Dishonored Review (Fat Sacks)
New age Thief- a modern classic. In my opinion there are few games from the last 10 years that have earned the same status that this game has. Gameplay is very thoughtfully designed, both the levels and mechanics are meticulously designed with a lot of different interactions and outcomes from different objects interacting. Everything has a use and if you use your brain you can pull off some crazy moves. My new favorite thing to do is to freeze time, set a mine on a rat then use the pull ability in the DLC and pull the rat into my hands and chuck it at the closest group of enemies. Fighting feels very satisfying especially with powers and doing things like chucking items at enemies to stagger them, you can jump on enemies heads to throw them off balance and deliver an easy kill. Sneaking as a whole is very fun, again you have to use your brain to figure out the best ways to go to avoid traps or enemy patrols. The game is an immersive sim through and through and I think it leverages its systems very well. It shares a lot of DNA with Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic (if you like the Dishonored games but never played this game jump on that ASAP) and that's a great because there aren't enough games out there like this.
Story wise it's not anything mind bending, but it doesn't try to be very intrusive. You can pick up a lot of lore from the world at your own pace and a lot of time that lore will help you get extra loot and it helps that a lot of time it's pretty interesting. The setting and art are distinct, the world looks like a stylized painting with elements pulled from Half Life 2's City 17. I think it has held up extremely well over the last 10 years and I don't think it will ever look bad because the art style is so well designed. The music is very minimal but fits the setting well. Sound effects for the most part are orchestral music stings that do a great job in communicating what is going on. The game sounds very clean with really the only negative thing being a lack of voice actors and voice lines for guards, but they still do a good job with specific dialogue designed to give you more insight to the story/lore and the mission objective.
As a whole, I think everyone with a passing interest in first person slashers, stealth games or immersive sims should buy this game and the DLCs. When this game first came out I was floored by how good it was and I think it still holds up today thanks again to the beautiful art, competent story, lore and writing, smooth gameplay with unique mechanics and great sound design. The game runs beautifully on modern systems with the only blemish being that there's no AA options outside FXAA, but you can force the game to run with MSAA through Nvidia Inspector. I've beaten this game as many times as New Vegas, Witcher 3 and Skyrim, so again it's a modern classic as far as I'm concerned. For me it's one of those games that kind of ruins your tolerance for middling games and makes you wonder how the hell more people aren't talking about it.