Looking to do some hacking? A little car-jacking to spice things up perhaps?
No, a new Grand Theft Auto game hasn’t been announced, but Watch Dogs is mere weeks away from release, and I believe it will fill these roles every bit as well as GTA, maybe even better. But let’s back up a moment here and talk about a new trailer that Ubisoft just released.
If you can remember back a few days, I posted up a Watch Dogs character trailer showcasing the game’s many, well… you get the idea. If you haven’t seen it yet, then you can check it out here. Alternatively, this brand new trailer simply called “Watch Dogs 101 Trailer” shows much of the same stuff, and a whole lot more. In fact, this may just be the longest video game trailer I’ve ever seen. If you don’t want to see what I consider a few minor spoilers, then you probably want to skip this one.
While I wouldn’t say there were any true revelations with this trailer, I did learn a few interesting things.
- Watch Dogs features 6 massive city districts, as well as a sprawling countryside
- There are over 70 drivable vehicles
- Pearce’s wife’s name is Lena Pearce
- You can take “digital trips”, which are essentially mini-games
- The multiplayer framerate looks terrible
I’m pretty excited for this one… Watch Dogs reminds me of a more relevant, interesting version of Grand Theft Auto, at least based on the trailers and screenshots we’ve been seeing over the last few years. I’ve always loved the GTA games, but adding this privacy/technology slant really gets me going.
Now, I do have one major concern: framerates. I’m going to assume that the multiplayer footage we saw was from the consoles, because it looked really quite dreadful. I saw plenty of stuttering, and the visuals looked like they had been cranked down quite a few notches. This is unfortunate, but not too surprising given how crappy console hardware is. I only hope that the PC version is well optimized.
Watch Dogs arrives on May 27th for PC… and really, who cares about the rest of the platforms? You can pre-order the game here.
