review, I'm going to let you know about most of the positive and negative aspects of Watch Dogs, and this review will not be influenced by nostalgia in any way, since I didn't remember much about this game before coming back to it after such a long time.

So, let's begin with the big negative, that is everything related to the online features of Watch Dogs: the Ubisoft service.

- Ubisoft launcher is mandatory to launch the game: very often a game on Steam launches in a matter of seconds (taking you have a decent internet connection), but Watch Dogs can take about 1 and a half minutes every single time, as the game has to sync all data with Ubisoft servers (as shown in this video). In my total playtime, I wasted approximately 3 hours just to boot the game up.

- Missing online license: for some reason, the Steam version of Watch Dogs doesn't come with the license required to access Ubisoft services, therefore making it impossible to play online. However, there are two solutions to this problem:
Either contact Ubisoft support and wait for them to receive an activation key to redeem the Ubisoft version of Watch Dogs (beware this method could take really long; in my case, Ubisoft answered me back after 2 and a half months, I'm not kidding!).
Or buy the Standard Edition of Watch Dogs on their store, Ubisoft Connect, and play and complete at least the prologue. By doing so, the online features will be unlocked on the Steam version as well. After verifying the online works, you can easily refund the game as long as you bought it within 14 days of purchase and with less than two hours of playtime.

- Servers are broken: it's extremely hard to find a lobby in most online modes because the matchmaking doesn't work for most players. You are going to need some fine luck to find players, especially to 100% the game. In my case, I took more than 20 hours within two weeks to get all the online achievements just because I got lucky.


I shouldn't recommend Watch Dogs solely because of the many issues brought by Ubisoft's terrible service, but it only affects the online. The single-player mode has a lot of positives to offer:

- Chicago, the city where the game takes place, is big, gorgeous, and lifelike. There are a lot of places to explore and landmarks to visit by walking or driving a car. Every building is highly detailed from outside to inside, such as in accessible facilities like pharmacies, where every model is 3D-rendered and there aren't any placeholder 2D textures, unlike in many AAA games. For a game released in the PS3/early PS4 era, it still holds nowadays graphically-wise.

- NPCs feel alive. Some of them follow a routine, and you can see them interact with each other in many ways. Here are some I witnessed myself: a lady buying some weed from some dealer in a poor-lit alley, two passersby attempting to help a drunkard to call a cab, sometimes drivers get in a car accident and argue in the middle of the road, a group of office ladies trying to hook up with a man behind a pub, and many others I missed.

- The titular character, Aiden Pearce, is a man in search of the culprit of his niece's death to avenge her, and during his quest he acts as a protector of the people, a vigilante, by fighting dangerous criminals and big corporations that want to control everybody's privacy.
For modeling Aiden's personality they took inspiration from Breaking Bad's Walter White; for example, sometimes Aiden is full of himself even when the situation is out of his hand. And don't get me started on how stylish his trench coat is, one of the coolest outfits I've ever seen in a game. I love when the wind blows against the trench coat, and it also comes with more than 50 different variants.

- Hacking, the main mechanic of the game, can be used pretty much everywhere in the game: from missions, where you can hack cameras and decoys to plan your perfect stealth tactics, or go Rambo and detonate every explosive on your sight with a single tap of Aiden's phone; to open-world side quests, such as spying on people's private dwellings by hacking personal laptops or hidden cameras and be a spectator of a mother taking care of her baby or a weirdo rating naked women unsuspected of being watched. And there's this hacking tool called "Blackout" that, when used, cuts out the whole electrical system of a big portion of the city, and watching every single light go out during the night makes you feel you're in control of the city.

- Driving feels good in my opinion. There are many cars and bikes to choose from, inspired by real-life brands. You can choose different camera angles, like driving in first-person, and it's also possible to travel by boat.

- The expansion DLC Bad Blood adds more-of-the-same post-game content to stick around for some additional hours, and it includes a new character to control, along with new mechanics and an intriguing enough story.


I think I covered in depth most of what the game offers. It's a great pick if you're looking to spend dozens of hours in a single-player open-world game with a lot of activities to do and many places to explore. But if you want to play online or to 100% the game without any issues, you should buy it on a console if you own one.
I highly recommend to buy it when on sale. You can get the complete edition of Watch Dogs in bundle with all DLCs at an awfully cheap price.