At the minute I’m playing through Watch_Dogs, Ubisoft’s long-hyped open world game focused on hacking the creepily prescient virtual operating system responsible for running an entire city. I’m having a lot of fun with it, as it has some cool ideas for combat and exploration that leverage the unique idea at the heart of the game. However, none of the extensive preview coverage I watched or read before the game’s release has prepared me for some of the crazy ways that the game’s developers push the idea of a super-digitised world through side missions and activities. Regardless of whether or not I end up reviewing – or even finishing – the game, I wanted to highlight the ridiculousness of some of the stuff I never expected to be doing in Watch_Dogs, but that is keeping me moored in Act I of the game’s story:
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Giant Flower Bouncing
This was actually one of the first things I did in the game, launching me right into completely unexpected territory. Several street vendors offer you the ability to take part in “digital trips”, which are pretty much self-explanatory. They transport protagonist Aiden Pearce into the world of a bad acid trip, changing up the game’s mechanics in the name of the kinds of minigames you’d normally only see in a Japanese-developed title. The trip aptly named “Psychedelic” has you bouncing belly-first from giant blooming flower to giant blooming flower, using the control stick to angle your trajectory and trying to land as close to the middle of each flower as possible. It’s actually quite difficult and there are plenty of levels to play through.
“I’m flyyyyiiiing!” cries our hero, completely un-ironically.
Vagrant Rant 