Dishonored Review

Dishonored is a stealth-action hybrid from Arkane Studios, the studio behind Dark Messiah of Magic and Might, another stealth-action hybrid. The inspiration from Dark Messiah is very apparent in Dishonored both in the stealth and the action segments, most notably in the sword combat.

You play as Corvo, bodyguard to the empress of the city of Dunwall who sadly gets assassinated and her daughter kidnapped, the blame is put onto you, naturally. You then embark upon a quest for revenge against the men who did this for power. Admittedly a lot of the main characters are relatively weak and not much characterization takes place but there is some wonderful plot twists

The city of Dunwall itself is a very interesting location, the city is very industrialized and looks to be based off of late Victorian England in some sort of alternate universe industrial revolution where great minds have harnessed the power of whale oil and created amazing Tesla-like technologies. A plague is currently ravaging the city and a large portion of the population has been killed or infected forcing the somewhat dystopic rule to to kill and dump the infected. Its a cheery setting isn't it. But this really sets the tone and story for the rest of the experience, although a lot of it does depend on your choices.

Dishonored has a very interesting moral choice system in the sense that it doesn't just say "here's a good option on this side and a bad option on this side pick ok thanks now your face has more scars" Instead you are generally given a lethal and non lethal option in missions but that's not the only thing that affects potential outcomes. Your general approach to the mission also factors in, with more kills increasing your chaos level and actually affecting the city around you. Other characters also respond to what you do and how you do it, but I won't say how because that would lessen the impact of it, and some of it can really affect you as a character and a player. The game often makes you question yourself and your actions, but revealing how would just be pure spoilers.

The gameplay itself offers much variety, the game caters well to both stealth and combat gameplay, both styles are viable options for completing the game and very satisfying to play as, grizzly stealth kills and combat executions are plentiful in this game. You can dual wield your blade and something else like a grenade or a power. A lot of variety comes from the powers system. There's a variety of powers available but none of them are useless which is surprising given how many games have terrible balancing in systems like these. The powers themselves are quite diverse, ranging from teleportation to time bending to summoning swarms of rats and more. The combining of these powers can lead to some very creative ways to kill, sneak and distract, upon mastering these abilities and learning to use them fluidly the game really conveys the feeling of being a highly efficient badass very well as all the powers blend very well into each other in the heat of the moment.

Visually the game is very stylized and I really like that, you can tell what kind of character they are merely by the shape of their head, the only problem I have with the style is that all of the female characters look exactly the same apart from their clothing. The style of the city and technologies within it is very reminiscent of half life 2 with the oppressive architecture.   From a technical stand point the game is about what you would expect for a game at this point in time, very pretty but nothing special

Overall I think that this game is a solid contender for GOTY, it's very immersive and the variety of playstyles it supports combined with the multiple endings means that I'm going to be spending a lot of time with this game over the next few weeks very much worth the purchase

XCOM Enemy Unknown Review - A Simplistic Take on a Complex Genre

I've been a fan of the turn based tactics genre for a while now, I've spent many hours on the Jagged Alliance games, WH40K Squad Command and Silent Storm But never actually played the original XCOM games so with this new reboot I decided it might be time to finally enter into the franchise.

The recent reboot of Jagged Alliance had me skeptical of another one in the genre and to be honest, the gameplay itself is very disappointing.  All actions on the battlefield are handled very simply, you can move twice, move and do something, or just do something. That's it. You're limited to 2 actions maximum per character per turn. An AP usage system is a standard convention in this genre and with good reason, it gives the player more strategic choices to make, which really should be the case in a game that's supposed to be about making tactical decisions.

Another feature that serves to limit your tactical options is the shoehorned class system. Troops Fit into 4 different class archetypes, Assault, Sniper, Support and Heavy, these are completely randomly assigned and you have zero control over them also these classes cannot use weapons that are specialized for one class, for example only the heavy is able to use rockets, so even if i really wanted to give my sniper a rocket launcher I couldn't, but don't worry, it's not like this game has an inventory system anyway and everyone has infinite ammo. However they do have a leveling tree which grants them different perks on leveling up, generally either offensive or defensive which can mean an ability or just a passive trait for the soldier, this system does help with specialization of soldiers and potential tactics but there is only three stats to level up for the soldiers, which is ridiculous considering how many other games in this genre have for you to play with.

What really, really bothers me about this game though is the cover system. There are two types of cover, half cover (chest high) and full cover (full height) with their respective defensive values, doesn't seem so bad right? Well, instead of stopping projectiles all cover does is decrease the hit percentage of the enemy, provided of course that the enemy is on the other side of the cover to you. From what I've seen even if the environment is in the way shots can still go straight through concrete and hit you if you just happen to be facing a different direction, presumably this system is used so that they don't have to do any projectile ballistics calculations, but it comes off as being lazy. This kind of percentage hit system means that it's also impossible to free aim, attempt to get a kill where you suspect an enemy is, or spray into a crowd and hope to hit someone you weren't even aiming at. Once more this all very much detracts from the tactical options given to you by the game, options which in my opinion are very important to a game like this for replay value, and general longevity.

All these reductions do not mean that the game is completely casualized though, the difficulty at times can be very punishing, there is a fair amount of resource management, the research system is well implemented and the base building elements add a very slight amount of depth. In fact sometimes these reductions can reduce some of the tedium that's quite common in turn based strategy games however I still think it detracts from the overall experience.

The story is fairly simple, aliens have invaded earth and its up to you, the leader of XCOM, to repel the extra terrestrial invaders. That's about it really there's a few interesting plot points but nothing too groundbreaking to be perfectly honest. Admittedly it does work well as a driving force for your actions throughout the game.

The graphics of this game are heavily stylised and cartoonish which is a refreshing change from all the grimdark brown and bloom games that appear to have overtaken the mainstream market, it actually works surprisingly well. From a technical standpoint the game is about what you'd expect at this point in time, pretty to look at but nothing major.

The enemy designs are a really refreshing change from current trends, there is a really good variety of shapes and sizes for you to kill, ranging from generic little gray men to half cyborg monstrosities and even more (but that would be spoilerific)

Overall XCOM enemy unknown is not a bad game, its just one with a lot of missed potential, I'm still planning on sinking some time into this title but it doesn't offer the same replayability and versatility of other similar games which is really quite dissapointing