Not quite Eye-Catching_Dogs.

I got about an hour and a half into Watch Dogs before passing out last night -- I had a hard time articulating my thoughts, but this hype-to-reality comparison video demonstrates the most immediate issues very well. Pretty much everything from the 2012 demo that looked "next-gen" - the nuanced lighting, the wind physics, the density of civilians and vehicles, the overall level of visual spit-shine - is absent from the released product. I'm not by any means going to claim that the game looks bad, but it looks usual, in the same league as (or lower than) other AAA games that have come out over the past few years; not head-and-shoulders above them, as teased.

Of course, yeah, they are just graphics. I am just getting into the real gameplay and the narrative, which are thus far disorienting and intriguing, respectively. Watch Dogs seems to suffer from the Saints Row (as in Saints Row 1) dilemma of having so much to do, that the map and HUD are too tightly packed to see a clear path through. It's not the worst problem to have, to be sure, but it only further distracts me from the game world's ambience, reinforcing the message that -- yeah, this sure is a video game.