Watch Dogs

One-button hacking might be overly simplistic, but it does give you abilities that make playing through Aiden’s story feel powerful and fun. Doing side missions and multiplayer as you make your way through the dark and lengthy story makes it feel like a huge adventure, and stealth options let you play smart if you prefer. Car chases aside, Watch Dogs is fundamentally very well made, and has more than enough unique ideas to make it a great and memorable open-world action game.

Despite the fact that Watch Dogs hasn't made any meaningful impact on the genre, I found myself having a ton of fun with it. Between the deep levels of customization and the sheer breadth of content, there's no shortage of things to do. If Ubisoft can take the game's core fun factor and marry it with an actual "next-gen" experience the next time around, they'll have something truly special.

Watch Dogs is a victim of its own hype when it comes to what the game looks like, and what types of gameplay is actually in the finished product. A lot of Watch Dogs relies on rehashed ideas from other games, and isn’t quite a generational leap for the open world genre. There are some undoubtedly great parts of Watch Dogs that feel fresh and innovative, but Ubisoft too often falls back on the tried and true to round out the game instead.