Watch Dogs: Legion (2020) (PC) (Ubisoft Toronto)
0The last Ubisoft open world game I really liked was Assassin's Creed Origins. That was only three short years ago, but it feels like another lifetime altogether given that both the barely iterative Assassin's Creed Odyssey (2018), the politically confused Far Cry 5 (2018) and the critical dud Ghost Recon Breakpoint (2019) has been released since 2017. This year, Ubisoft is going into fiscal year overdrive with Watch Dogs: Legion and Assassin's Creed Valhalla coming out within weeks of each other. If we didn't catch open world fatigue before (which seems more contagious than covid-19 at this point), we sure will get it now...
As much as Legion tries to experiment with the tried-and-true formula by introducing randomized playable characters and optional perma-death options, it's hard to know just what to say about a Ubisoft game at this point. You traverse a big map, get quests, kill enemies, solve minor puzzles and smash into a whole lot of pedestrians by mistake (mostly, anyway) - and that's about it. The game's futuristic London is nicely rendered (particularly with raytracing enabled), but there's nothing really distinctive about this vision of a surveillance state hellscape, and the whole concept feels rather stale when compared with, say, the lush Orientalist fantasies of Assassin's Creed Origins or even the straight-faced nostalgia of Mafia: Definitive Edition.