Review Scores

Ugh. This is embarassing.

Not long ago, I wrote a huge post on my beloved The Walking Dead, by Telltale, in which I declared it to be my favorite game of all time. This was, at the time, true. I still stand by calling The Walking Dead a phenomenal game, and anyone who's interested in what the medium can do beyond just power fantasies should check it out.

Now, prior to playing The Walking Dead my favorite game was Deus Ex. Not Human Revolution, a prequel released in 2011 that somehow managed to both disappoint and pleasantly surprise me to great extent, but the original, released all the way back in 2000. Whilst I may have enjoyed The Walking Dead for its story, I have to admit that, as a game, Deus Ex is simply superior, a masterpiece of complex level design that is still to be surpassed in that particular aspect. Thing is, I first played it all the way back in 2007, and have gone through the ritual of re-playing it start to finish every year since then, and it was a good 6 years before it was dethroned as my favorite game.

The Walking Dead, unfortunately, does not have such luck. It has been dethroned by a new contestant, a game which I am about to finish and will soon move on to review. Which makes its reign, compared to the 6 year reign of terror of Deus Ex, rather short, and I can't help but feel a bit flip-floppy.

Anyway, what does all this have to do with the title? Why are you going on and on about your favorite games and not talking about review scores? Well, it's quite simple. I can already tell that the review score for my new favorite is going to be lower than you'd expect. It's most definitely not a 10/10, and I doubt it'll make it to a 9.

This is because I feel reviews need a degree of objectivity. Now, Jim Sterling, one of the smartest people on the gaming portion of the internet, has a large body of work discussing this, and usually coming up against the "objective review", and for good reason. Look up his objective review of Final Fantasy XIII on Destructoid (or click this handy link), and you'll not only be treated to one of the funniest things on the internet, but to a clever statement of just what the problem with objectivity in reviews is.

That said, one can recognize faults in a game experience without this affecting their enjoyment. Despite this, it is important to mention this, and factor it in the score. Similarly, well-designed mechanics that don't positively affect your gameplay experience are important to mention. I can tell Rome: Total War is a brilliant game. It has an insane amount of depth given out through crisp, to-the-point gameplay. Nonetheless, it bores me to death, and I would rather play the terrible sequel to Deus Ex, Invisible War, which, despite being a terrible game, built on a foundation of completely batshit design decisions and programmed by a gibbon has the flavor of Deus Ex that I craved so much before Human Revolution came out.

Of course, a score will be affected by ones personal preference: Total War bores me to such an extent that I'd likely score the rather mediocre Invisible War above any of the games in that series. It can't be any other way, nor should it be: knowing what reviewers share your tastes and trusting their opinions is the optimal way of making buying decisions, and in a world of completely objective reviews, we couldn't make these decisions properly. All I'm saying is that game reviewers (which, despite reviewing games, I am most definitely not a real one of) should also factor in flaws or merits that, whilst not affecting them personally, could change the enjoyment of other players. The only reason my next review is my favorite game is that it's good in all the ways I care about, and bad in all the ways I don't care about. It may be bad in more ways than other games, but it happens to fall precisely in my own particular blind spot.

Dishonored - Assassins and Whale Oil

Dishonored is a game I was extremely excited for when it was coming out all the way back in 2012. However, for various reasons, I ended up not playing it on release, and only recently finally bought and went through it. This is one game I'd managed to stay completely blind for - I knew next to nothing, apart from the title, setting, and what the mechanics were promising to do (which was the entire reason I'd been looking forward to the game in the first place). Let's see how it held up.

Presentation: 

Our beloved Empress Whats-Her-Face

 Dishonored is set in the city of Dunwall, an industrial-revolution era city, with some heavy steampunk elements. You are Corvo Attano, Royal Protector (read: Bodyguard) to the Empress Jessamine Kaldwin. You return from an important political voyage, just in time for Jessamine to be assassinated and you framed by the Imperial Spymaster as the culprit. You escape from prison a day before your scheduled execution, and join with a group of Loyalists who plan to rescue the Empress's daughter Emily, overthrow the Spymaster (newly appointed Lord Regent), and restore the rightful royal family.

Now, I don't like spoiling major twists in my reviews, but the assassination of the Empress happens within the first ten minutes of the game, and this is indicative of the problem with the plot: You're never given a reason to care about any of these people. The Empress's death is clearly supposed to be a tragic event, shocking the player, but all we've seen of her is a small monologue and a couple lines of dialogue welcoming Corvo back before she is promptly stabbed. The desire for revenge is supposed to be the driving force behind Corvo's actions, but it's hard to want revenge for the death of a person you barely know.

Well, he screams "trustworthy"

After joining with the Loyalists, the plot becomes nonsensical, the writers struggling to connect the various locales you're visiting with each other in a logical way. Corvo is given the post of assassin for no apparent reason, and you're sent to eliminate targets for convoluted reasons and in convoluted orders. The logic of the bad guys doesn't seem to be particularly sound either: The Lord Regent doesn't seem to bother telling his closest allies that an assassin is slowly eliminating his confidants, and instead chooses to close down the areas where assassinations have already taken place. The area where he chooses to hide away Emily is amongst the most ridiculous contrivances I've seen in a while.

Admittedly, the characters participating in the convoluted mess that is the plot to Dishonored are considerably better than the plot itself. Dunwall is a harsh and dark world, full of harsh and dark people, and you're presented with a wide roster of characters either living in misery and desperation or in wealth and incredible opulence. The Loyalists are interestingly contradictory people, nobility and loyalty contrasting with violence and deception. Where the character roster really shines, however, is in the assassination targets, all deliciously evil and corrupt in their own twisted way. This, of course, makes the few genuinely good people you meet, like Samuel the Boatman or Emily, all that much more touching. Unfortunately, the game seems to have its priorities all wrong: Character development is thrust out of the way to make place for more of the rather awful story, and we don't get to see enough of these interesting people, instead being forced to listen to them send you on increasingly dumb missions.

That's gorgeous. And terrible.

Thankfully, that's all the criticism that can be levied at the presentation of Dishonored. Graphically, the game is gorgeous, adapting a stylized, almost watercolor look. What's genius is that, technically, the game isn't very advanced: It's clever design by the art team that adapted old graphics technology into looking very impressive indeed. Even on my old, decrepit machine the game runs butter-smooth on next to max options. The only issue I found is that objects in the skybox could look slightly pixelated and low-res, but this barely comes into play as you're often either in buildings or in streets were the skybox is not visible.

The music is, admittedly, rather forgettable. It's fitting enough, and never got in the way, but there's no particular track that I remember. It's the typical story with videogame soundtracks: It does the job, then you forget about it as soon as you're done.

The city of Dunwall itself is fantastic. If the story is uninspired and nonsensical and the characters are decently interesting, the world-building is fantastic. Dunwall feels like a living, breathing city, and you'll find numerous books and notes that help flesh out the world both inside and outside its walls. A steampunk city can easily get tedious, but you get to visit a lot of fascinating locales: From a high-class thriving party to the miserable quarantine zone within the Flooded District. Visual design for Dishonored was done by Victor Antonov, the man behind Half Life 2's City 17, and it shows: Dunwall oozes creativity from every pore, though you can certainly tell that the driving force was the same. Dishonored's Tallboys are suspiciously similar to Combine Striders.  Nonetheless, the world Dishonored is set in is intriguing, and I certainly hope we get to re-visit it, if not necessarily in Dunwall: The game does a fantastic job of setting up other interesting locations all around the world without you ever visiting it.

Presentation Verdict:


6.5/10

Dishonored is gorgeous and set in a fascinating and unique world, but the things happening within the world are boring and nonsensical.

Gameplay:

They don't know yet, but those guys are fucked in so many ways.

Dishonored is best described as an action-stealth game. The obviously intended playstyle is similar to how something like Deus Ex: Human Revolution is played: hide in the shadows and ping off your enemies one-by-one until you can get past, sneak past all of them without harming any if you're good enough, and fight for your life if you're caught. There's plenty of ways to traverse Dunwall, and a good many ways to stealthily dispatch your enemies. You can swoop in from above for a clean, almost Assassin's Creed style drop-kill, sneak up behind them for a quick stab to the neck, or snipe them off from a distance with a headshot from your crossbow.

Your arsenal of weapons is admittedly rather limited: A sword that's always equipped, which you use with left-click, a deadly but loud pistol, a silent crossbow with a variety of ammo types that requires you to headshot for one-hit kills, and two types of explosive (thrown grenades and mines). Nonetheless, they're all cleverly designed for interaction with what is the main gameplay gimmick of the game: The magic system.

Yeah, have fun with that.

Early on in the game you're given the ability to use magic by what is basically the Devil of Dishonored's world, and are gifted a "blink" power, which allows you to teleport a short distance. Blink itself is the most important power in the game: you'll be using it the most, and it's integral to the game's level design. It's got an insane amount of uses: You'll be using it to scale buildings, escape from enemies who've seen you, teleporting behind enemies who haven't seen you for an easy kill, and blinking around the battlefield to confuse your opponent. Other powers are less vital, but add a large level of complexity to the game: The stop time power allows you to safely dispatch large groups of enemies who've seen you, possession allows you to get through security checkpoints inside the skin of a guard, or find alternative ways by possessing rats or fish, and, if you're feeling particularly nasty, the devouring swarm power allows you to sick a large swarm of rats on your unfortunate victims.

What's even best is how powers and weapons interact between one another. You can put a mine on a rat's back, possess said rat, and put it in the path of a guard, who'll often decide to stomp on the unfortunate rodent, to both of their demises. If you've got no rats around to do this with, you can make some with devouring swarm. You can stop time, and possess a guard into walking in the path of the bullet now floating still in mid-air, or you can use this to walk into your target's room, shoot it, and walk out completely undetected, apart from the crossbow bolt now sticking out of your enemy's face.

Just look at all the damn options

In short, there's a great many ways of doing whatever you want, most of them quite creative, and they interplay in many beautiful, beautiful ways. However, this is useless without good level design, and Dishonored's level design is brilliant. You're given a slew of ways to approach every objective. You can just walk into your target's office and start shooting, you can sneak in through a variety of different doors and windows and stab them when they're alone, or you can get creative and find a non-lethal alternative to removing your target from power. What makes the design even better is that you're guaranteed to have the Blink power. This means the level designers put in a variety of clever, non-obvious ways to move around, and could design the levels to be more realistic, not having to leave a contrived way of getting up to that third-floor open window for the player, since you can now just blink to the balcony of the building opposite and jump in.

Levels can be divided in two types, where you'll usually find one of each in every mission. The first part tends to be a large hub area,  where you can find small sidequests and rummage through houses to find money and supplies. This part usually involves being on a lot of rooftops, avoiding the patrolling guards on street level, and usually has a few different entryways into the second type of level, the assassination area. These tend to be heavily guarded buildings, and your main objective will be finding your way past the guards to your target. You'll usually be guided into finding a secondary objective which provides a non-lethal way of disposing of your target if you go through a series of complex steps.

Just carrying a heart around. Don't mind me.

In both areas, you can use the Heart, given to you by the aforementioned Devil, to find Runes and Bone Charms, important types of collectibles. Runes allow you to unlock and upgrade your powers, and Bone Charms are small passive bonuses that you can equip. I mentioned money earlier: All the items you collect that aren't used for combat apart from Runes, Bone Charms and potions are instantly converted into cash when you pick them up. You can use these to upgrade your gear or buy items at a store you get access to in between missions. Unfortunately, upgrades are rather boring, being limited to things like "Faster reload" or "Longer range", with the exception of one which gives you a unique ability (namely using a watching-glass type zoom in).

Whether you choose the lethal or non-lethal approach in missions is extremely important. At the end of every level you're given a Chaos rating, dependent largely on how many people you've killed. High Chaos at the end of a level means the next level will be affected, with the city becoming more desolate, security being tightened and people being less trustful, as well as your overall Chaos rating affecting which ending you get. This is a mixed blessing: It means the game, which is otherwise rather short, merits two playthroughs at least, to see both versions of the levels and to try out both playstyles. However, the game strongly encourages the non-lethal approach, which is problematic. The only real ways to be non-lethal are to completely avoid conflict, or use only sleep darts and non-lethal takedowns, which can only be done if you sneak up behind an enemy to melee range. Lethal players get the entirety of both the arsenal and the power roster, whereas non-lethal involves using only two ways to fight and almost exclusively blink and passive powers.

Yeah, that'll make the world a bit chaotic.

Non-lethal does provide a much more challenging experience, as sleep darts are difficult to come across and you can only carry ten, but it also takes great part of the fun from the game. This would be OK if it was simply a different playstyle, but the game actively encourages you to use it, and the lethal playstyle results in the bad ending. This results in the game punishing you for using all of the fun tools that are at your disposal, which may put a sour taste in your mouth if you put as much importance as I do on the story. To be fair, even if non-lethal is not particularly exciting, it still results in your getting a rather decent stealth experience, slightly above average due to the blink power, and the boost in difficulty is much needed, as the game is easier than it probably intends to be when you're going lethal: There's just too many ways to easily take out guards.

Another problem I ran into is the controls. For the most part, they're perfectly fine. However, there were a couple problems that made me re-play a section because my character didn't quite do what I wanted to. The first annoyance is the requirement to always have your sword out. This, admittedly, isn't as much a control problem as a design choice, but, on my non-lethal playthrough I barely used the sword, the only situation being when the success of my objective was under direct jeopardy otherwise. This means that I was stuck with a useless tool always equipped, and would much rather have had, say, both the Crossbow and my Blink power out. This caused a couple hitches when switching in tense situations, which, whilst my fault, was a persistent annoyance that could've been easily avoided if I could just substitute the damn sword with something.

Ermmm... nothing more to illustrate, really

The second issue was control on Blink. You can either right-click to Blink immediately where you're aiming, or hold right-click to get a targeting indicator. This is fine, but the issue comes when climbing objects. If you Blink to just below the edge of a platform, Corvo will climb it. This is shown by the indicator turning into arrows. The issue comes when fast-Blinking: the area where you end up climbing is entirely too precise. This means you have to hold to ensure that you'll climb up properly, as very rarely does it work with quick-Blink. This makes the higher-skill sneaking, where you're Blinking from the ground to platforms in quick succession to avoid being seen, practically impossible: if you quick-Blink you'll miss and fall, if you target-Blink you won't be able to do it on time. This means that sneaking in between cones of sight from platform to platform is not a viable option, which is a shame: The Blink mechanic could work fantastically.

There are a couple other minor gripes, such as the right mouse button acting a bit strangely (you press it to deactivate a power, but if you've switched to a different one it doesn't seem to know whether it prioritizes deactivating powers or using new ones, which makes it annoyingly unpredictable), or Corvo climbing on things unintentionally slightly too often (ironic, considering the issue with Blink), but those tend to be minor annoyances at best. Apart from the two major issues above, the games controls are fluid and intuitive.

Gameplay Verdict:
8.5/10

Dishonored is brilliantly designed, insane amounts of fun, and very varied, as long as you make use of the huge arsenal you're given and go lethal. However, you may find yourself being bored if you're going non-lethal, and a couple of the main mechanics of the game aren't great to use.

Final Verdict:
(6.5+8.5)/2 = 7.5

Dishonored is great in the gameplay department, with a few glaring flaws holding back a truly phenomenal experience. It's also gorgeous, and set in a well-realized world. However, if you're looking for a story that makes sense, and characters that are deep rather than entertaining, Dishonored will be very disappointing to you.