Dishonored

Dishonored
No more Mr. Nice guy?

I had the chance to put my hands on a game called Dishonored lately. A game that won’t actually be praised for its details or graphic quality but instead choose to let the players play. And it’s an honor to be playing this Dishonored. The game is actually kind of hard to describe properly and fully with a review without going into spoiling people with details about each mission that could clarify a lot of things but here we go.

Dishonored takes place in a vast and open world and is a solo, first person action/adventure. It lets you make your decisions as far as which way you’re going to take or how you’re going to do the game. And it chooses not to interrupt the flow of gaming with cut scenes, cinematics or unbearable loading times each time you open a door or walk into a new enemy like many games are sadly doing nowadays.

In Dishonored, you play as Corvo. Once the protector of the Empress, Corvo comes back to her with an important message at the beginning, but only to see her get killed and have her daughter taken from her. You’ll be accused of the murder of the Empress right from the start and be taken to prison. To start on you’ll have to escape before your execution. Once you made it out of the prison you will meet an ally that will safely take you to a little village and the people there will be nice to you. They will provide you with missions that you will have to accomplish in an attempt to bring back the daughter of the Empress and finally get your revenge on the very people and men who conspired against you. It reminds me a little of games like Zelda, that I was a big fan of when I was a kid. Dishonored gives you the freedom to actually talk to the people in the little town and actually make a search for useful stuff as much as you want before going to your next mission each time. And if not everyone has something interesting or useful to say, some of them might provide you with hints and even side missions that you can do, only if you are willing to. One of the town’s resident is the guy to provide you with ammo and weapons when you need it, but of course you have to have enough money to buy. Money that you will acquire by exploring the areas while playing the game.

It may be worth to mention that the game uses the Unreal Engine. An Engine that’s well known in the world of gaming today and surely provides comfort and fun in terms of the mechanics and controls of your character and actions. So this is not so hard to master and it’s easy and fun as soon as you start to play thanks god. The difficulty might actually vary depending on which path you will take, the kind of player you are, how you’re willing to do the adventure. If the A.I is not so bad at times, there are little depressing moments when your enemies won’t be able to see you once you crouched behind a wall or under a table. I was sure I was to be seen at times since my head was a little uncovered after I had crouched but no. Some enemies will even look under the table and right in your face, but they won’t see you. It’s a little funny. But if you plan your gaming on stealth, make sure that once they know you’re there, they will look for you. So you can’t really remain inactive for too long.

The gameplay is really free and fun. You will have the chance to choose the path you take for every mission such as the roofs, the streets and even sometimes the sewers or the sea shores, cause it will allow you to. You can decide to do an easy and comfortable ride, taking your time to explore the area in search of side missions, money and artifacts that will later allow you to trade them for ammo or powers. Powers such as night vision that will of course allow you to crouch in a corner and change the vision mode to see the enemies that are near, teleport jump will allow you to jump from a surface to another safely, helps a lot for stealth. And all these powers can be ameliorated by finding more of these artifacts and trading them. Actually, one of the first powers that you will be granted is a handmade heart that you can use as much as you want to locate the artifacts. The closer you get to it, the faster and louder the heart will beat indeed. Take care, your enemies might actually hear it beat if they’re passing by.

And you will be as free when comes the time to deal with the enemies and the main missions in course. Free to try stealth and try to walk pass everyone on your way, free to spot an enemy and knock him out without killing him or go for the kill. In fact, instead of telling you how to defeat a certain area, this game lets you choose how you will do it. But of course you will have to live with the consequences of your actions. And you won’t be interrupted unless you’re killed. This is kind of refreshing not to be told that the game stops as soon as you will be seen in a certain area.

In terms of combat and killing, if you plan on taking the enemies face to face, there is a pretty nice fighting system even for a first person game that will allow you to duel with the foes with your sword or gun. I’m playing this on PS3, but the controls are as easy as simple as R1 to fight with your right hand weapon and L1 to use your left hand. Blocking becomes necessary of course. But the overall difficulty might actually trick you. Because if killing or knocking one opponent down is relatively easy, you might find yourself thinking about what will be your next step just to end up doing against your will. There is some sense of realism that makes the fights against 3 or 4 enemies at the same time a little tricky. Then again, you might die just to try and hide the bodies in a better place next time or try a different approach, so in this way the game doesn’t even happen to be frustrating when a lot of other games are based on getting the players angry. In this particular game, it’s just fun to learn from a mistake that could have been avoided. Then again, since you make your own decisions, the story and script seems to be influenced by these decisions you will make and that surely helps the value. Cause you will at some point be asked from your friends to kill a certain person but you may find yourself asked to save the life of the person you’re about to kill by someone else. What kind of reward or consequence awaits you after you made your choice and acted though? This is all yours to find out.

At a time when games value rely solely on making a campaign and remaking the same missions on multi player modes or repeating the same stuff on versus modes, Dishonored is a game which value offers you to take different approach and different decisions each time you will retry a chapter or mission. And providing you with more than one path or more than one outcome offered in more than one mission, the fun of doing this solo adventure and redoing it to live darker or lighter consequences clearly adds to the story where many games won’t even let you play but interrupt you each time you cross a new enemy or bring you to the game over screen only cuz you went in the opposite direction or you’ve been seen where you shouldn’t have. Dishonored does exactly the opposite and lets you play the game the way you want to. I still have to see the overall outcome that my first attempt will provide me with but I surely made choices that make me doubt myself or still have me thinking about doing the opposite next time just to see where it will lead me. Choices that will have an influence on the story, the next step and will add to the value of the game just make this game one of the biggest and funniest surprise so far this year in my opinion.

9/10

So what type of person are you?
-Do you love comfort and prefer taking it easy by taking the time to fully explore an area in search of money, ammo or any other useful thing before leaving the area behind, or are you the straight forward type that refuses to waste precious time when an important mission has to be accomplished?

-Are you the gentleman type? The nice guy that will avoid killing. The player that will excuse himself to a lady for having seen her half naked or even refuse to kill her just cause she’s a lady? Or are you the type of player that always wants to raise the bar in terms of killing so much that you will attack and kill everyone that crosses your path and even do it randomly?

In Dishonored, the player is actually the one thing that matters and so they let each and every one play their own way but there’s something that’s been said more than once which results to be true after playing a game like that: This is surely hard to be a nice guy.

So. Killer or stealthy guy? Bad guy or nice guy? Think you can pull it off your own way in every aspect of this game? An easy pick and a really great game.