Watch Dogs release date is May 27, fresh trailer shows Chicago blackouts

Watch Dogs has resurfaced after months off the grid. Not much has been seen of Ubi's hacker-in-Chicago open city adventure since they announced a big delay, but creative director Jonathan Morin confirms a new release date of May 27 on Twitter , and links to a new trailer showing hacker and magic-phone-owner Aiden Pearce running around always-online Chicago hitting people with a retractable truncheon, as is his wont.

The developers have had an extra six months of development time on Watch Dogs. Were they polishing up the city, or adding new features? They've promised multiple open-ended approaches to infiltration and assassination missions, which seems on first appearances to encompass the two contrasting approaches of "hack it" or "hit it with a stick". Perhaps it's unreasonable to expect subtlety from a man who blows up a petrol station every time he locks his phone the wrong way.

In case you've forgotten how Watch Dogs plays, here's Ubisoft's 14 minute in-game mission run. Check out Tyler's hands-on account for more, and check out the system specs to see if it'll run on your rig.

Tom Senior

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.