Dishonored: Definitive Edition Review

Once More, For Queen and Country.

 

We’re almost two years into the life cycle of the current generation of consoles. Although we’ve had some really good games (The Witcher 3, Life is Strange) that are only available on new-gen consoles and PC, many gamers are still playing last-gen games that have been remastered. GTAV, The Last of Us, and Halo: The Master Chief Collection are some of the most worthy of the double-dip. Several, though, are just ports.

 

And Dishonored: Definitive Edition is essentially that: a port. The graphics are a little crisper, outputting at 1080p, and the three previous DLC content have been included. If you own the PS4 version, the whispers Corvo says when using supernatural powers now emanate from the controller's speaker. (Like when you answer your phone in GTAV.) The framerate is 30fps, but can go below if there’s too much going on, which is what occurred when I played the game on my 360 back in the day.

 

That said, this is still a great single-player game. Dishonored’s assassin Corvo and his quest to find the Queens’ daughter and right the wrongs in an alternate Victorian world always had massive replay value. Not long after the introduction, you have hints as to who, has set Corvo up for the fall, and you decide to go all John Wick and take them down one-by-one steampunk style. The setting is the city of Dunwall, which at the time has a nasty plague with rats as the main delivery system. Thankfully, you have cool powers that can be accessed via an onscreen wheel, and just like in BioShock, both powers and weapons can be upgraded. Although Dishonored is primarily meant to be played as a stealth game, it’s up to you as to how you dispense justice. There’s even a morality system if you choose to simply knock them out instead of killing them. I never did that. (For more, you can read Nick's review back in October 2012.)

Everything from the strong voice acting to the gorgeously detailed art direction is intact with this new edition. Typically, I choose remasters over a port, but Dishonored is such an enthralling experience I was surprised how many hours I ended up playing on my first sitdown with the new version since first playing the game back in 2012.

So if you purchased the game as a digital download on your PS3/360 you can now purchase this “upgrade” of sorts for twenty bucks. If you’re new to this soon-to-be series, $39.99 is a fair price. (The upcoming Dishonored 2 managed to catch my eye even amidst the hype for Bethesda’s other game, Fallout 4.) So know that it’s absolutely worth picking up. As a port of the PC version (or a remaster if you being kind), Dishonored: Definitive Edition is what it is, but the core game was great to begin with, so while we wait for newer games to release this year, you could do much worse than a trip back to Dunwall.