Watch_Dogs

Why start with Watch_Dogs then? Out of all these games, why this one?

 I know that when Watch_Dogs came out, it was in a pretty poor state. The LOD and popin issues were really bad, the performance was uneven at best and unplayable at worst.
And the big graphics downgrade from the previously shown version made the PC crowd completely loathe it. And aside from technical problems the story is pretty moronic and the protagonist is a mess.


 But there's been patches, and Watch_Dogs now is nothing like when it first arrived, it runs smoothly, the popin is almost all gone and the LOD issues are completely fixed. Add to that the excellent "TheWorse Mod" which makes the game look much closer to the originally promised visuals and we have a completely different game now compared to at release.

Image courtesy of deadendthrills

 Graphics aren't everything, obviously. Sure the main story is stupid and Aiden's motivation makes no sense. Kill thousands of people to avenge the death of one person, steal from innocent bystanders and so on. But it's got some really excellent side stories, like the slave market auctions you're trying to shut down. I think that whole story arc is fantastic.

  I also really like the "hacking" and stealth mechanics, scoping out a location via cameras and other means to find your targets, plan your approach and taking them down undetected has the same thrill as in any of the great stealth classics.

 Lastly, I think Watch_Dogs has extremely underrated driving mechanics, which could partially be explained by the poor performance at launch, but with that now sorted it's really pretty good. The physics are good enough that maneuvers like a Scandinavian flick actually works. Cars also handle extremely differently and there are many to chose from.

 So I picked Watch_Dogs as my first game to complete because I really like it, think it's hugely underrated and was more than halfway though the main story when I stopped for whatever reason, so it shouldn't take the rest of the year for me to complete. 
That should hopefully help keep me motivated going forwards with my backlog mission.