Dishonored: Fist Impresssions

Dishonoured adverts tell you that you can play the game "guns blazing" as a crazed assassin mad for revenge, or you can play it cool and calculated, striking from the shadows like a dark spirit of vengeance.

These adverts fail to tell you that playing Dishonoured as a straight out first person action game is super freaking dull. Combat though flashy can get very boring very fast. In fact as I first started playing the game and went about slicing and shooting people in the face I was like: meh

If you want to get the most out of Dishonoured you need to play it taking advantage of it's stealth elements, but that's not to say that the stealth in the game is awesome, far from it. In fact for a stealth game the mechanics in Dishonoured are pretty bland. It's not gonna do anything to take fame away from such titles as Splinter Cell conviction or even the Batman Arkham games.

Stealth in Dishonoured means crouching. But even then depending on how the game feels, you might hid in a corner and have a guard walk right by you, or you might reload a save and the damn guard will spot you in the same exact spot he missed you in a while ago. And you'll find that a lot of the game is broken this way. It helps though that none of the NPCs in Dishonoured have peripheral vision, so you can just walk up to a baddie and stab him in the neck as long as you walk to em in  a straight line from behind or from the side.

Another thing about Dishonoured is that the NPCs don't really care about each other. If there are three people in a room and you kill one of them, the other two will keep talking without a worry. They won't even notice that their friend is missing. I mean come on! for all the bullshit realism the adverts for Dishonoured boasts with its "fully realised world" - you'd think they would pay attention to something like that. If they were lazy to do anything they could have just added some bull shit dialogue.

"Hey where did Ben go?"
"His probubly gone for a piss again"
"That Ben sure does have a weak bladder"
"yeah ... I won't be the least bit worried if he never came back"

Also there was all this hype about the "PC" edition of the gaming having special attention given to controls. Is that why by default your left hand is mapped to the right mouse button and your right hand is on the left button? The amount of people I shot in the head instead of quietly stabbing... 

So basically the "one on one" components of Dishonoured aren't the sharpest, but I had fun trying to stealth my way through it. So much so that I kept loading saves when ever I got caught. I actually haven't killed too many people either because it takes longer to make em pass out without getting caught - and I like that added challenge. Plus the less people you kill, the less guards there are in later levels etc.

Speaking of challenge, the first chapter of the game is probably the most demanding, at least it was for me (I'm currently on the 4th chapter)

When stealth kills are just you and the dark, it gets very intense. But then the game has all these fancy gear and supernatural powers that it gives you. I remember seeing early trailers for the game, show casing these special moves, thinking that they looked way over powered. Playing through the game with them - they are almost like "God mode."

There are tone of things you can pick, but all you really need to totally pwn everything is Blink and this ability that allows you to see NPCs through walls, including field of vision. Once you pick these up you're pretty much boss.Blink lets you instantly teleport to any spot you can see.

You also have traps and stuff, but there really is no point to these except to kill boredom.

Why set up a spring trap when you can so easily just blink behind a baddie, slice him and blink out? I only used my traps once so far - just to check em out.

Visually the game looks pretty good in a Bioshock: infinite sorta way. The art and design for the game is what I love the most and is the only thing I think it does really well. The  Gothic / "Alice in wonderland" nightmarish world you get to explore is very awesome to look at. The people look good, but move like claymation, so the animation isn't the sharpest. And though the self contained levels are big, the missions them selves are pretty leaner.

As is the trend with most of the games that Bethesda publishes, the fun parts of Dishonoured are when you make the most of its given mechanics to forge your own adventure. There is a story in here some where, but I stopped listening when our hero is accused of a murder he didn't comminet, and instead of saying "hey I just got here" - he goes all Gordon Freeman on us and allows him self to get fudged.

You may not believe me, but I do like playing Dishonoured, but it's not as awesome as the critics make it out to be. I don't know what side of the bed these people woke up on when they played Dishonoured because I can see this game very easily bombing into 'midcore' territory depending on the reviewers mood.

If you're hard out for an action game, this wont do. If you're up for a poor man's "Thief" then Dishonoured might do it for you. But be warned - it requires a great deal of patience to get the most out of it. It will basically serve well those folks who claim they want a challenge but still haven't played Dark Souls because it's too hard.