2019-03-01_PC_Gamer

I

’ve written a fair bit about
Dishonoredover the years – it’s
one of my favourite games
ever, and for three or four
completely different reasons. I love
the way it adopts the legacy of
Thief, incorporating magic and
parkour into the fantasy of being a
cat burglar with a heart of gold.

I love it as a spiritual successor to
Dark Messiah, the superlative
orc-kicking sim. This is one of the
most gratifying sandboxes ever
rendered in first person, and it puts
the minute-by-minute action of
comparable immersive sims to
shame. I love Deus Ex, but I’m not
sure why that series is obsessed with
simulating the experience of
RoboCop realising that he’s left his
charger at home. Dishonored just lets
you be magic Zorro. And why
wouldn’t you want to be magic
Zorro?

But here’s another reason why

Dishonored is great, and the one I

ultimately want to land on: it works

as hard on worldbuilding as it does

on system design. It draws from

elements of 19th century art and

history – don’t call it steampunk or

I’ll set magic Zorro on you – and uses

them to inform everything from

architecture to costuming to politics.

Games struggle to escape the pull of

pastiche at the best of times, but

Dishonored confidently asserts its

own identity.

This originality is important

because it opens up the game to new

audiences – like Dragon Age,

Dishonored is a game that supports a

broad fandom because it feels like a

world where different stories are

possible. That is the noblest

employment of the agency

that immersive sims have

always granted, and why

this is the best one.

HonouringDISHONORED

EXPECT TO PAY

£8

DEVELOPER

Arkane Studios

PUBLISHER

Bethesda Softworks

NEED TO KNOW

...and I’m all out

of men in hats.

Icameheretodoparkour

and stab men in hats...

REVIEW

DUN WELL

94

S

uper Hexagonis the king of the
beeping games. It’s a distillation
of what makes bullet hell shooters,
dance games and arcade racers fun,
rendered in lines and using only two
buttons (or one stick). You must
guide a small triangle out of a shape,
which is often a hexagon and
sometimes a square. The walls close
in! Point at the gaps. Do so to the
beat. Touch the sides and fail. Start
again. It’s a direct interface between
your lizard brain and the machine
you control, but with excellent
music and lights that make the
monkey brain happy, too. That
might sound a little reductive, but I
mean it differently: in a
medium that can do a lot, this
feels fundamental.

SUPER HEXAGON

94

I

suppose the games that I love the

most are the ones that act as a

toolkit for people to express

themselves with: whether that’s

through fiction or action or finesse.

Dota 2 is special because it acts as a

showcase of almost everything that is

good and bad about people trying to

co-operate with one another. Its

sheer complexity relative to other

comparable MOBAs isn’t an obstacle

to this: it accentuates it. It’s hard!

People can be mean! People can also

exceed your expectations, pull

victories out of the bag, come

together when it counts. I

appreciate that I gaveDota 2 92

when I re-reviewed it for

PCGamer.com last year, but

I’m doing a bit, so...

DOTA 2

94

I

don’t think any game series will

ever hit as hard for me asMass

Effect, and this is a phenomenal

conclusion. You heard me! It’s a

series of thrilling resolutions with

one bighearted finale, unsurpassed as

an act of bombastic interactive

cinema. That it brought out the angry

petition brigade, and that they have

plagued games since, is a tragic

shame. ButMass Effect’s strength

was always that it could play notes

other than anger. What I’m

saying is: the brave spaceships

made me cry.

MASS EFFECT 3

94

Two su p e rb h exa go n s

right there.

GG WP. Sniff.