Fit for a King
Words: Michelle Wallace IG @my.michelle.w
Photography: Sergey Yusin @sergey_yusin
Wardrobe: Jaxson Maximus @jaxsonmaximus
Make-up: Julia Brig @juliabrigmia
style | June 01, 2021
The Man Cave
December 18, 2020
WATCH DOGS LEGION REVIEW
Watch Dogs Legion is the latest entry in Ubisoft’s Watch Dog series, the game is an open world action adventure game, with a lot of different mechanics built into it, such as stealth, eavesdropping, hacking and even melee combat.
Watch Dogs Legion is based in a dystopian futuristic London, where a private military by the name of Albion has taken over, the game’s main premise is a story based game, that, get this; has no one specific main character. You play as a rebel organization by the name of DedSec, who cause mayhem around the city to fight and take back London, by recruiting literally anyone that you see on the streets of London, most of these characters come with different abilities and weapon load-outs, some come with cars and passive perks, but as experimental as this gameplay premise sounds; the game is going to be very familiar grounds to anyone that has played a Ubisoft open world game.
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Hacking Around Town
Hacking is a core gameplay mechanic in Watch Dogs Legion, you can hack almost anything, traffic signs, doors, garage doorways, cars, electronic gadgets such as phones and weapons, even explosives to set up traps. I enjoy the hacking in the game to be quite honest, it is very satisfying to set up a trap and then attract a group of enemies towards it and watch them all fall down, or hack a Spiderbot to do everything in an infiltration mission without even heading inside of the mission location (unless the mission requires you to that is), or hacking a cargo bot to traverse the city or making a getaway, or even just walking around the beautiful streets of London hacking into people’s phones and learning about them is just fun. Hacking into locked locations by completing puzzles was a fun side activity that I enjoyed, especially ones that require you to use a drone to do them.
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Hacking traffic signs to make a quick getaway felt a bit useless because there are rarely any car chases in the game, and if there are any, the enemy AI isn’t as strong to figure you out and just driving fast enough renders them unable to chase you.
The Future is Breathtaking
Watch Dogs Legion in every way, shape and form, is one of the most gorgeous open world titles that Ubisoft has created, with some of the very best graphics in gaming to date. Walking around London with the reflective RTX technology is mind blowing, it is breathtakingly beautiful, the game has some of the best reflections in gaming to date, with global illumination and DLSS added into the mix, the game runs smoother and looks prettier than anything I have seen. This graphical fidelity works extremely well because of how well it is optimized, along with the game having a beautiful futuristic world with neon lights all around it, and the cars being so reflective too.
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The world that they have created is amazing, each NPC character follows a strict schedule, I was baffled as I ran into some of my own recruits on the streets following the schedules that I originally found them doing, these schedules make these characters feel more alive, following a person for an entire day in the game is extremely impressive, as they have their own vehicles which they use for traversing the world and own friends and families that they interact with. Not to mention, every single one of these characters look well designed and the textures, movements and animations are top notch.
A Game with Personality
The melee combat in the game is super fun, the amount of variety you get based on your selected player character is insanely fun to see through, some have wrenches, some have batons, some have baseball bats and some have enhanced punches, these make for melee combat situations super fun, not to mention that you can go to Bare Knuckle Boxing clubs and duke it out against the best fighters in town, and recruit them at the end of it if you like their abilities. Other than this, sometimes they have primary weapons too, such as paintball guns or other guns in general, Hitmen are found with Desert Eagles and Assault Rifles, while their stealth takedowns are them choking people to death with wires, Spies have silenced weapons and cars that have missile launchers, there’s characters with paintball guns, poison gas grenades and drones, that can both fly or just be useful in taking enemies down, some even come with passive abilities like Key Stealing Unlimited Range, where you can steal the key code to any doors from miles away basically.
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These characters are what separates Watch Dogs Legion from the crowd of Open World titles, this character system brings in so much depth to the gameplay, you can use a police person recruit to enter into police stations, or a recruited Albion soldier to get into Albion restricted areas, or construction workers for construction sites etcetera, along with the load outs that they come with, you can choose what play style you want, there’s even some goofy ones that are really fun to play with. I found a Hypnotist in my play through of the game, his ability basically let him hypnotize anyone and send them on a rampage of killing their own buddies.
A Unique Twist, On a Cookie Cutter Genre
Ubisoft’s latest entry to the Watch Dogs franchise is solid, extremely solid, the story might not be the most interesting part of the game but it is not regarded as the main aspect of playing it, the main aspect are the characters you find and interact with and how their stories pan out, and how you take back London the way you want to, with occasional bugs popping in every once in a while, and some factors not being used too much in the game (such as the car chases), the quality of the game remains a bit static in some areas, while in some areas, the franchise has improved in multitudes.
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7/10
All in all, Watch Dogs Legion is a fantastic new entry to the series, with many improvements and new features that make it a fresh experience unlike any other one the market at the moment, brought down by little snippets of problems, but nothing too much to ruin the experience.