Dishonoured

I’ll be honest, I never got far through Dishonoured. I started it several times, and each time something annoyed me enough not to want to go back to it. Although, probably at least two of those times it was the overlong opening sequence that most put me off. If I have to sit through one more cutscene where I’m supposedly being taken to my execution or life imprisonment, I will despair at the quality of writing originality in the industry.

In my first playthrough, the furthest I got was the distillery. It was the first proper level part of Dishonoured, which is linear but partially open-world, with side-quests. I fannied about for a bit, using my magic to shoot across buildings in the steampunk sort of environment, with mediaeval fears of the plague crossed with Victorian technology, Gothic and Middle-Ages architecture, with French Revolution army costumes (think Les Misérables) among the array of creepy cloaks and masks. It fits together remarkably well, making an eerily  atmospheric game.

Once I got into a proper level situation, I started to notice a problem right away. It’s a stealth game in large part, but the stealth options suck. Your most common means of stealthy, non-lethal invasion involved pouncing someone from behind and slowly strangling them. This is extremely slow, and gets dull within about four pounces.

Double-agent open world

Or to be more accurate, the Hitman-stealth-sandbox-war-double-agent-survival-exploration game.

In writing a post on moral choice systems, two contrary things occurred to me. First: “The moral choice system is absurd! It limits freedom and stunts gameplay.” Second: “Yet… If the concept of ‘moral choice’ was less of an arbitrary one-dimensional-gauge and more of a play style, it could be the funnest thing ever.” In the process of having a go at Fallout 3 for making it too easy to be “good” whether you wanted to be or not, I started imagining what it would look like if it was easy to be bad.

I came up with a exploration-survival sandbox game that most resembles Hitman in concept, or other stealth / double agent type games. There aren’t enough free-roam double-agent games, whereby players wander around manipulating every possible side of a conflict unpredictably for personal gain. Which is odd, because that tends to be the way people naturally play moral choice games; we may pick a side to start with, but get bored of our loyalties and screw someone over.

Stealth: In the eye of the beholder

Stealth games have improved a lot in recent years, favouring less tactical step-by-step avoidance of passing human drones and more inventive means of averting detection using the map design. Later incarnations removed the necessity of lurking in the shadows and also lessened its effectiveness somewhat; improvements in AI also made the patterns of movement more difficult to spot and predict. Yet there are still odd details left unchecked.

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell

This is part of a series of four reviews examining the specific pros and cons for each of the four sixth-gen console games in the franchise Splinter Cell. The games in chronological order are: Splinter Cell, Pandora Tomorrow, Chaos Theory and Double Agent.

Splinter Cell ranks number 3 of 4 in my recommendation. It is significantly better than Double Agent but a little worse than Pandora Tomorrow.

Splinter Cell: Double Agent

This is part of a series of four reviews examining the specific pros and cons for each of the four sixth-gen console games in the franchise Splinter Cell. The games in chronological order are: Splinter Cell, Pandora Tomorrow, Chaos Theory and Double Agent.

Of the four, Double Agent is the clear loser in my estimation.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

This is part of a series of four reviews examining the specific pros and cons for each of the four sixth-gen console games in the franchise Splinter Cell. The games in chronological order are: Splinter Cell, Pandora Tomorrow, Chaos Theory and Double Agent.

Of the four, Chaos Theory is the clear winner in my estimation.

Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow

This is part of a series of four reviews examining the specific pros and cons for each of the four sixth-gen console games in the franchise Splinter Cell. The games in chronological order are: Splinter Cell, Pandora Tomorrow, Chaos Theory and Double Agent.

Pandora Tomorrow ranks number 2 of 4 in my recommendation. It is significantly worse than Chaos Theory but a little better than the original Splinter Cell.