Dishonored Review
Dishonored's engrossing world and intoxicating interplay of supernatural powers make it a game you'll want to play more than once.
The Good
- Great suite of abilities encourages creativity
- Spacious environments riddled with pathways and secrets
- Lovely design brings the city to life
- Superbly voiced cast of interesting characters.
Dishonored is a game about many things. It's about revenge; armed with deadly weapons and supernatural powers, you seek vengeance upon all of those who orchestrated your downfall. It's about a city; the plague-ridden industrial port of Dunwall is lovely to behold, exciting to explore, and seething with secrets. It's about people; an array of vibrant characters await you, and as you get to know them, you are drawn further into their intrigues, hopes, and heartbreaks. But above all, it's about choice. The incredible variety of ways you can engage or evade your enemies makes Dishonored impressively flexible and utterly captivating.
You play as Corvo Attano, former bodyguard to the empress and current death row inmate. The prologue chronicling Corvo's crime not only inflames your desire for revenge, but also sparks your affection for a vulnerable character. These dual fires foreshadow the choice you have to make each time you encounter an enemy: do you walk the bloody path of brutal vengeance, or take the nonlethal high road and rise above the violence that suffuses the city? Your actions have small, yet tangible consequences throughout your quest, and it's up to you to decide what kind of retribution you want.
A cadre of conspirators helps you escape imprisonment, and you find out that they are plotting to bring down the very men who wronged you. These characters embody familiar archetypes--the dutiful admiral, the egotistical nobleman, the cheeky servant--but Dishonored is not content with one-dimensional portrayals. An excellent voice cast (which includes a number of notable actors) and stylish character design help bring these people to life. As you listen to them talk (you remain mute throughout), read their journals, eavesdrop on conversations, and learn whispered secrets from an arcane, psychic item you acquire, you come to know the characters and the world they live in. This kind of knowledge is engaging, so even when the main plot follows some well-trodden paths, you're always interested and eager to press on.
Exploring Dunwall is another one of Dishonored's great pleasures. The city prospered from the whaling trade in the recent past, but has fallen on hard times since the influx of a deadly plague. Brick walls and wooden beams loom over alleys crawling with rats, while granite facades and metal barricades block off the cobblestoned plazas of the wealthier neighborhoods. Dunwall evokes a British city in the grip of the industrial revolution, but painterly coloring and slightly exaggerated proportions give the place a unique feel. Though some texture details can be slow to load in the console versions, the lovely artistic design is undiminished, making Dunwall an immensely appealing place to inhabit.
Of course, there are tangible benefits to exploration as well. Sewers, alleys, apartments, and estates all hide items that restore your health, reinforce your arsenal, teach you secrets, or allow you to gain new supernatural powers. The large areas you must traverse to get to your targets are riddled with out-of-the-way places to explore, and finding them reveals not only hidden goodies, but alternate routes as well.
Figuring out how to move through the environments is an enjoyable pursuit, and one of the first powers you get allows you to teleport a short distance. The quick pop and blurry whoosh of this power provides a nice audiovisual accompaniment to the thrill of defying natural law, and if you choose to supernaturally augment your jumping ability, your range of locomotion is drastically increased. Though you'll likely have some awkward moments as you try to go places that the game won't let you, Dishonored's level design is consistent enough to make such moments easy to avoid once you get the hang of things.
With his Apple IIGS as the spark and his neighbor's NES the fuel, Chris Watters' passion for gaming caught fire early. Years later, you can find him aiming down virtual sights, traipsing through fantastical lands, and striving to be grossly incandescent while desperately avoiding sunburns.
Best game I've played in a long time...took me about 21 hours to beat. I'm confused about the complaints with the length - if you beat this in 4 hours then you're doing it wrong, lol.
Can't wait to play this. didn't even see it coming.
Another Review with a few differences of Opinion: http://www.thestrongestthereis.com/lofi-dragon-reviews-dishonored
I love this game, although the ending came too soon. It felt like one of those endings where you expect the bad-guy to slip away and you'll get another 3 missions in order to find him for some grande finalle, but instead the credits rolled over my screen. Though the great replay-value makes up for that.
Dishonored is a fabulous game. Very fun to play and cool game mechanics with various methods for taking care of your enemies and targets. My only gripe is I do not think this game is worth the $60 price tag. The game contains nine missions and I was able to complete the game in nine hours (finished with low chaos then loaded a previous save and did the last two missions killing everyone to finish the game with high chaos). Even with the future release of DLC, I can not see this game having a high replayablity value. I would compare this to LA Noire- once you've played through one or two times, you've gotten all achievements/trophies and there's no reason to come back to it. I got 32 achievements from one play through. My advice is to rent this from a Redbox instead of shelling out $60.
Reminds me of the Thief games. Those were the days...
Depends on the gameplay style, Dishonored shows its real values. If run & gun COD style then probably you would complete the game within 8hrs or less and feel some disappointment about its length. But Dishonored is not to be played like that - this title shows its superb qualities with a slower, stealthy walkthrough, while forcing you to plan every step in advance and offering many benefits coming from exploration - above all, you collect the runes & amulets which are a key issue to gain/improve your special assassin skills, furthermore you can find money and many valuable items, which can be spent for equipment/weaponry upgrades afterwards. The stealth gamplay itself is exciting, challenging and can be fulfilled with thrilling encounters with your foes - here there are many ways to get rid of your enemies, with creative kills and bodies disposal afterwards. Obviously you can go into open fights, but to act like a "ghost", kill or knock senseless each foe step by step and remove/dispose their bodies afterwards is much more fun and challenging. Ive clocked more than 10hrs in the game and currently Im in the 4th mission; For sure one of the best games of 2012;
Dishonored Is Truly DISHONORING.
how many missions are there?
BradTheGreat123 9 missions
What???? only 9
BradTheGreat123 yes only 9, seems short but when playing stealthy way with a lot of exploration of each new area, you can definitely clock approx 20hrs (or more) of gameplay.
20 hours is good, even when you beat the game you can probably play again and do things differently
BradTheGreat123 It lasts definetely less than 20 hours, even picking up all runes and bonecharms on the hardest difficulty and completing all the mission without kills. It's a fun game but a little disappointing for the overall easiness and short lenght.
For me, this is just the perfect game. So well crafted and fun. My pick for GOY, easy.
In terms of gameplay and atmosphere, this game so totally reminds me of the Thief series and that's a compliment. Just wanted to take a glance at it yesterday and ended up playing for 6 hours. Talking about being addictive.
I really like this game, my kind of stuff. It's like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Assassins Creed and Half Life were mixed together to create this. If it was a tad longer I would like it even more.
this and gw2 are destroying my life and i don't care i love dishonored so much. if they don't make a sequel they're shooting themselves in the foot. i love games like this. thief, hitman, and now this. incredible. gamers are soooo spoiled this year.
No one hating the game get? I'm shock..... ;)
On the 3rd mission, and what a game! Well worth a look.
Scratch that, not just an excellent game, but single player game of the year.
great game only one thing....WHAT KIND OF RATS ARE THESE? THEY LEAVE NOTHING FROM DEAD BODIES!!!they eat a Corpse WITH ALL ITS BONES AND CLOTHES BELT BOOTS SHIRT PANTS even the IRON PART OF BELT...and not one but 4 or 5 bodies how much a rat can eat?these rats are worse than a Bulldozer! other than that it was perfect!that RETRO FUTURISTIC aspects of game graphics the fantasy the story line and the FREE DOME OF GAME PLAY!everything PERFECT....
Excellent game!
Preordered this and I think it's worth every cent. The campaign isn't extremely long even if you collect every rune and bone charm. Thank god this game doesn't artificially try to increase gameplay value by hiding collectibles in extremely obscure places. The same goes for enemy encounters. All the missions have a wide variety of scenarios and a bazillion ways to approach them, not to mention the non-lethal solutions have a lot of poetic justice are just as satisfying (if not more) to execute than killing your target outright
Finish 1st play trough on low profile * kill no one* mode. But I can't help feeling that I miss out in lots of things, lots of areas that I avoided trying to be *nice*.
2nd play through I going a la Rambo style * DooM* mode. :) and try to explore the areas a bit more.
CaesarIIII jejeje a la rambo! that sounds very spanish! suena bastante espańol amigo!
Got it yesterday evening, had a chance to play shortly, the first impression is very positive and Im excited to play more, Dishonored offers solid gameplay back grounded by interesting plot / amazing atmosphere!
Got Dishonored day 1 and its AWESOME!
This game on PC have horrible textures ! Looks like at least six or seven years old ip.
Been playing this for hours now.. having a little break..
I can see why Chris give this game a 9.0.. is very hard to see anything wrong with this game..if you want to be over critical.. I guess the Graphics are just about average, is to many loading screens and in some situations you miss a 3rd person view for a better tactical look... but those are small problems that are balanced with lots and lots of VERY good things.
But man.. if the graphics were just a bit better, and it have a 3rd person view option.. this game will be a perfect 10
bought this yesterday, took me 14 hours on first playthrough (went with low chaos, and non-lethal throughout the game).
gameplay was extremely fun! graphics are nice (but nothing spectacular - i think its going with some type of artistic style).
Ending was shockingly anti-climactic and horrendously unsatisfying.... i feel cheated in some ways. its almost like i dont see any impact for how i conducted my missions..... reminiscent of the ME3 ending made me feel the first time through (before they did the DLC to make it better). i paid $69 for it, which is probably a reasonable price for it.
wow the best game of the year!!!!!!!!!
this game didn't run with 2GB ram on Win7?I mean On every details LOW and Resolution 1280x720!please answer me:(
Ram is cheap-> depending on your motherboard, you should be able to upgrade to at least 8GB for around $100.. however, the biggest factor on whether your game with run or not is your video card... the second biggest factor is your CPU..If you increase your ram, make sure your version of Win7 is 64-bit not 32-bit.
As always, make sure your computer matches or exceeds the requirements on the box before you buy games..
sargijeh With how sub par the graphics are I dont see why you are having problems unless you are using onboard graphics.
why there is no third person option in this game??
DBGT-87 Because it's a first person game..?
FINALLY!! a gamespot review that I can agree with.. well I give the game 8.5.. but only .05 off
Thank you Chris!! you restore about 10% of my faith in gamespot. good job.
So far its a great game!! Will write a review when I've spent more time playing.
Great review Chris, good to know there are still a few reasonable reviewers at Gamespot. Loving the game so far, only gripe is that the protagonist has no voice....minor issue.
Love this game, but I think I know why a point was taken off: loading screens, omg...
RE6 sucks. Finished 3 out of the 4 campanigns AND IT BLOWS. Ada is cool though.
phatsanta wrong review dude, this is Dishonored, not RE6.
BlazeODU HUUMMM YOU THINK?
phatsanta Sucked so much you just had to finish 3 campaigns!! Don't forget to complete all the difficulties and obtain all achievments!
FurryStar I played with my buddy who made me. I'm a good guy like that.
phatsanta just played dishonored and i must say res evil 6 graphically blows dishonored out of the water. dishonored looks like it was made 7 years ago it just looks old.
ravenkiller Its a good thing I take gameplay over graphics or that would really upset me.
Ahhhhhh yes this is the game I was hoping for whith Deus Ex HR exept they had some bullsh#t DLC, come on I couldn't put a silencer on a sniper without DLC, and the loading time where brutal but the story was excellent and atleast on PC they fixed loading times, but Dishonored is fresh and is looks like everything I was expecting when I first started lokking into it, great job guys
Dishonored or X-com for Christmas. Choices...
Game Emblems
The Good
User Reviews
Dishonored
Follow for the latest news, videos, & tips from experts & insiders
- Publisher(s): Bethesda Softworks
- Developer(s): Arkane Studios
- Genre: Action
- Release: Oct 9, 2012 (US) »
- ESRB: M
