Remember when Ubisoft announced they were working on a movie adaptation of hacking series Watch Dogs, before it was even released? I sure didn’t! Well, allow us both to be reminded of something from over a decade ago, because the Watch Dogs film is still apparently A Thing. It’s more of A Thing now, too, because it has actual names attached rather than just a corporation’s vague “excitement” about licensing out its IP.
]]>Chinese media giants Tencent have invested €300 million (£260 million) in the company operated by Ubisoft’s founding family, the Guillemots. The deal will see Tencent bring some of Ubisoft’s most well known game series to mobile, and to PC in China. Tencent’s investment in Guillemot Brothers Limited follows speculation last month that they were looking to take out a bigger stake in Ubisoft, even becoming the single largest shareholders.
]]>Chinese gaming and social media giants Tencent have approached Ubisoft’s founders, the Guillemot family, in an effort to expand their stake in the AAA publisher, Reuters report. Tencent acquired a 5% stake in Ubisoft in 2018 and now multiple anonymous sources are now saying that Tencent intends to become the single largest shareholder in the publisher, a company valued at almost $6 billion (£4.9 billion).
]]>Videogames' most famous uncle returns in Watch Dogs: Legion's first major story expansion, Bloodline. Yes, it's Aiden Pearce from the original Watch_Dogs, who heads to London for a job (and perhaps to visit his nephew, who is namechecked in the new trailer below.
]]>To the delight of perhaps as many as seven people, Ubisoft today announced that Watch_Underscore_Dogs protagonist Aiden "The Fox" Pearce will come to Watch Dogs: Legion in DLC. Six years after the first game, he's still wearing his stupid coat and "iconic" cap as he visits London for surly business. He's not even washed the cap.
]]>We've missed the Thursday mark, but there's still time to snag some free games over on Epic's shelves. This week, the house of Sweeney are giving away The Stanley Parable and Watch Dogs. One is a sprawling, meta-textual comedy narrative about control and the nature of stories themselves. The other has a bloke with a neat cap. You've got until next Thursday to grab 'em for free, at which time they'll be replaced by Figment and Tormentor X Punisher.
]]>When I wrote my Watch Dogs review back in 2014, I thought the third-person grand-theft-hack-'em-up was an off-brand multipack of slightly stale crisps. Yet I'm excited that the game is free this week and that if you download it now via Uplay, it's yours to keep forever.
]]>When they kick at your front door, how you gonna come? With your hands on your head or tapping on your phone? Think on that, as Ubisoft are hinting that the future of Watch Dogs may have an interest in (ohh-oh!) London's Brixton. The latest Watch Dogs 2 [official site] update expanded the ending cutscene with a recording of a conversation stating that hacktivist cells are bustin' out all over, see, and it shows numbers which just so happen to be map coordinates pointing at Brixton. Yeah, I'd like to see Ubi continue the wild Hackers homage in Merrye Olde Londonne Towne.
]]>Five executives from Ubisoft accused of insider trading have been fined a total of €1.2 million by French regulators, including the CEO of Ubisoft Montreal, Yannis Mallat, whose individual fine is €700,000. The company has said it will appeal the decision and continues to support the executives, saying that the regulator does not understand how its games are made.
]]>We've already looked at Watch Dogs 2's [official site] multiplayer, which is seamlessly stitched onto the game's open world singleplayer shenanigans, and I've written about my first few hours with the game. Now, having worked my way through the story missions and as much of the surrounding city as possible, I'm here to tell you wot I think of Ubisoft's latest hack 'em up as a whole.
]]>While Adam is busy hacking the planet for his final review, I’ve dropped into the multiplayer of Watch Dogs 2 [official site] to harass some of the world’s script kiddies. This is built into the singleplayer world “seamlessly”, you just select an option on your super-phone and a foe will become known to you a few hundred metres away (sometimes you’ll be warped closer to them). Now you’ve invaded their world, Dark Souls style, and have to hack them without being caught. It’s the same great game of hide and seek from the first Watch Dogs and I'm enjoying it a lot. But there’s also problems. Most significantly, why does this mode need guns?
]]>Watch Dogs 2 [official site] is out now on PC, two weeks after our best friends in Console Town got their hands on it. The delay wasn’t surprising coming from Ubisoft, who like to make us wait before letting us clean up all the icons they’ve spilled onto a new map. They said it was to make sure the game “runs smoothly across a broad range of hardware”. Well, now we can test that theory for ourselves. You there, with the Pentium II processor, get downloading.
]]>Five executives from Ubisoft, including the CEO of Ubisoft Montreal, Yannis Mallat, have been accused of selling stock in the company while knowing about an imminent delay to Watch Dogs and The Crew, back in October 2013. All of the executives have denied the accusation from the French stock market regulator, Autorités des marchés financiers (AMF), and are currently disputing the long-running case, requesting for it to be nullified and seeking damages against the regulatory body.
]]>Ubisoft are pooping out all of their videogames news this week. Poopisoft. But then again, it’s Gamescom, so is everybody else. This time they’ve revealed details of multiplayer modes in Watch Dogs 2 [official site]. As long as your connected, they say, you’ll come across other players in the world. You can either team up with them, or do bad things to their phones while they’re not looking. It’s all kicking off in this trailer I’ve got down here. Follow me.
Watch Dogs 2 [official site] will come out on November 15th, Ubisoft declared today, formally announcing the open-world crime simulator. It's jetting off to the sunny San Francisco Bay Area and it... looks fun? Not simply fun-to-play fun, but actually having a sense of a fun, with colours and people who look like they're having fun and no moody uncledads anywhere in sight. Here, jack into this announcement vid-o-rama:
]]>Ubisoft today announced the formal announcement of Watch Dogs 2 [official site], a sequel to their open-world crime simulator about a magical hacking telephone. They also released a trailer teasing the release of a trailer. What do we know about the announcement of Watch Dogs 2? It will be livestreamed at 6pm CEST (5pm UK time, 12pm EST, 9am PDT). What do we know about Watch Dogs 2 itself? Its hacking is also a bit silly, and its protagonist also has terrible dress sense. Observe:
]]>The magical planet-hacking phone of Watch Underscore Dogs seemed a fine tool to play with in a sandbox world, but Ubisoft's murderuncle simulator wants much fun as a sandbox. So hey, look, a mod brings Aiden Pearce's fancy phone to Grand Theft Auto V [official site] - which has a wonderful world. You can now hack traffic lights, pop up traffic barriers, plunge the city into darkness, unlock cars, make trains freak out, rain money from ATMs, and pull other ctOS tricks.
Note: changing the player model to Aiden with his "iconic cap" is an optional, separate thing for hardcore uncle enthusiasts only.
]]>You know how trailers of work-in-progress games sometimes look better than the finished game? That's largely because they're unfinished, unoptimised, and running on production hardware, so no one's yet ordered folks to beat the beautiful out of them so they'll actually run. It's misleading, and while it does build anticipation it also leads to crushing disappointment. Ubisoft have felt that wave of disappointment crash over their faces, which is why they say they're stopping doing that.
In an interview with The Guardian, Ubi head honch Yves Guillemot said that the company were overambitious with early displays of Watch Dogs, but their E3 2015 showings were the real deal.
]]>I'm eternally surprised by what modders manage to do with Grand Theft Auto IV, especially as Rockstar never released official mod tools. Modders needed to build tools before they could build mods, a bit like Minecraft--only you end up with high-fidelity murder rather than a monolithic phallus.
The latest wonder rising from GTA 4 borrows an awful lot from another open-world murder simulator: Watch Dogs. Mass-murderer-with-a-heart-of-gold Aiden Pearce is now hacking Liberty City with his magical telephone, popping barriers out the ground, riding trains, spying through cameras, screwing with traffic lights, and generally hacking the planet. It's a remarkable feat.
]]>I wrote a long list of reasons why I didn't like Watch_Dogs very much, and then at the end wrote briefly with caveats about why I liked its multiplayer mode. I thought that would be the end of it, but then a couple of times a week ever since - and it's been a month now - I boot the game back up to have another couple hours of hacking into other people's games. How am I going to explain this, I keep thinking. I can't, I can't, I can't, I'll try.
]]>If we're going to talk about modders - and yes, I'm calling it a mod - releasing Watch_Dogs tweaks, then it seems only fair to mention when Ubisoft plan to do the same. As outlined in a post on the Watch_Dogs forum, a set of fixes and tweaks should arrive on PC in the next few days, bringing improvements to performance and control problems.
]]>Watch underscore Dogs took a pre-release beating for the differences in visual fidelity between its early trailers, such as the original E3 reveal, and its later videos and final release. Now a mod creator called 'TheWorse' has released a tweak that aims to bring Watch_Dogs in line with how people originally hoped it would look. I've had a quick play with it, and there's some comparative before/after screenshots and a video below.
]]>One day you will purchase a multi-pack bag of assorted crisps. Maybe because you're going to a party, maybe because you're living on a budget. You won't be overly fond of any of the contained flavours, every bite will feel a little on the soft side of fresh, and the individual packets will be 90% air, but you'll at least feel comforted by having choice and abundance.
Welcome to Watch_Dogs, the latest videogame from Ubisoft. You play as Aiden Pearce, a brooding packet of cheese & onion whose hacker-criminal past has led to the death of his niece. Now you must run, drive and hack around its ready salted open world on a quest for truth and vengeance, alternating between salt 'n' vinegar main quests and a prawn cocktail of crafting and side missions familiar from Far Cry 3 among others.
Running low on crisp flavours, I may just end my review right here. But there's something of Watch underscore Dogs stuck in my teeth and I need to unpick it. This is wot I think.
]]>It doesn't matter how many ASCII indie games I play, sometimes I have an itch only shite cutscenes can scratch. Sometimes I want to be told what to do. Sometimes I want to be told what to do by expensively animated, grumbly-voiced cartoons. Sometimes I just want to be able to lean back in my chair and let the game get on with it.
Thankfully: Ubisoft*. They're releasing Watch Dogs on May 27th. I want to walk around its Chicago, hack its traffic lights, leap across its rooftops, burrow into my friends' games and follow them around without them knowing. But I also want it to lead me by the nose, pointing me in the right direction with the pomp of big-budget cinematics. It's comforting.
In other words, there is a place in my life for teenage fantasies writ large, and this nine-minute breakdown of every Watch Dogs feature is full of them.
]]>Up to this point, Watch_Dogs has been all about trench-coat-clad, vigilante-justice-dispensing hatman Aiden Pearce, but the game's no one-man show. It's positively brimming with colorful characters like--[KABOOOOOOOOOM]. Sorry, what I meant to say is, there's this rebellious hacker girl and--[BLAAAAAAAAAMWOOOOOOOOSH]. Argh, my ears won't stop ringing. Let me just find a solid wall to duck behind so I can tell you about the arms dealer who--[CRASHSMASHWHOOOOOMBOOOM, sounds of glass clattering in slow-mo]. I guess I'll just let the weirdly action-packed character trailer speak for itself.
]]>Some of my favourite Dark Souls moments came from being invaded. Down deep in the Tomb of the Giants, chased over the bones of colossal skeletons by the spirits of a wicked wizard then a lost paladin, oh I was so very pleased. It's a fantastic little multiplayer touch, and one I'm glad to see Watch Dogs adopting on top of more traditional modes.
A new 9-minute trailer goes over the open-world hack 'em up's three main multiplayer types: Dark Souls-y invasions, challenges tied into the ctOS mobile companion app, and objective-driven team violence.
]]>Remember when Watch_Dogs was first announced back at E3 2012? That sure was something, huh? It was all shiny and "next-gen" and rain-spattered, like a soaked-to-the-bone canine shaking off in perfect slow motion. Subsequent trailers, however, have looked... less great. Not terrible by any means, but just a little plain. Why? I can't say for sure, but I do know that this bells-and-whistles-enabled PC trailer is barking up the right tree. Many textures look more detailed, lighting's taken a definite step up, and I want to go bounce up and down in those puddles like an obnoxious school child. It's still not the best-looking game ever, but I can't complain too much.
]]>I've grown complacent, and my PC weak. I haven't upgraded at all in a fair few years, but now face building a whole new system. See, the demands of multiplatform games pretty much stalled once console developers starting pushing their limits, but now a whole new load are out and oh, their games are hungry. One of the first all-singing, all-dancing shiny big games is Ubisoft's Watch Dogs, and its system requirements confirm that it's about time I take my dear old friend down to Regents Canal in a hessian sack. Good night, sweet prince.
]]>I've been to Chicago before. It was for Lollapalooza a few years ago, so I remember heat, sweat, and gibbering herds of sticky humans jammed together like uncooked hotdogs - and pretty much nothing else. I guess, then, I'll just have to take Ubisoft's word for it when it comes to Watch_Dogs' rendition of Chicago, which is apparently about as true to life as you can get while presupposing that a) it is the near future and b) the entire city can be controlled by a single magic cell phone. Apparently all the citizen AI and whatnot is quite sophisticated, though. Hack into the jungle of 1s and 0s below to for a video.
]]>I overheard a man at Ubi's recent Digital Days event describe Watch Dogs as "not really single-player, not really multiplayer". I've no idea who it was, and it might have been a ghost, but it's a fairly good description. Watch Dogs is an odd game. An open-world game of hacking that has touches of GTA and Deus Ex. But Like Dark Souls, it allows you to let other players into your game as sneaky opponents. There are a few ways they can get involved: you can leave the door open for anyone to wander in and they can bring their character and guns and try and take you out, or there's a versus game where you can let a friend mess with the world from the free mobile 'ctOS' app as you attempt to escape their attention. I had a very brief play of the latter as the tablet prodder. It's not great, but it is interesting.
]]>It's Gamescom, one of the many firework-enshrouded peaks of game convention season. You know what that means: glitz and glamour galore. No, the Hollywood-style antics don't quite reach the fever pitch of, say, an E3, but there's still plenty of triple-A chest-thumping to go around. And so, Ubisoft has rolled out another movie deal, this time for not-even-out-yet open-world hackomancy thing Watch Dogs. Technically, the game's title now has an underscore in it, but I refuse to write it that way because it looks hideous. Anyway, like all videogame movies (except ones based on franchises no one cares about), it'll probably never come out. But let's listen to a bunch of executive types be super optimistic anyway!
]]>Watch Dogs seems like just the game to mark the burgeoning brutal reality of governments around the world using technology as a boot with which to stamp on human faces, forever. It's a game about a fairly cool trenchcoat maverick-not-playing-by-the-rules guy - I mean I say "fairly cool", I would never want to look like him, or dress like that, but okay he's the kind of individualist freedom fighter a nerd like me can get behind - who uses modern things like phones and internets to fight back. He use guns too. They're like computers that can make holes in stuff. They'll never go out of fashion for fighting back, right guys?
Right! Anyway, a new wad of glossy commercial trailering reveals a lot more about that hacking stuff as you can see below. Gosh, it looks fancy.
]]>Huh. It had entirely passed me by that exciting-looking action hacker open-world Ubi-game Watch Dogs has multiplayer. But it does. There's a video of it happening below. The game features folks hacking, while the victim attempts to fend off the hackery. It's all looking a bit Assassin's Creed at this time, which I suppose to be expected.
Go take a look.
]]>In a post-PRISM reality, or rather a world in which the public have knowledge of PRISM, the hack and crash nature of open city cyber-adventure Watch Dogs could be considered timely, topical or controversial. Judging by the latest footage to emerge from the heaving bowels of E3, it's really a game about superpowers though. Strip away the theme of a game and most abilities beyond running, jumping and falling down have a supernatural whiff about them. Observe as our hero, who really needs a strepsil, summons an impenetrable darkness. He does it by pressing a button on his smartphone, which causes all the lights in the city to turn off. It's technology rather than magic, see?
]]>UPDATE: New video of just gameplay, without someone wittering over the top of it.
IGN, as it happens. And you can see footage of some GTA-type wandering about in Watch Dogs below. The handsome corporate gaming site was the first to get to grips with Ubisoft's action-hacking game about the timeless love affair between phones, surveillance, guns and explosions in urban areas, and it looks quite good. Like the tennis.
]]>Ubisoft's impressive-looking hacker-with-superphone action game, Watch Dogs, will appear on November 22nd. There's a big fancy new trailer below, which you should definitely watch.
]]>Ubisoft's vaguely cyberpunk open-world thriller Watch Dogs has the worst minimap in history. It's so amorphous and blobby, like someone sneezed on the screen, and it miraculously oozed into a fully functioning UI element. I'm sorry. I know that's not really the main issue at hand here, but it had to be said. But yes, Watch Dogs! It looked rather promising - though somewhat upsettingly action-focused - during E3, and new footage only adds fuel to the electrical fire. Which is rather the opposite of how you're supposed to deal with those things, but this is a rare case where that's a good thing. Well, if you like Assassin's-Creed-style chases and magical cell phone techno-magic, anyway.
]]>Much like the news that your house is being repossessed after a particularly brutal bout of identity theft, Watch Dogs came out of nowhere. Hot on the heels of a Ubisoft press conference that could charitably be described as "at least probably not offensive to some breeds of orangutan," Watch Dogs mopped up that particular mess and then some. Main character Pearce hacked everything from cell phones to traffic lights as naturally as most of us draw breath. He stalked, he talked, and then, well, he shot some dudes. Lots of them, actually.
So Ubisoft's spilled quite a gooey glob of GTA into our Deus Ex, but is that necessarily a bad thing? Do we really need a rather large helping of lead to spice up our near-future cyberpunk intrigue? I spoke with producer Dominic Guay about that concern, Jedi hacker powers, how discovering someone's sexual history can lead to a side mission, and more. Hack your way past the break to read on. Or just click on it like a normal person.
]]>It's a bit odd to cover E3 with a PC-focused slant. Initially, I felt horrifically out of place roaming the LA Convention Center's banner-plastered halls. The Kratoses and Master Chiefs of the world leered at me from their billowing sky perches, and I longed for the warm embrace of, say, a game about embracing people - as Rambo. Xbox controllers and PlayStation pads contorted showgoers' hands into unnatural, vice-like claws, and I could only grasp feebly for a mouse that failed to materialize.
But, after the initial explosion of senses-overwhelming glitz and glamour, I started taking stock of the show's inner workings. And you know what? Turns out, this is a PC gaming event - perhaps moreso than anything else.
]]>Tcch, everyone knows you don't reveal new game IPs at E3. It's all about companies trying to out-sequel each other. Or, if you're Microsoft, being insane enough to believe that anyone on Earth is interested that they've spilt more Bing onto their Xbox dashboard. Ubisoft have elected to buck the safe-bet trend with the mighty promising Watch Dogs - an apparently semi-open world game of grand-scale hacking. Includes bringing up a frightening amount of embarrassingly personal information about passers-by at the touch of a button, stealthing into buildings by making everyone's mobile phones play up, screwing up traffic lights remotely to cause dramatic pile-ups and, somewhat sadly after all that bravura tech-twisting stuff, some trad. shooty-bang-bang. Also, graphicasability which appears to fall firmly into the 'ultra' bracket. Though whispers are this is a couple of years off, so salt may need some pinching for now.
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