Watchdogs Legion is back after 4 a 4 year hiatus and Ubisoft is promising that it’s bigger and better than ever before.

Set in the London in the not so distant future, the city has been transformed into a dystopian surveillance state after the hacking group DedSec is framed for a series of terror attacks on various locales around the city. A private military company, After the explosions, the British government contracts Nigel Cass, the CEO of private military company Albion, to hunt down DedSec and restore order to the city causing much unrest with the residents.

One of the big changes to Watchdogs Legion is that you can literally play as anyone. In the first game, we played as Aidan Pearce, the second one introduced us to Markus Holloway but this time, your main character is the hacker collective. You can recruit people to be members of the team off the streets. Each person has their own unique weapons, specialties or background. You can pick up a construction worker who comes with the specialty of calling in a cargo drone or even an old lady who’s extremely adept at using a taser.

To me this seemed like a strange decision to make but it actually works and I think the reason it does is primarily because of the sarcastic and incredibly well voiced and written character Bagely, the teams AI. Personally, I stuck to 2 or 3 characters for my playthrough and that may have also played a role in keeping me grounded.

Most of the gameplay mechanics you expect from the series are there. You can send cars veering off the roads and into oncoming traffic, flip the switch on road barricades and shutting down pursuit drones and the hacking minigames which are some of my favorite things in the series. One of the neat things about the game is not only can you use anyone but the ways at which you can handle missions can vary dramatically. You can actually finish many quests without even firing a weapon or by using a spider drone for the 90% of the mission and then just go in and clean things up as the hacker.

You’ll find plenty of things to do in the game. From taking down propaganda and helping the citizens of London rise up against the oppressive occupation to seeking out underground bare knuckle fight clubs and new upcoming DLC you’ll be well taken care of with entertainment for hours. One thing I found to be a bit perplexing or odd was being told that you only should use weapons as a last resort but then suddenly being thrust into gun battles after some story beats. The boss battles are fun but felt a bit underwhelming. One in particular was surprisingly easy as it only took me about 10 seconds to taking this person down. I had fully expected some sort of big ordeal and to have to try multiple times but that wasn’t what happened.

An interesting note is Watch Dogs Legion has some major similarities with the first game in the series.. and that’s the fact that they both come in at the end of a generation and the birth of a new one meaning it’s a cross gen title which proved to some less than optimal results for the franchise’s early days. I’m pleased to say that I think they’ve really fond their stride here. My Xbox One X handles the game admirably and I found the graphics to be stunning. I’m more than a little excited to play this on my Series X next week.

Watch Dogs always felt like this was Ubisoft’s GTA and they also had high expectations and lofty goals with the series that they never could quite deliver on. It feels like Watch Dogs Legion, the series has finally hit it’s stride. It’s a fun engaging game with plenty of technological advancements that they’ve been promising for years. I really enjoyed my time with Watch Dogs Legion. The campaign took me roughly 20 hours to complete and I’ve since moved on to more side missions as I wait for next gen to arrive. Watch Dogs Legion is a game that demands your attention and time this season.

Pros:
– Graphics are beautiful on current and sure to please on next gen consoles
– Voice acting and writing for Bagely was genuinely outstanding
– The series feels like it’s grown up into the original vision it always had

Cons:
– Boss battles were a bit too easy
– Bugs in the system. The game crashed to dashboard on me more times than I care to count