Dishonored Review Round-Up: Embargo up, Game is a critical hit!

The embargo has lifted for Arkane Studios’ Dishonored and, as expected, the game has received glowing reviews from critics all over the world. Our review is in progress too, so stay tuned for that!

We also interviewed the game’s co-designers Harvey Smith and Raphael Colantonio, you can check that out over here. It’s a good read, here are some excerpts from it.

Smith and Colantonio: “Technology is not really the bottleneck, and developers have not come close to maxing out what could be done. The photo-realism graphics race eats up a lot of hardware bandwidth for what could be used for interesting, different features and styles of gameplay. That said, new hardware is always exciting.”

“It was a team-wide effort, based in part on our core values (including things like first-person, immersive, cohesive world that is bigger than the game, simulation, stealth and choice). We started talking with Bethesda about making a particular stealth-assassin game that would include the depth afforded by some of those values. Over time our research into historical periods and our artists’ love of specific architectural periods led us in this direction. What we ended up with is not seen very often in games.”

Without further ado, take a look at some of the reviews from popular websites out there on the Internet.

GameSpot

The incredible variety of ways you can engage or evade your enemies makes Dishonored impressively flexible and utterly captivating.

Joystiq

What makes Dishonored great are the mechanics made possible by the universe in which it exists. There is a level of replayability and creativity available here that isn’t seen in most stealth action games. You aren’t just figuring out how you need to get from point A to point B, but how you want to get there.

Destructoid

It’s the big intellectual property that comes to retail and shows up the competition by being bold, original, and — more importantly — brilliant. Easily deserving of its place among the BioShocks and the Borderlandses, Arkane’s aggressive, non-aggressive, unsubtle, sneaky, thoroughly versatile tale of intrigue makes for the kind of game that reminds us this generation isn’t all straightforward shooters and “me too” trend-seekers.

Polygon

Dishonored succeeds as an ambitious game not content to take one thing and do it well. It demands more than most games ever will of its player, and gives more to players than most other games will ever manage.

Game Informer

Though I was frustrated by the chaos system and how it steers your actions, the heart of Dishonored is about being inventive, adaptable, and ruthless. The team at Arkane Studios has injected an array of cool possibilities into the simulated city of Dunwall, and discovering them all is a blast.

Eurogamer

This is a muscular and confident game, one with the utmost faith in its own fiction and a dedication to gameplay satisfaction at a microscopic level, paid off in dozens of situations that feel completely random and organic, even when they’ve clearly been planted there for you to find. Tighter control and a more generous approach to replay value would elevate Dishonored to true classic status, but it stands as one of the year’s best all the same.

Giantbomb

An excellent game, and one worthy of your attention. Dishonored’s greatest contribution to the genre games like Deus Ex helped establish will be best appreciated by those who’ve been with it from the start, but Arkane has made a game rooted in manipulating artificial intelligence that plays just as well to the guy or gal who wants to shoot stuff. That’s impressive.

IGN

It’s also one of the prettiest games of recent years. The art direction is nothing short of incredible, and it’s matched with a visual aesthetic that makes the world look like an oil painting in motion.

The Escapist

Dishonored gives you a beautiful, fascinating, new world to explore, and then makes it your playground for grand misdeeds. Its story of political intrigue and betrayal is told at exactly the right pace, balancing information with action in a way that keeps you interested, but not overloaded.