Dishonored

I'm a sucker for a stealth game, specifically in the style of a Metal Gear Solid or Mark of the Ninja. Dishonored should have hit so hard for me. 

I apparently started a game years ago. I barely remember it, but I had a save at like the 40 minute mark. Definitely not enough to really get a good idea of the game. 

After I found Death Loop to be so surprisingly enjoyable, I wanted to give Dishonored another chance. 

I beat it this time. It was a weirdly paced game. 

The beginning, I loved the level design. I loved the setup, the world, the challenges. I'd play for 3 hours straight. Putting the game down and just thinking about how much I wanted to play it more. 

That love affair wore off after a few levels. The design started feeling more abstract and purposely annoying. Early in the game, as you start getting powers like teleportation, you start moving around the levels very fast. You feel cool, you feel powerful. It's what I imagine it feels like to be Neo in the Matrix. But eventually you start running into levels with tall buildings you have to slowly make your way up on. Or there were ruins that reminded me of Fallout 3's stacks of cars and junk that forced you into the subway systems to hide loading screens. 

It seemed like the designers got bored halfway through (assuming they built the game linearly, which they definitely did not). It felt artificially difficult. 

The powers also didn't feel very balanced. The first unlock of each power seems like a complete game changer. Then the upgrade... ehh... kind of. And the game encourages killing as little as possible and more than half of the powers are related to murdering fools. So it's a confusing message, do you want me to kill or not? And if not, let's come up with some cool powers for the passive playthrough.

I started a passive playthrough and ultimately the systems started annoying me too much, so I just started murdering. 

I wanted to like this game more than I did. Had the game ended about three missions sooner, probably looking at a solid 7 or 8 out of 10. But the finish line to this game is a real slog and dragged it down to a 5-6. I'm intrigued by the sequel, but I don't think I'm intrigued enough to download it now.