Oh boy…okay, short version, this game SUCKS. Do not buy this game. Do not rent this game. Do not think about renting this game. Don’t think about thinking about renting this game. Don’t let your friends think about thinking about renting this game. Avoid it. Save your money. If you really want to get your first-person stealth games one, play one of the myriad of better ones from the last fifteen years. Okay, I probably need to give you the long version now, don’t I? Well, just as a disclaimer in the interests of transparency, I didn’t actually finish the game. I physically could not bring myself to play through this entire game, so what you have here is my riff, based off of several hours of gameplay, supplemented by watching Let’s-Plays and Wikipedia, as necessary. That was an unusual turn for me, as if I drop money on a game, I damn well play it to the end, to get my money’s worth, even if it isn’t particularly good in my opinion. For Dishonored to have repulsed me to the point of returning it the next day should tell you something. I mean, if I am being totally honest with myself, it isn’t the worst game that I have ever played, not by a long shot, but for a game that got 10 out of 10s from a bunch of professional reviewers, this was frustratingly agonizing.
Wrongly accused of a crime he didn’t commit, our hero must take revenge against the people who wronged him. With the wider world convinced our hero slew his loved one, he must unravel the conspiracy that aligned against him, with the occasional aid of comrades and a patron of sorts. No, I’m not describing the plot of the latest Steven Segal straight-to-DVD movie, this is the entire plot of Dishonored. And you know what? That might have been fine on its own. Sometimes the best stories told are simple archetypical ones. As long as these tried and true tropes are presented in an interesting way. Unfortunately, Dishonored does jack-all with it. You are basically thrust straight into revenge killing mode LESS THAN TWO MINUTES AFTER HITTING START. The only thing that they did to try to lessen the cliché storyline, was to add a sort of morality system, albeit one that even games like Alpha Protocol, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect have accomplished to much better effect. Basically, your two choices are to be wimpy and pacifistic save for a few kills, or the paragon of RAGEMURDER. All an all, the execution was pretty boring. This is all compounded on top of the fact that the main character, Corvo is a complete non-entity in his own game. And not in that semi-charming silent way like Link is, or a fully customizable blank slate fit for self insertion like the Knights of the Old Republic game. Just…an eternally silent, completely reactive, completely forgettable mute set of hands.
The gameplay of Dishonored is…okay listen, if you have ever played a first-person stealth game in the last fifteen years, say the Thief series or The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, you have played this game. Stick to the shadows, sneak up behind a guy, kill him and take his stuff. Try to avoid being spotted by nameless mooks and steam-robots, complete an objective, make all uber-antagonists dead. The controls are pretty much exactly what you’d expect them to be, and even the inclusion of magic powers granted to the main character won’t throw you for a curve. Speaking of those magic powers, your teleportation spells is your most useful power, as it can vastly change the way you go about completing a level. But even this bit of supposed praise for its innovative multiple-path, multiple-level level completion is marred by the fact that, once again, older games did it already, and they did it better. Hell, even ass-clenchingly awful games like Shadowrun for the X-Box 360 had a better teleportation mechanic. I cannot stress enough how utterly sad that is. However, if I were to cut this game some slack, the controls are very responsive, and there is very little in the way of glitches, or excessive load times, even without installing it onto your consol. So the game achieves competence in the realm of mechanics at least.
Moving on to the atmosphere side of things, the blandness of this game continues. The admittedly interesting idea of blending magical ideas into a late Victorian steampunk setting, with all of the associated aesthetics you would expect, is unfortunately undercut by the terrible graphics. No hyperbole, I thought these were Gamecube graphics at best. And the art direction was wildly inconsistent. Some people and mechanical creations have a unique look that might separate Dishonored from the pack, if not for the fact that most the game is uninspired to the point of cohesion loss. Most boats, houses, etc. is so bland you might see them down on Lake Champlain, and not on the banks of a might pseudo-British steampunk empire. Just, you will flat out get confused as to the supposed technology level of the time, is all I’m saying. Musically, this game is hilariously underutilized. After hours of playing, I couldn’t even hum you a few vague tunes from it. Not even from the title screen or something. Atmospherically, it adds nothing to the game, as it’s so forgettable and non-context sensitive, that you might not even realize that there IS music. The voice acting is…a mixed bag. Some of it is performed ably enough, and others are…less than satisfactory let’s say. I’m getting a bit tired of frothing at the mouth over this game’s failure anyway. So yeah, in a medium fraught with could-not-care-less voice actors, Dishonored gets a pass.
As you can probably tell by my subtle inflections and vague allusions, I did not particularly care for Dishonored. I found it bowel-shatteringly cliché and boring. And really, that is the worst sin that any form of media can commit. Things that are bad to the point of incompetence can almost be BETTER than things that are boring. Because it is forgettable, and is just a waste of time. At least with some “bad” things, you can get that “it’s so bad its good” effect, which boring things obviously lack. I cannot stress this enough, leave this game in the dust-bin. Play anything else. Hell, play the really old E.T. game for the Atari…at least that game is so bad it is almost academically fascinating. You’ll see what I mean.
