Heed my warning: Consider cancelling your pre-order while you still can

[Morten]

Just as a little pre-heads up. If you love mouse acceleration or don't notice it because you play with a controller anyway, that's fine. I didn't make this post to argue whether mouse acceleration or other control related issues are acceptable on PC, or whether any other issue in the game is tolerable. I made this post to give people with a prejudice a chance to get the facts presented directly, to make a decision on whether to spend their hard earned money before the point of no return.

I was probably one of the people who were most hyped about this game. It's been hard waiting for this game. When there was about 45 days left, my hope had grown so strong, I barely knew what to do with my time. Luckily I started doing stuff, and before I knew, less than a week was left.
And today, I'm thankful that I didn't waste my time doing nothing while waiting for this game, because fortunately I had the misfortune of playing this game early, and cancel my pre-order in time.

When Splinter Cell: Blacklist was released, I was already not very fond of Ubisoft. They've always been unable to provide enjoyable controls on PC, with mouse acceleration, etc. in all of their Assassin's Creed games, which I stopped buying after the third one.
With every new game they make, they always make them look interesting in trailers and gameplay videos, and once they come out, the picture changes completely.
After Blacklist, which had "active sprint" that made you run up every wall in radius and get killed when you really just wanted to run through an open door to take cover, and forced ENVIRONMENTAL auto-aim (Meaning the game auto-aimed at everything), but worst of all their crappy netcoding (Which is a dream come true for any hacker, as everything is controlled client side with no authority from the server, through P2P), I decided that never again would I pay for another Ubisoft game.

And then I saw Watch Dogs, which again looked brilliant, and I thought that maybe these were new times; and various news sites had reported that the game was developed primarily for the PC. It did take me a considerable amount of consideration, but eventually I craved in and pre-ordered the Deluxe Edition for the "discounted" price of 60€.

You may or may not be in the same position, but if I can save a few souls from this ♥♥♥♥ poor excuse of a video game, then I've accomplished something.

Fact is, this game is far from what it was hyped up to be.

I quickly realized

Consolitis

Ubisoft has yet again managed to dump a console port onto PC gamers. And before you say "PC WAS LEAD PLATFORM!", then let me tell you this: Development may have started exclusively for the PC, but it was later shifted to consoles, and they've managed to mold the controls around controllers once again.

Is it worth 60+€?

Absolutely unequivocally NOT. This game is yet another crappy port from Ubisoft.

Performance

If you think the system requirements are too high, think again.
This game suffers from the typical lack of optimization by Ubisoft.

With an i7 at 4.7GHz, 16GB RAM and a factory OC'd Gainward GTX GeForce 780 Ti 3GB Phantom Edition the game fails to maintain a 60+ frame rate. (Drops to 25 fps, average at 30-50).

Mouse acceleration

The game has massive mouse acceleration. This is forced and cannot be turned off in the game settings nor in any configuration files, despite what some people may claim.

For an example see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qP37lx_kCg

Mouse smoothing

The game has mouse smoothing, which can only be toggled through a configuration file.
Disabling this is what people propose as a fix for mouse acceleration, but it is not. It only disables mouse smoothing. (Which according to the configuration file is disabled by default anyway).

Mouse speed limiting

Besides mouse acceleration and smoothing, the game limits how fast you can turn the camera. This is forced and cannot be turned off in the game settings nor in any configuration files. This means, that you cannot turn around quickly and shoot or look behind you, which makes it feel even more like you're playing with a controller.

I'm starting to feel like I'm the only PC gamer left in the world, because apparently mouse acceleration / speed limiting is "not that bad" to most other people I've talked to. That, or they play with controllers.
It is literally terrifying that of the ~30 playtesters on the PC version, 0 playtesters apparently had a problem with sluggish mouse movement with acceleration, smoothing and limiting. I suppose they all played with controllers.

Mouse speed in menus

When in the menus the mouse cursor is uncontrollably fast, which cannot be altered.

Hundredfold mouse acceleration when entering/leaving vehicles

While entering or leaving a vehicle, the camera will not stop moving when you move the mouse, making it impossible to look around while performing these actions.
That is, if you move the mouse, then stop moving it, the camera will pretty much keep rotating around the car forever, unless you move the mouse the opposite way to slow it down.

Aim assist

The game has aim assist which cannot be disabled. The settings menu has an option to set controller aim assist to "Minimal", which does not remove the aim assist.
The game does not hard-lock your aim onto targets, but if you aim near an enemy, then right click to pull up your sights, the game will move your crosshair onto the nearest target. In certain cases, though, I've seen the crosshair follow the target automatically for a few moments.

Vehicle handling is horrendous

The vehicle handling really makes you appreciate what Rockstar is doing with vehicle handling.
In GTA (IV and V at least, haven't played the rest in 10 years) the wheels turn very fast, meaning instantaneous response to control input.

In Watch Dogs, it takes about nearly a second to rotate the wheels all the way to the side (Or twice the time if moving from one side all the way to the other).
The problem with this approach is that the time you hold down the keys to turn, the more degrees you turn per second. Acceleration is also applied to the turning, so their rotation rate becomes greater and greater over that second. Meaning, it's difficult to steer, because the rate at which you turn changes over time. When releasing keys, the wheels again take a second to straighten out, meaning you have to release the key about a second before you want to drive straight.

Fishy windowed mode

The game provides options for both fullscreen, windowed mode, and windowed borderless mode.

Normally when a game runs in windowed mode, the game locks the mouse to the game window, so it cannot be moved off the game window and end up clicking on things around your desktop.

However, instead of locking the mouse to the game window like any other reasonable developer, Ubisoft instead does something very fishy that I've yet to dig into, that alters
the way windows messages are processed (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms644927(v=vs.85).aspx), that prevents other windows from processing clicks, etc.

This means that when you alt+tab from the game, you cannot click on any other window (Right clicking a few times allows you to click again).

This has turned out to have some more severe repercussions than I initially thought. For example, booting up GTA IV in window mode after running Watch Dogs causes GTA IV to be unable to process mouse input, and the cursor is simply locked to the top left corner of the game window.
So far, the only fix has been to start Watch Dogs, set it to fullscreen mode, then close it. This will allow GTA IV to process mouse input again.

Audio is extremely low

The audio in Watch Dogs is extremely low, requiring speakers to be set to 85% volume to have reasonable levels.

Automatic camera movement

When moving or driving around, the game will automatically rotate the camera to face where you're going. As a PC gamer, any unprovoked movement of the camera is an absolute no go. If I'm not moving the camera, don't move it for me.

This means that if you want to look at something, whether in a car or a camera, after a second, the game rotates the camera back straight, and while on the street if you haven't moved the mouse for a second, it'll rotate back to follow your character around.

Same goes for hacking, if you're shooting someone and you see a hacking opportunity, and you press the button to hack, the game will rotate the camera to face the hacked object.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ AI

Ubisoft said that one of the reasons they delayed the game half a year, was to improve on some serious AI issues (Eg. enemies instantly knowing where you are).
Considering the state that the AI is in today, I'd have loved to see how bad they were half a year ago.

For example, civilians in vehicles don't give much of a ♥♥♥♥ if you pull out your weapon and point it at them. They'll sit behind the wheel, put their hands up and comment on the fact that Aiden is pointing a gun at them. That is the extent of their reactions. They won't even drive off, they won't ever get out, and they won't ever attempt to call the police.
If you turn their cars into Swizz cheese, they'll still just look at you with their hands up. As I pointed out a moment ago, they won't ever call the police. Characters cannot use phones while in cars, which means that you can drive onto the highway where there are no pedestrians, and start killing everyone forever, without risking a warrant level as no one will ever call the cops on you.

If a group of thugs are looking for you, you can simply take any car and drive it right between all of them, then park it and hit F to hide. This will make Aiden go low in the car and turn off the engine.
Enemies will only spot Aiden if they stare in his direction for about 10-15 seconds. They are NOT alerted by the engine when driving it close to them, nor do they give a ♥♥♥♥ if you sound the horn like crazy.
You can literally get in a car, then drive 1 meter behind an enemy, and when he stops, turn off the car, and hide. When he turns around he won't notice there's suddenly a car behind him, nor that its horn is being used.
You can then get out and kill him when he walks past it, or rev the engine and spin around to follow him unnoticed.

During a blackout, all enemies will go into a confused state, in which they ignore everything. You can be running right at them, while they're trying to fill you with lead; then cause a blackout, just to watch the enemy who were just busy blowing you away go "Huh? The lights are suddenly gone." while they look around like a bird just fell dead from the sky. In this time, nothing you will do will cause them to fire at you, until their confusion ends. And before you think this is a humane reaction, we aren't talking about a transistor blowing up in their faces, we're talking about a few lights coming off, which no one high on adrenaline fighting for their life would even notice.

Hacks are highly scripted

When hacking traffic lights, the lights don't just change (as a side note, you can only hack all lights to green. You can't choose a direction or make them red, etc.), the game also instantly makes all cars accelerate, disable their brakes and make them drive into each other on purpose. In other words, accidents are not caused by the fact that the lights are green in all directions and everyone go on their marry way, but rather the fact that all cars will engage in a destruction derby, and intentionally try to hit other cars.

As an example, if an intersection has one single car, and the lights are already green for its lane, hacking the lights to green, will instantly make that car drive full speed like crazy.

During pursuits, the game will constantly tell you when the targets you're pursuing or are pursuing you are close to a hackable object. When this happens, the ordinary "hack" action will turn into a "neutralize" action. Normally, hacking takes about half a second, but when it turns into a "neutralize" action, the hacking is instant. Now let's say, for example you're about to drive over some blockers, and you want to prevent your pursuers from following you, you can time it correctly and hack them right as you go over, meaning they'll pop up when you've passed them. So you'll start hacking them just before you drive over them, and 0.5 seconds later, the hack will complete, with you already past them. However, if a pursuer happens to be within range for neutralization, right as you time your hack perfectly, it'll turn into a "neutralize" action, and instantly pop up, causing you to get blocked yourself.
Furthermore, a "neutralize" action cannot fail! If you activate the "neutralize" action, and the pursuer just misses the blockers, his car will magically become disabled.
In either case, the game will trigger an annoying slow motion cinematic disrupting your gameplay to watch the pursuer smash into your obstacle (or simply just stop for no reason), completely killing immersion.

Quantity over quality

It is clear that Ubisoft spent more time on "digital trips" and other mini-games than the game itself. It has become a common thing now in Ubisoft's games, that quantity conquers quality.

This game really makes you appreciate the work Rockstar puts into their games, even considering what a bunch of pricks they are towards the PC community (and the modding community).
Ubisoft has a long way to go before reaching the quality of a Rockstar game.

And no, I'm not a Rockstar fanboy. Far from it. Their games have some serious issues too, and I've made a rather long video about it, but they usually provide so much fun that they can be tolerated. And their games are relatively easy to mod, making these issues even easier to live with.

But the day one patch will fix everything!

I've heard this from a lot of people. Fact is, it won't. The day one patch has improved match making and improved AI.
This is the patch notes for the day one patch (Notice the "Initial launch patch"): http://i.imgur.com/9kJ0xYJ.png

Fact is, that the early copies of the game came from physical copies, which were updated by uplay when people installed them (And also by PS4 which the screenshot above is from). The early versions includes the day one patch, and the day one patch has been available for more than a week.

Don't worry, Ubisoft will fix all this in future patches!

It doesn't really matter. These problems should never have existed in the first place. Besides, Ubisoft's patches are mostly cosmetic. Fixes of things no one even knew was a problem.

DLC and Season Passes

It is shocking that people are encouraging companies like Ubisoft to provide day one DLC and Season Passes, as if they're unaware that these are content stripped from the game, then re-sold seperately.
And the Season Pass doesn't contain the PS exclusives from the Deluxe Edition, so you need at least the Deluxe Edition + Season Pass, which after the "discount" disappears on release is 70€ + 20€ = 90€ ($122.97 USD).
I (barely) remember the day when you bought a game, and you got a game, and you enjoyed that game without having to worry about whether your Deluxe + Special + Multicultural + Season Pass + Super RipOff editions got you the entire game. Some day we'll end up having to pay a professional to plan how we're gonna get all the parts in this world of game assembly kits, without spending all our money on one game.

Conclusion

The conclusion is. If you're tired of expensive, half-♥♥♥♥♥, content-stripped games with consolitis, then don't buy Watch Dogs.
In either case, the choice is yours. But if you're able to see through the hype, and see the same old story we get with every Ubisoft release, perhaps you'll have the courage to cancel your pre-order before it's too late, and wait for a considerable price drop.



The fact that a developer (Especially Ubisoft, which has been in the industry for years) still releases games on PC with absolute no goes like forced mouse acceleration, automatic camera movement, etc. shows how little they care about the PC community, and how important it is that people make it clear that these half-♥♥♥♥♥ releases where quantity is now more important than quality are unacceptable.

But I guess that won't happen any time soon, as long as people are blinded by what they want and refuse to see problems for what they are, because their desires for these games are greater.

[Whistt]

interesting review, but one point... a game being optimized for controller use or even being basically unplayable without one does not mean that game was a port or console optimized etc etc. This is 2014. If you are a PC gamer, you should have a gamepad. You can get a decent one for $30. Designing a PC game for gamepad/controller play is not a sign it's not a PC game. Not these days. Hey, I cut my teeth playing Adventure on a mainframe and have fond memories of circle strafing in Quake, etc. but these days, one should not automatically leap for a mouse and keyboard with the newest PC games.

From your review, it's clear that you equate poor mouse/keyboard support with being bad for PC gamers. Sorry, I don't buy that theory

[Xardo]

Very well written. Thanks for the heads up.

[SuperCrumpets]

This is why people shouldnt preorder video games

[mrgocrazy5]

A lot of this post is nitpicky. I don't disagree with most of it, but I also am not anywhere near as bothered by the flaws you pointed out. I downloaded the leaked version, had fun with it, and was willing to pay 70 dollars for it. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but anyone who actually believed Ubisoft was going to reinvent the wheel with Watch Dogs is very silly and should feel silly.

[MTV]

Watch Dogs was an inside job.

[Frost]

he is right,i was super excited until i watched the gameplay and livestream from ign and then that when i doubt that this game would be amazing like what they showed us on E3 2012,because on E3 2012,that gameplay looks amazing but in reality,this is not next gen imo

[naomha]

Holy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ text Batman. I'm with loggotr on this one. Having bad mouse/keyboard controls surely isn't a sign of a bad game. Not for nothing, but I own pretty much every Ubi game made (except for the ridiculous kiddy ones) and I've never had a problem with mouse/keyboard controls. Even Black Flag and Far Cry 3 I thought were very well handled for m/k controls. I even play those games maxed out at 5760x1080 and the mouse acceleration, pinning, everything was done extremely well. Even Black Flag with all its parkour and tree jumping moves especially smooth. Sorry you are having a bad experience.

I'm downloading the game now and will be able to play in about 45 minutes or so and I'll be able to check your input. I also use a Razer Mamba for gaming. It's never given me so much as a hiccup playing Ubi games.

[󠀡NAES]

Originally posted by Morten:

Originally posted by Mectron:

Another useless rant my a nobody who try to get 15 nano secound of fame: EPIC FAIL

Thank you for proving my point.

You have so many posts about this game it's crazy haha.

[Teschmacher]

thanks goodness i havent preoreded this and will wait for further user feedback before taking any actions

[sallaD]

So, in short:

A few nitpicks about mouse controls and what not, which you claim to be identical to Blacklist's supposed problems.

Played Blacklist myself, been playing PC Master Race since the days when Space Jam was still in theaters and DOS was stilll a thing outside of DOSbox. I thought Blacklist was a rather decent port, it maintained a solid 60 FPS at all times on my rig and never once crashed. The major complaint I had with it was the sever lack of any decent Anti-Cheat engine, resulting in the unfortunate death of Spies VS Mercs at the hands of hackers driving away any and all newcomers after the initial launch crowd began to move on to greener pastures.

And with the story: Ever since the first wave of trailers arrived, I'm pretty sure it was obvious the story was an afterthought. It's a game about blowing ♥♥♥♥ up or hacking into things to make ♥♥♥♥ blow up, were you really expecting a deep, intricate, Hitchcock grade plot that will forever change your outlook on life?

I'll go play an MGS game if I want to watch an interactive movie that shoves philosophy down my throat until my bronchial pathways get ruptured.

[Ericgi231]

I agree 100%, this game is not ready to be played.

[Venetoi]

Thank you, all this stuffs is really informative,and exactly what I was looking for.

I asked about mouse acceleration and benchmark on this forum before,but I didn't get any real answer.

[Morten]

Originally posted by naomha:

the mouse acceleration was done extremely well.

See, that's the problem exactly. Mouse acceleration is not a help. It doesn't have any tactical advantages. It simply takes away control, because it causes mouse input and aiming to not be 1:1.

If you feel that mouse acceleration is great, it must have been some time since you played a game without it.

I suggest you load up SWAT 4 or something.

Originally posted by MARKED ONE, WHAT THE HEEELLLLL?!:

So, in short:

A few nitpicks about mouse controls and what not, which you claim to be identical to Blacklist's supposed problems.

Played Blacklist myself, been playing PC Master Race since the days when Space Jam was still in theaters and DOS was stilll a thing outside of DOSbox. I thought Blacklist was a rather decent port, it maintained a solid 60 FPS at all times on my rig and never once crashed. The major complaint I had with it was the sever lack of any decent Anti-Cheat engine, resulting in the unfortunate death of Spies VS Mercs at the hands of hackers driving away any and all newcomers after the initial launch crowd began to move on to greener pastures.

And with the story: Ever since the first wave of trailers arrived, I'm pretty sure it was obvious the story was an afterthought. It's a game about blowing ♥♥♥♥ up or hacking into things to make ♥♥♥♥ blow up, were you really expecting a deep, intricate, Hitchcock grade plot that will forever change your outlook on life?

I'll go play an MGS game if I want to watch an interactive movie that shoves philosophy down my throat until my bronchial pathways get ruptured.

I'm not sure you read my post thoroughly enough. I'm pretty sure I never claimed Blacklist had mouse acceleration. It did have environmental auto-aim, though.

I'm also pretty sure I didn't mention the story or plot of this game at all.

[LeXz]

good job you said everything I've thought of but couldn't write it out thank you.

[Langor]

Glad I waited. I would of got it on a PS4 though.