Watch_Dogs really was terrific, and a lot of the hate came from a vocal minority of internet spergs who got assmad about how its E3 trailer looked slightly better than the retail PC release. None of the hate was about any of the five different console versions, let alone how the DLC-free Wii U version was a year late for no reason.
Why does this video have 7.2 million views? Oh no, the details in the physics engine aren't absolutely mind-blowing. What did you expect? It was a fun game otherwise, and causing crashes by hacking street lights to run the police in pursuit off the road was a lot of fun. Even the protagonist, albeit bland, was believable. At least a lot more believable than the soft black kid you play as in the sequel who looks more like he should be holding a game controller than a gun.
Aside from the graphics issue (which didn't effect me, since I do my AAA gaming on consoles), people complained a lot about Watch_Dogs for being too empty or something. A lot of people seemed to expect it to be GTA and were pissy that they didn't get GTA: Smartphone Edition, OR thought it was going to be one of those spergy hacking simulators. I thought the actual game played better than a GTA, though. The hacking was sort of shallow, but it did exactly what it needed to, and I thought it had a pretty large effect on the gameplay. I don't know, I just got way more satisfaction out of interacting with Chicago and the minigames and the hacking system than I did out of anything in GTA V.
The story was a bit of a shame in that they didn't do much with the idea of government/corporate surveillance in favor of a Mob story, but the Mob story was executed well. I think it's one of those things where the cliches only bother you if you've been exposed to them a lot already... I don't play/watch a ton of that sort of thing, so it didn't feel cliche to me. Aiden Pearce was definitely a better character than Marcus Holloway. Marcus is superficially charismatic, but I cannot believe him, in any situation, shooting gangbangers with an assault rifle. I found Aiden sympathetic and accessible.
Plus, Watch_Dogs 2 felt so shitty in terms of quality. I never could get into it, really. But it seemed like the city was really empty, the car chases and car handling were clunky (I LIKED the realistic, heavy cars in Watch_Dogs, Watch_Dogs 2 is a fucking cartoon), and the profile stuff when you scan people seems like it was written by some soyboy who's never left the rich part of San Francisco, because everybody has a lol-so-quirky personality and a white collar job.
I'm interested in Legion but am put off by the politics. It's also pretty lame that they're making the NPCs more or less identical. You should NOT be able to parkour as some 80-year-old grandmother.
It still blow's my mind how people still try to paint AC3 like it's the Devil may Cry2 of the series. Everyone loves to suck off the ezio trilogy ( mostly nostalgia ) and Black flag, even though brotherhood and revelations are 2 glorified DLC's for AC2 stretched out with filler to make a full game, ( witch was admitted by the actual fucking devs ) and Black Flag having the most tailing missions and is the biggest copy and paste job in the series, " buh datz ookaeee cuz MUH PIRATEZ". And since 3 all they did was strip features, can't pick up weapons ( unity and forward ) can't air assassinate with any weapon ( unity and forward ) can't assassinate from blend spots ( black flag and forward ) limited tools to use ( Black Flag and forward ), no assassin recruits ( black flag and forward ) and don't get me started on how much they shoehorn in micro transactions since 4, "time savers" lol fuck off.
I remember people mostly bitching that AC3 was too slow and boring and that it was all too scripted. I suppose it was comparatively more scripted. But for me, I really liked the story, the minigames, and the world design. It felt like a masterpiece of an homage to the American Revolution.