Dishonored

Picked this up really cheap, and it's a cracker. I guess the closest thing I can think of to compare it to is a victorian era Deus Ex, mixed with dashes of Bioshock, Thief and System Shock, but that doesn't really do it justice.

In many ways, it feels a little old school. The game starts pretty much on-rails, the prologue and first level proper being quite linear and restrictive, which is a shame as I can see it putting a few people off, especially as the art style is consistent throughout yet not particularly striking, though it does run much more smoothly than the likes of Far Cry 3. Thankfully, things quickly pick up once the second level starts; you're gifted magical powers and given a whole level to play with.

Level design is one of Dishonored's strongest features. Every level is a self contained sandbox, featuring multiple paths throughout each as viable as the next, amd the joy of exploring these cannot be overstated, particularly once you start experimenting with the magic powers. You can teleport short distances with Blink, corssing otherwise impassable gaps, even vertically, allowing you to scurry across the roof of a level, out of sight and mind, you can possess rats and enter small air vents, taking you to places that would otherwise require a fight to reach, and presents you with opportunities to be an unseen assassin, using stealth to eliminate everyone without ever revealing yourself, or to go in like a devil, all flesh-ripping traps, explosive arrows, and swords through the gut. Or you can go for anything in between. It's testament to the game that no approach ever feels like the lesser option, everything is fleshed out to the point that it feels completely natural.

Case in point, high-ranking assassination targets. You can fight your way to them and simply shoot them in the face, that's what the game tells you to do. However, it also presents other ways of achieving your means, for example when trying to remove two high ranking parliamentary figures from their seats you can help out an NPC elsewhere in the level who will actually remove them for you. Not that this spares them; in the example above, rather than simply being killed, the two have their tongues removed, their heads shaved and are sold into slavery working in their own silver mines. Ouch.

So however you choose to approach Dishonored, it's a game that asks you to think, plan, be smart. It's a wonderfully empowering game because of this, as you lurk in the shadows knowing the powers you possess and the options you have. It's elegantly designed to make the most of those tools, but isn't afraid of changing the rules in order to keep its (admittedly predicatble) story bubbling along. It ends rather abruptly, and it is a touch odd that you cannot take the powers you have earned into a new game. Neither can you revisit missions with your full arsenal, the game resetting your powers to those you had during your original playthrough. A shame, because revisiting early levels fully powered would be tremendous fun.

I started by saying how it pulls aspects from other games, but it never feels less than its own thing. It's a beautifully crafted game world, very strong lore and despite the lack of NG+ it still feels rewarding to tackle earlier levels via a different path. There were some really good games released last year, and this is right up there as one of the best.

Yeah, I was following it before it was released but then ended up not getting it despite how fun it looked. Still waiting for a good steam sale.

Comparing it to Deus Ex and Thief is giving it too much credit but the game is good, if a bit easy and lacking replay value.

Neo wrote:

... lacking replay value.

Hardly.

There are at least two endings, one for low chaos (ie stealthy) one for high chaos (murdering everyone), and the multiple paths through each level mean there's plenty of reason to go back and revisit earlier levels. As for comparing it to Deus Ex, I had a lot more fun with Dishonored than I did with Human Revolution.

I assumed you meant Deus Ex 1 as you also mentioned Thief, I still don't think this is better than HR though.

Anyway, yes, there are two endings, but the levels are all exactly the same and whether you kill a person or KO them makes very little difference. I'm not interested in doing the exact same things a second time over with the only difference being whether I shoot someone with a bolt or a sleeping dart.
On top of that there's only one non-lethal way to neutralise each mark, all of which are more interesting than just stabbing them, so if you've played through the game once and used all the interesting methods there's not much else it can offer you.

Define really cheap and tell me where so i can get it. Also how short is it?

Depends on how you play the game, it could probably be finished in 5 hours or so but I took a lot longer.

I got it in-store from Blockbuster, advertised at 19.99 with 30% off, so paid fourteen quid. Length will vary dependant on how long you choose to spend in each level, but there are nine stages of varying length; the first can be cleared in half an hour, though every level thereafter will take at least an hour, some two or even three.

I reckon an average first play through would see a solid twelve to fifteen hours, and the only way you'd ever do it in five is if you chose to throw caution to the wind and run through each level guns blazing on easy. I don't see five hours as being remotely feasible (not to mention any fun at all) on a first time run. As above, some of the later levels are huge.

There was a whole lot of drama on release because a bunch of people finished it in about that amount of time and some tried to start shit on various forums and sites.

I'll assume it takes around 7-8 then. Neo always flies through stuff faster than me and Simian you always take longer. I'll check it out though, anything being vaguely comparable to Deus Ex is only a good thing.

I took like 20 hours to finish it because I literally explored everything, read everything, found everything etc. Was just making it clear that it could be finished very quickly if you were so inclined.

There's a small minority who like to strok their e-peens by flying through a game as quickly as is humanly possible and bragging about it. To do so is to miss the whole experience, it is utterly stupid, like someone watching your favourite film on fast forward and then moaning it wasn't as good as they'd have hoped.

Buu, yes, I'm always very thorough as I don't like to miss stuff and I daresay my own completion time was close to Neo's, around twenty hours, though I did actually still miss a fair amount. I said the average completion time would be 12-15 hours because I was allowing for some people to be going as quickly as possible rather than savouring it, especially as the high chaos path would require less stealth and patience than the (more rewarding) low chaos path.

Yeah it is a shame when people fly through a game, i'd fully explore on a stealthy run, most of the time i never bother with the fuck shit up option on games.

Low Chaos gameplay from the mid-game;






The same level approached with a High Chaos mindset

There's now a Definitive Edition of this for XO and PS4, but sadly it's a pretty poor effort. Unlike TLoU or the new GoW (both God of War and Gears of War!) there's been very little effort made to upgrade the original games assets in any way, it's exactly the same but at slightly higher resolution and with all the original's DLC. Most gallingly, not only does it not run 60fps, it can't even manage a locked 30fps.

It's a great game, but the "Definitive Edition" is a very lazy port and I'd urge boycotting it for that reason alone.

SimianWonder wrote:

There's now a Definitive Edition of this for XO and PS4, but sadly it's a pretty poor effort.  Unlike TLoU or the new GoW (both God of War and Gears of War!) there's been very little effort made to upgrade the original games assets in any way, it's exactly the same but at slightly higher resolution and with all the original's DLC.  Most gallingly, not only does it not run 60fps, it can't even manage a locked 30fps.

It's a great game, but the "Definitive Edition" is a very lazy port and I'd urge boycotting it for that reason alone.

Thanks for the info.