There’s always that one guy, you know, the guy who’s always on his phone.

Aiden Pearce is the man with the smartest phone in Chicago it seems. Well not really, he’s just one of many hackers in an overly connected techno-metropolis that is Chicago; in the world of Watch_Dogs.

In a strange world where wireless data transfers are nearly instantaneous, handshaking is of no concern to anyone, and for some reason, cameras can become weapons of mass destruction. The game puts forth an almost forbidding view of the evolution of technology.

Without divulging too much of the plot, it’s safe to say that Pearce’s proficiency with portable devices seems to be the greatest double edged sword one could find.

Gameplay wise, Watchdogs a sandbox game, it has wonky driving physics, a beautifully detailed and highly interactive world and some genuinely funny bits that pop up spontaneously as you travel through the world. Which goes back to driving for a moment, I simply don’t care that the driving isn’t realistic at all because walking around is where it’s at, in this game at least.

If you are a person who goes with the flow, Watch_Dogs can be quite simply one of the most distracting sandbox games ever made. Where around every corner, on every phone, something is happening in this big city. The police could stop it, but they don’t leaving Aiden Pearce to pick up the slack.

Which is what I find most enjoyable about the game, it’s a bit of a mashup of Assassin’s Creed, Splinter Cell, Blade Runner, and that movie Hackers from 1995. Kind of like Sam Fisher, meets Rick Deckard, with a dash of Zero Cool.

The game is, very much an enhanced sandbox. It does feel very much like a living city on the surface and it is indeed immersive. When I first booted the game I was a little underwhelmed graphically.

I was expecting to be blown away. I wasn’t. That was until it started raining, and the light and water effects started appearing everywhere. Puddles had dynamic reflections, sidewalks glistened and reflected lights from billboards. Then I remembered that the original reveal was done showcasing the rain.

Personally, I was underwhelmed by the music, I was expecting something along the lines of Grand Theft Auto‘s well fleshed out radio system. But instead it was a lot of mediocre pop music and dubstep. Ehh, it’s a quibble but it really started to wear on me. I mean how many times can you hear Kid Cudi’s “Day and Nite” before you turn the music off?

The game is, at it’s core one of the best examples of a truly next gen sandbox game. Did it live up to the hype? I don’t really know, I didn’t follow the pre release hoopla so I don’t exactly know where the release was supposed to rank on the hypeometer.

I can say, that Ubisoft has put together a game that is definitely worth the money. The only thing I would have liked to see is a better musical score but, Muddy Waters’ greatest hits loaded onto my HDD will suffice while running down the streets of Chicago.