Dishonored
Incredibly detailed steam-punk world. Play the way you want - stealth or shoot/slash ‘em up.
– Real player with 288.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best First-Person Steampunk Games.
If Bioshock and Assassin’s Creed/Far Cry had a baby, this would be it.
Super fun and highly recommended!
– Real player with 44.7 hrs in game
Dishonored 2
Dishonored 2 - is this a game for you?
Right now, the game is undergoing a spell of patching after a very poor PC release. The game worked for some, but not for many, and so your mileage will vary depending on your PC (not necessarily how powerful it is either - but how balanced, how much VRAM you have and such). As most reviews already centre around performance issues, I won’t spend too much time on those because I’d rather review the game itself but please bear them in mind (they are mentioned in the ‘not so good’ section below)….
– Real player with 111.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best First-Person Singleplayer Games.
My experience with this game can be summed as thus: every update I found myself testing the changes, nodding in satisfaction, then quitting the game to await the next update.
Arkane knows how to make a good game. No question. But if you film an Oscar-worthy movie and the lens is smudged while filming, you can’t judge what’s underneath without acknowledging what’s been marring your experience the entire time.
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PERFORANCE
Everyone is aware of the performance issues, and these still persist to this day. It runs much better than at launch, where it was literally unplayable, but that’s because the game looks worse than before - the most noticeable change being the extremely aggressive LOD scaling. Out of the corner of your eye you notice the shapes of window frames and posters on distant buildings morphing in shape, or the furniture at the opposite end of a long hallway suddenly blinking into existence. FPS dropped to 15 when stabbing a gravehound, so they simply removed the inky visual effect that was causing the problem instead of optimizing it.
– Real player with 111.0 hrs in game
Dirty Wars: September 11
Chile, September 11, 1973
The Military Coup of Pinochet’s army overthrows President Salvador Allende’s democratically elected government, marking the beginning of 17 years of horror and genocide. Exile, censorship, torture and the forced disappearance of people who oppose the new regime are performed on a daily basis.
Maximiliano and Abigaíl, a young couple who decide to stay in Chile, join the resistance against the dictatorship, sacrificing everything to enter a life of secrecy in which they must face multiple challenges.
Dirty Wars is a video game that combines stealth mechanics, puzzles and interactive dialogues in a closed and immersive world with defined objectives.
You play as Maximiliano and Abigail, who must overcome difficult objectives in order to opose the regime, in a time where only one side had all the weapons and the use of information and counter-intelligence are much more valuable.
There are no inventory systems or acquired skills, in the resistance the only weapon to survive is your intelligence and your ability to understand the security rules that will keep you going in the fight against the dictatorship, an unequal fight that will take years.
The compartmentalization is the iron law of resistance. No member can know personal information about an other, or anything that the dictatorship can use. Anyone could be captured, tortured and forced to give out information at any time.
In moments of great tension and danger, armed confrontation is not an option. Use the elements of the environment to hide and avoid being heard by the repressive forces.
Dirty Wars is a Chilean video game for the world. Introducing a completely Chilean and Latin American story that shows part of the culture, art, music and aesthetics from this corner of the world.
Read More: Best First-Person Cold War Games.
Dishonored®: Death of the Outsider™
Caution: This review includes information that will spoil Dishonored: The Knife of Dunwall and Dishonored 2 for some readers!
While Dishonored and Dishonored 2 focus more on the politics of the Empire of the Isles, the side stories – The Knife of Dunwall, The Brigmore Witches, and now Death of the Outsider – explore the playable characters’ inner conflicts, as well as the dark, supernatural sides of the game series’ lore. This allows the developers to expand on the game universe without over bloating the main series titles, and give the side stories their own tone and personality.
– Real player with 29.9 hrs in game
Roughly a year after Dishonored 2 its expansion pack, Death of the Outsider, was released. Events take place just after its predecessor: we now take control of Billie Lurke and, initially, our job is to find her old mentor, Daud. Once he is located we are tasked with killing the Outsider. An interesting plot (even more interesting is the ending) that will continue in the 5 chapters the expansion pack offers.
New (albeit fewer) powers
It’s always nice to see what new ideas developers come up with. I thought Billie’d probably have Blink and Dark Vision and some new powers. Instead, even these powers have slightly been changed. We teleport by using Displace which first requires us to put a marker somewhere and only then can we finally complete teleportation. if the marker is put on an enemy he’ll die a gruesome death with bloody parts flying every which way.
– Real player with 28.3 hrs in game
Thief™ Gold
I can’t believe I played this game 20 years ago and it’s still a blast. Well, it’s my number one game, just look at my avatar.
Technology:
The way this game is meant to be played is with TFix + HDMod. I repeat !!!TFix!!! (not TGTool). I can safely say that now the game looks better than ever, even compared to its original release back in 98. The reason why is pretty simple - the hardware limitations at that time were quite significant. TFix patches the game with the unofficial New Dark Engine lifting the limitations imposed by the original Dark Engine. There are many improvements: support for higher resolution, the in-game objects have significantly more polygons, bugfixes, HD textures.
– Real player with 71.2 hrs in game
It is amazing how as computing technology improves and new tools such as VR are introduced that consumers continue to pine for ‘better’ and ‘more immersive’ games, as though immersion is some ideal we may hope to one day achieve once the graphics are good enough and the gadgets we attach to our forehead become more effective. However, one need only look back to the late 90’s, when a developer known as Looking Glass studios was already forging the path for immersive simulators decades ahead of time.
– Real player with 61.2 hrs in game
Public Enemy: Revolution Simulator
I love the message that the game poses. but the gameplay is garbage. after getting to the second stage IN THE FIRST LEVEL! more guards move around and when all three types of guards mix, its impossible. when you try to get the attention of a stationary guard, a moving guard comes out of nowhere and notices it, rendering it useless, ALSO! when you start a piece, you cant finish it. i could go on and on about gameplay problems, but i don’t want this to be too lengthy. if your the type of guy to go select “HARD MODE” on the first run of a game, that’s cool, but for me, i don’t like it.
– Real player with 1.7 hrs in game
It’s free, it’s short and simple, a lot could be added but for a free game i’m guessing they just made it in the hopes that people would look what other games the devs of this made so that those games can get more people playing them. Really you can only play it about twice or three times until you win, but it’s fun for a free game, not too long, might as well try it out.
– Real player with 1.4 hrs in game
Thief
Thief is an Action/Adventure/Role-Playing/FPS (First Person Sneaker) game, set in a Victorian Gothic world but, with primitive electric lights and machinery typical of the early 20th century, as well as some unique and very imaginative devices. The characters are a blend of aristocracy, soldiers, commoners and beggers, some with British accents and, some who sound like they came from the streets of Brooklyn. The theme casts a hint of paranormal hope in a disease-ridden city of despair. The player is a thief named Garrett, who lost his female counterpart, Erin, in an accident which resulted in Garrett’s near death. After his recovery, amnesia swallowed most of his memories of the past year. So begins his search to find out what happened to him and, to learn Erin’s fate.
– Real player with 1322.5 hrs in game
I really wanted to like Thief - and so, in a way, I did. But it helped not to think of it as a Thief game but rather more Batman - if Batman couldn’t fight and also was a relentless kleptomaniac.
The game is a quick eight chapters, some better than others. For example, one takes place in a brothel, and is so predictable with its silly attempts to be lurid that it’s laughable. Another takes place in an abandoned asylum and is actually unnerving. The deeper into the game you go, though, the more pat the levels are, the less finished they feel, and the less engaging they are. And the less you care because the character development is so lackluster, and the dialog so poorly written, that you cannot get involved in the story, even if you want to.
– Real player with 161.0 hrs in game
Filcher
Never played thief. I come from a childhood of Splinter Cell. At first I didn’t like it due to the weird mechanics like 2D sprite enemies and lack of a sound meter, lighting that doesn’t exactly look how it acts on the player. But it really does grow on you. A couple missions in and I had got the hang of the game (not to say that it was easy by any means). I love old-school stealth games that are super hard and I’m glad to say I ended up enjoying it. The story is pretty good too, even though it’s decently shallow. I hope to see a sequel at some point.
– Real player with 35.8 hrs in game
THE GOOD: Did you like Thief? You’ll love Filcher. It’s as simple as that. Long, dark shadows, sharp, moody lights, art-deco style, and film-noir tone, ambient sounds that bring nostalgic tears to your eyes, and Dark Engine-like mechanics that bring a familiar smile to your face.
THE NEUTRAL: Some may find the 2D sprite-based enemies and objects strange, but the atmosphere makes up for it.
THE BAD(ISH): At least the protagonist could have been voiced if nothing else. Because that’s all that’s missing from a complete, 100% experience, some good voice performance for greater immersion. Also, the auto-closing feature of the doors is a pretty questionable design choice for this type of game.
– Real player with 15.8 hrs in game
HELPLESS
(Very) short game about going through an abandonned hospital, mostly about finding an object to allow you go through to the next area, and hide from the main enemy.
Well done and nice to play, but little replay value.
– Real player with 1.6 hrs in game
I really enjoyed this one. Sound fx and music were on point with the creepy factor and I like how you seemed “Helpless” when trying to escape at the end. It made for some great content as well (except for the copyright claim). EDIT The Copyright Claim was released - Great first game! https://youtu.be/HKgInJur_2I
– Real player with 0.7 hrs in game
NEON STRUCT
For anyone who’s a huge admirer of Thief like I am, this is a definite recommend! While it is a rather low-budget, small scale game, it has enough of its own vibe and does not outstay its welcome to become boring. I will attempt to sum up my feelings on it in more detail. (Possible spoilers ahead?)
Mechanically , it directly borrows light gem and surface materials elements from Thief. I love that! The experience of “reading a room” for isles and pathways that are safe to run on or stay in (and having to dynamically think through affordances of illumination and sound) never gets old and is unfortunately missing from most modern stealth games.
– Real player with 17.2 hrs in game
NEON STRUCT is a game for those who like first-person stealth, and don’t care about graphics or story. It’s not exactly that it’s a bad game; I did play it to completion. But thinking back, there’s little that stands out positively, and the experience never really gripped me.
The gameplay is probably the strongest part of NEON STRUCT. The game is divided into self-contained missions, each with a couple of goals such as stealing an item or deleting data from a computer. The levels are moderately sized with a progressively increasing number and variety of guards, security cameras and similar obstacles to overcome. There’s some freedom in approach; for example, you can steal keycards from patrolling guards, knock the guards out first, or hack the door with a Breakout mini-game; and all levels feature multiple routes to explore.
– Real player with 14.1 hrs in game