Watch_Dogs Eyes-On Preview - Hack the Planet

Here at New York Comic Con, Ubisoft offered up a Watch_Dogs presentation that arrived in two distinct phases.

First, Creative Director Jonathan Morin sat in front of the camera and spewed a ton of buzz words and marketing hyperbole about how amazing it’s going to be to turn the city of Chicago into a weapon. It’s the same speech that’s surrounded this title since day one, and the fact that it was delivered to us at this show as a pre-canned message made it all the less interesting.

The second phase, though, was pretty solid. I’ll start with the bad stuff…

We were treated to a gameplay demo, but it was pre-recorded and played as a movie on a computer. The cynic in me says that Ubisoft did this so as to ensure that there would be no presentation bugs or hitches. I personally sat in on an Assassin’s Creed III demo last year that completely locked up.

Aside from that, though, the eyes-on preview was pretty sweet. The mysterious and unseen driver took us through a single mission in the game’s campaign. We visited a gun shop, snuck around some enemies, engaged in a cutscene and then took part in a big firefight.

It all worked well, and it seems like the fictional Chicago that makes up Watch_Dog‘s backdrop is swell enough to help carry this game’s campaign. I will say, though, that we still saw some technical hiccups.

Yep, in this pre-recorded footage, we saw a few hangs and stalls. Whether that was on the computers playing the video or the gameplay source itself, I don’t know. It still happened, and Ubisoft’s track record with buggy entertainment hasn’t been too good as of late.

Ubisoft keeps insisting that the charm of Watch_Dogs is the ability to hack each and every piece of tech around you. Based on today’s demo, I’m personally more excited about the futuristic Chicago. It looks dark and intense, and this city might be exactly what I want from an open world.

We’ll see how things play out when Watch_Dogs hits the Wii U, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on Nov. 19. Of course, the Xbox One drops on the 22nd, so expect this game at launch.

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