3/5 ★ – ephemeriis's review of Dishonored.

Dishonored, honestly, disappointed me. It was fun enough, but it just wasn't what I wanted it to be. Judging from the advertisements, and the way people raved about the game, I honestly expected something a little more open and free-form. I didn't expect the game to be nearly so linear, or to see stealth so poorly fleshed-out. While it is true that you can choose your own path through any given environment, and you can choose whether or not you complete some optional objectives, and you can choose whether you kill your target or complete the objective in a non-violent manner... That's all the freedom you get. The game, itself, is painfully linear. There's no choice of which target to go after in what order. Nor can you choose to revisit an old area to finish things off. And while the game does keep track of who you're killing and responds with more rats or weepers, your actions don't really seem to have all that much impact on the world. And, while you can choose to kill people or not, there aren't a whole lot of stealthy tools at your disposal. There's plenty of upgrades to your lethal tools and abilities... But your non-lethal options are all-but ignored. The end result is that the game felt more like a first-person brawler or a straight-up action title, rather than the vaguely open/non-linear stealth/action title I was expecting.