In an age of unimaginable government surveillance, you might think the surveillance-based Watch_Dogs would find more to say about the matter.

It must be awkward to spend upward of US$68 million dollars and five years in development on a game centred around hacking, while simultaneously ignoring the complications around unwarranted, state-sanctioned surveillance, the constant, wide-scale violations of privacy and the almost unfathomable security breaches taking place by the minute. And that's not even taking into account the real-world climate, an environment tempered by questions about drone strikes, cyber-attacks, the potential for identity theft and the utter disdain which Western countries' own intelligence agencies have for their citizens' civil liberties.

But that's Watch_Dogs - an open-world blockbuster which skirts around its own problems. I wonder what it's like for Ubisoft's editorial staff, a team of 70 or so who oversee every project in the company, to have the characters do nothing more than complain about the vulnerabilities and dangers of CTos - the state-sanctioned surveillance network recording everyone within Chicago: their online traffic, phone transmissions and even the flow of traffic - only to use the self-same system to commit their own equally-distasteful injustices.

In the middle of this den of iniquity sits Aiden Pearce, a nondescript sullen white male who, despite claims to the contrary, never displays a level of technical expertise beyond that of your grandparents calling talkback radio for advice with Windows. Rather than cobbling together electronic devices like a futuristic MacGyver, Pearce is wholly reliant on his phone. Without it, he'd still be a formidable close-quarters specialist with a penchant for gunplay, but that makes him the same as any other video game hero. He's Just Another Guy.

But Pearce's bland tale for revenge is nothing compared to the ultimate crime of Watch_Dogs. Miserably, five years of development and the contributions of hundreds of seasoned developers has done nothing more but completely butcher all of the romance, allure and the underground appeal of hacking. Instead of being the dark, subversive tool of the disestablishmentarian, Ubisoft has devolved it into a one-size-fits-all button for corporate espionage and occasional public mayhem. Rather than being the Kevin Poulson or Adrian Lamo of modern action-adventures, Watch_Dogs is the script-kiddie of our age, a world missing the soul of a Just Cause 2, the unbridled excitement of a Saints Row or the splendour of an Assassin's Creed.

In many ways, the game is hamstrung by modern mass market design, a composite of pre-tested ideas cobbled into a lifeless surrounding with a nondescript protagonist and a plot lacking the awareness or courage to confront its own issues. Instead of seizing the remarkably relevant window which Watch_Dogs has landed, the story squibs it at every available opportunity, using the kidnapping of Pearce's sister as a crutch to ignore the wider implications of a city and its infrastructure operating on compromised, interconnected computer systems.

The softly-softly approach would be less problematic if the starring cast were more of a joy to behold, but their lack of collective warmth and constantly spinning moral compasses make it impossible to care. Jordi Gomez, an eccentric supplier of weapons, vehicles and perhaps the closest thing Pearce has to a friend, is head and shoulders the most entertaining character, despite his penchant for dead bodies and explosives. He's quirky, funny and is one of the few who seems to actually be enjoying himself.

Pearce, on the other hand, spends most of his time regretting the past, vowing revenge or failing to properly appreciate the support of those around him. I've seen Pearce described in some quarters as an anti-hero, but in reality he's no different from the gang members he slaughters, the corporate mercenaries and headquarters he invades or the rogue engineers responsible for the creation of CTos. They're all complicit and just as happy to maim, murder and manipulate where necessary, with the poor citizens of Chicago caught in the crossfire.

The Gotham-like void of decency is best encapsulated with the opportunity to interrupt a crime, a la Minority Report. On the urging of CTos, Pearce is given an area to survey, using the in-game Profiler to examine who will be most likely to commit a crime or be the victim of one. Using the profiler gives you all sorts of information - what that person does for a living, how much they earn, and a notable trait or item from their history. The latter can range from working as a prostitute, to being diagnosed with Alzheimer's, questionable searches on Google or a standard, run-of-the-mill office job.

If you're so inclined, you can delve even deeper into people's lives, thanks to a series of video logs stored on CTos servers throughout the city. But the footage you find is nothing short of bizarre, which, in principle, makes sense: after all, if you're recording every moment of a person from dawn to dusk, you're guaranteed to capture some truly idiosyncratic behaviour.

But nobody twisted Ubisoft's arm and forced them to include fake wireframe videos of a psychopath chopping up a hand for a main course. Nobody would have frowned at the developers for leaving wireframe videos of people kissing mirrors, using sex toys or a camera capturing a man with a mental disability screaming as he runs around his own house. There's no shock value in what's contained, but there's no value in including it either. Pearce sometimes queries the ethics of CTos storing all this data, only to continue unleashing urban chaos on the streets of Chicago. So if the material isn't enough to make the main character care, why bother including it at all?

Putting those issues aside for a moment, the traditional open-world mechanics are tight and effective. Driving, at least on the PC code I reviewed, stutters at high speed and anything that's not a motorbike handles poorly, but otherwise Watch_Dogs is a perfectly-serviceable action-adventure. Anything less, mind you, would have been an utter shambles, considering much of the content has been hive-mined from Ubisoft's back-catalogue, repurposed for Pearce to hack at the touch of a button.

You'll be required to break into the city's camera network a lot, which thankfully gives rise to one of the standout features, Watch_Dogs' stealth-lite gameplay. The cameras unlock different perspectives, allowing Pearce to trip grenades, steam pipes, barriers, head-mounted communications and more from the safety of cover. It can also be used simply to plot a safe route forward, if the gunplay isn't to your liking.

Some missions explicitly require this, forcing Pearce to guide a target through a maze of guards in segments reminiscent of the stealth-action Republique. Some parallels can be drawn between the iOS title and Ubisoft's approach to hacking - the camera network and the battery usage for instance - but it feels fresh enough here. Manoeuvring guards around by triggering distractions, car alarms and explosions are a far greater advertisement for Watch_Dogs than Pearce, his enemies, the 4chan-esque rival hackers that appear later on and the surprisingly-drab surroundings of Chicago.

The graphics are a touch surprising, because it's technically very accomplished. At night, the falling rain, sporadic lights from buildings and cars and the chatter and movement of the NPCs combine beautifully without drastically destroying the frame rate. It's definitely a title worthy of the next-gen consoles, even if the level of spit and polish - and this will satisfy conspiracy theorists on certain forums - is a smidgen short from that spectacular E3 reveal two years ago.

What's a shame is just how lifeless Chicago is as a city. As scarily accurate as Ubisoft's recreation might be, it doesn't have the character of Hong Kong in Sleeping Dogs or the thrill of traversing among the rooftops of Rome in Assassin's Creed 2. Other games have equally-lifeless cities, but the mechanics of traversal are more fun, such as the free roaming in Infamous: Second Son or the superpowers available in Saints Row 4. Watch_Dogs permits fast travelling between hideouts, but it's a mechanic that lacks charm and grace and it's a disappointment that a better solution couldn't be found for something so heavily-hyped over the last two years.

The crowning achievement is the added realism in which NPCs go about their lives. A small group grows frustrated at Pearce if he photobombs them on the street. A pair I found by the water danced to a beatboxing third. It's the people (and the content that revolves around them) that come closest towards giving Watch_Dogs its own identity thanks to the randomised missions, vigilante opportunities and gang hideouts that they provide.

Where you stand on the online invasions is another matter. Enabled by default, Watch_Dogs allows players to interrupt your game by giving them the opportunity to hack your data. The victim's current session grinds to a complete halt as they scour an area looking for the opportunistic hacker. If the hacker is discovered, a chase begins until the intruder escapes or is caught. Alternatively, if the hacker is never found, they're awarded notoriety points, improving their position on the global leaderboard and unlocking extra skills.

The invasions can be just as frustrating as they are entertaining depending on the lay of the land where the hack takes place. Flat, open-areas are usually a cakewalk: the timer is long enough to scan everyone in the vicinity and, failing that, a few bullets into the air scatters NPCs quickly. Areas with multiple levels are a greater problem and there's always the prospect of someone causing grief through the network of cameras.

Online tailing is similar to the hacking, except you're required to follow your target instead of waiting for a download bar. Online Decryption is a form of capture the flag where one team collects the data (aka flag), and decrypts it (aka waits) before escaping. Races are fairly self-explanatory, except everyone can mess with traffic at will, which can get messy quickly. There's a cross-platform mode involving the Watch_Dogs mobile app, where the mobile/tablet player commands the traffic grid and police, trying to eliminate the PS4/Xbox One player.

There's additional content within the game-within-a-game digital trips and augmented reality distractions, but it's just mindless filler when you get down to it. Players have been salivating over Watch_Dogs for the prospect of hacking a city to pieces, delving into people's lives and dominating their existence by accessing things the target didn't even know about themselves.

Thanks to the profile and the world's most overpowered iPhone, all of this is possible in Watch_Dogs. The great tragedy is how unsatisfying it all feels. Unlike Assassin's Creed, where a fresh, engaging concept and a beautiful open-world lacked the masterful execution it deserved, the mechanics in Watch_Dogs are perfectly fine. Excellent, in some aspects. But the idea behind Aiden Pearce, the manner in which he skulks about on his derivative quest for revenge, is utterly dire.

Ubisoft has the technical skill and the team to produce an utterly outstanding sequel. The Disrupt engine powering Watch_Dogs has given life to the ordinary citizen like no game before it. Caring about the minutia is hard though when the main appeal - the hacking and the plot - is so threadbare. Whether Pearce should be scrapped and a new hero introduced, as with Assassin's Creed 3, is a question for the developers. But if Ubisoft wants this franchise to succeed, it needs to deliver a complete experience, not a fabulous engine with its main selling points stuck in second gear.

Rating: 6.5/10