I’m sure this was a week of day-time drinking. On Monday, Mike spoke about Rainbow Six Siege‘s new season patch and David talked about Mortal Kombat 4‘s re-release on GOG. Tuesday, I talked about WrestleMania’s relocation and Dari spoke on NaNoRenO the visual novel game jam. Wednesday, Abdul spoke about the Resident Evil 3 Demo that released today and I talked about what is replacing E3 this year. Thursday, Taylor spoke about reviewers racking up days worth of play in Animal Crossing before release and Abdul talked about the new trailer for Persona 5 Royal.

So on to the Epic Games Store games this week, and oh boy, it is one of those fun weeks. Like most, I’ve had some time off this week with more free time, though I wouldn’t even touch the first game in our double bill with all the free time in the world. Yes, it is Ubisoft’s 2014 mess of a game, Watch_Dogs. As I’ve said before, I love Watch_Dogs 2 to death and I’m so excited for Watch Dogs Legion set in London, by far one of my favorites of this past generation. However, I despise the first in the series because it is not fun.

Yes, we’re on one of my usual opinionated rants on games, so strap in or strap on. Aiden Pearce, moody protagonist model 1 in the catalog of moody men being very morose, is not a fun man to be around. His entire plot is summed up in: “Hello, I’m Aiden Pearce, my niece is dead. Get ready to die.” He’s an A-moral psychopath that’s pretending to be Batman without all the fun things like a voice made of gravel, a cape, millions of dollars, useful tech, a butler, and a personality. I’d rather sandpaper my genitals down to what could only be described as “Ken Doll-like” than be in his presence for a few minutes more.

The game itself is, OK. You are less of a “Watch_Dog” and more of a “script kiddie” using programs everyone else has engineered so you can use them on your phone. It might as well be “Harry Potter: The Mass Murderer Edition,” for how much of a magic wand the entire game’s USP is set upon. On its own, that would be fun (and it is in Watch_Dogs 2), but here with the human Grumpy Cat I just want to take him down by the Navy Pier on the New Eastside and throw him in the harbor while singing “In the Navy“

I know one of our staff lives in and around Chicago, but Watch_Dogs‘ take does not do the city justice. There is nothing fun about it as a map, as there are no views to grasp your surroundings, and when you’re surrounded by large grey buildings, everything looks the same. The smaller neighboring parts of the map don’t differentiate themselves much either, they all feel too uniform to their settings of “rich neighborhood,” “poor mass housing,” “struggling middle class,” “docks,” and “wilderness.” There is no proper character to the map, and if it did it would be depressing as well.

The last thing I want to rant about with this truly awful first installment is the “vigilante” business that it tries to work with. Aiden is not a vigilante, he’s a useless spod with a skewed sense of morality. He’ll find sex trafficking rings, mass gun-running, and all sorts, yet never do anything about them. He’s only concerned with who killed his niece and, quite frankly, I’d sell any of my relatives off for half a cheesecake given the chance. Watch_Dogs (1) is fine as long as you ignore the god-awful story completely.

The second and, as I already said last week, more enjoyable game is The Stanley Parable, a game that’s hard to directly talk about without spoiling. The Stanley Parable is a game about a man named Stanley but then again, obviously, it’s about Stanley, it wasn’t going to be about Clive in accounting. Stanley works in an office and everything he does is narrated by the wonderful voice of Kevan Brighting. The same Kevan Brighting of Dungeons 2 & 3, Doctor Who, and other voice acting fame.

Kevan guides you, playing as Stanley, through some mad multi-path comedy ends of what is pretty much a walking simulator if it was funny and well written. The biggest problem with that genre being its lack of ability to make you feel anything, just expositing that you should feel emotions. Unlike every David Cage game and other walking simulators, The Stanley Parable is funny, introspective, and all-round great. I can’t say much more without spoiling what is a fantastic game.

Both Watch_Dogs and The Stanley Parable are free on the Epic Games Store all throughout this week. Both are available until the morning of March 26th, next Thursday at 8 AM PDT/11 AM EDT/4 PM BST. This is when we’re back to smaller indie games, another double bill during your quarantine time, in both Figment and Tormentor X Punisher. 

Oddly, I was provided a review copy of Figment back when it released in September of 2017, and I’ll happily say I like it. It is a fun isometric puzzle game by the same developer that made Back To bed, another isometric puzzle game about getting a character back to bed. However, Tormentor X Punisher is a game I’ve never heard of and looks to be a 2004 flash game that was uploaded to Newgrounds. That’s not a bad thing, it just doesn’t catch the eye as much as Figment or others might, though it’s ultra gore, MS Paint, top-down, twin-stick shooter style does give it character.

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