Watch Dogs must be one of the most hyped up games of 2014, and today we find out whether the game can deliver on all its promises.

The game is available on PS3, PS4, PC, Xbox 360, and Xbox One from today, 27 May 2014, with a Wii U version said to become available later in the year.

Without further ado, here is what the critics have to say about Watch Dogs, and the aggregated Metacritic score.

Eurogamer – 7/10 (PS4)

Watch Dogs doesn’t have that promising kernel. It certainly entertains, but mostly through borrowed concepts, and the central notion that could have made it stand out – the hacking – is the most undercooked of all. It doesn’t get anything horribly wrong, but nor does it excel at any of the genre beats it so faithfully bangs out.

It’s good, and yet that always feels like a criticism when a game comes weighed down by this much hype. You won’t regret the time you spend in Aiden Pearce’s world, but nor will it be saved as a precious memory when you reboot.

Joystiq – 4/5 (PS4)

The advanced technology in Watch Dogs is not just indistinguishable from magic – it IS magic. The game would have you believe you’re the world’s most powerful hacker, bending surveillance cameras, traffic control and all manner of personal electronics to your one-touch whims. But in this paranoid vision of the future, in which every mundane device is grafted to the same computerised skeleton, the right software might as well be an all-powerful wand.

Watch Dogs is a more fluid and modern power fantasy than we’re used to. Somewhere, in its vague, fantastical version of hacking, there’s a lesson about the power and the naughty temptations that lie in our networked, selfie-infested world.

GameSpot – 8/10 (PS4)

Aiden’s soul is still locked away, too, even though I spent dozens of hours with him. But while I can’t say who Aiden truly is, I can confidently say that Watch Dogs is a lushly produced and riotous game with an uncanny ability to push you from one task to the next, each of which is just as fun as the last.

This version of Chicago is crawling with a hyperbolic number of degenerates, and I didn’t mind squashing pyromaniacs and slavers under my tyres as I ploughed through the streets chasing after a hacker, hip-hop beats blasting from the radio. After all, the struggling mothers and homeless beggars wandering Chicago deserve some peace of mind, and doling out some street justice is a good first step.

CVG – 9/10 (PS4)

Aiden’s journey – like Far Cry’s Jason Brody before him – is a chain of progressively murkier decisions and justifications, and the game isn’t scared to pull you up short from time to time to ask you if you’re really comfortable with the man Aiden is becoming.

That makes all the recent internet hand-wringing over resolution and frame rates doubly egregious. Watch Dogs is smart, punchy, HBO-boxset-worthy storytelling spun together with solid stealth, responsive gunplay and voyeuristic power fantasy. It isn’t perfect, and it isn’t the graphical supermodel that Ubisoft showed at the game’s announcement. But as the ‘next-gen’ poster child we were promised, Watch Dogs delivers and then some.

Watch Dogs

Polygon – 8/10 (PS4)

As an open-world game, Watch Dogs provides “enough” – enough side-quests, enough space, enough of a playground – to qualify, but it doesn’t quite place. Other games have nailed a better balance in optional activities and large-scale ambiance, including other games from Ubisoft Montreal.

But when Watch Dogs focuses on the things it does better than anyone else, it finds an identity worth developing. As a hybrid open-world stealth-action game, it’s in a class by itself.

PC Gamer – 8.7/10 (PC)

At times, Watch Dogs can seem like a game we’ve played before, just another open-world city to speed through in a series of stolen cars, another crowd of hoods and hitmen to add to your body count, another moody, growling protagonist to endure in cutscenes. When it deviates from the familiar, however, it really soars: hacking the city of Chicago and all its cameras, utilities, and communications is freeing and fun, and invading the games of unsuspecting players is an unusual and welcome thrill.

For those of you who have played the game, give us your impressions in the comments and forum.

More gaming news

Games you can clock in an afternoon

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare – new weapons and vehicles

Blizzard to sue Starcraft 2 hackers