Why Dishonored is not very good.

Yep, I'm going there. Now Dishonored is one of the most praised games of the past year. It was on a lot of peoples Top Five lists, and then it won game of the year at the BAFTAs and at another recent UK awards gig. Now this isn't to say that I think that Dishonored is bad, per say, just that it sure as hell ain't 'game of the year', especially not in the year that gave us XCOM, and Spec Ops: The Line. Now this isn't to say that critics haven't spotted and talked about some of the game's faults. The terrible voice-acting/dialogue, the binary moral choices, the fact that most of the upgrades are only useful for killing enemies. So, as always, I will attempt to refrain from the obvious complaints.

Linearity disguised as non-linearity

One of the supposed selling points for Dishonored was the idea of an open-world stealth game, in the vein of Thief. Games such as these are generally best with large open maps that allow multiple routes to the target, allowing for a generally more interesting and diverse play experience. However there are a few things that kneecap this aspect of the gameplay, and as is often the case, they come in threes.

1. Side-quests: While complaining about a game having more content seems strange, particularly with a game that barely squeaks in at 6-8 hours with that extra content included, hear me out. You see it isn't that the side-quests give to much content, its that they don't have much diversity and actually hamper the idea that if you put seven gamers in a room that they'd have played the level differently. Because the side-quests give the all important power-ups you are going to want to complete them all.
2. Map, more like Mini-Map: Yeah I think the maps are kind of small. And before someone starts complaining that bigger isn't always better, I would like to preemptively rebut you. One of the most recent examples of this little sub genre, Hitman: Blood Money. Now the better maps from that game, and series, are the ones that genuinely have multiple routes and options. So that players could potentially get the same score. The maps in Dishonored are small and rather claustrophobic, most of the important stuff is all in the same place. 
3. Power-up, unless you don't like killing: This is the real big problem, almost all of the upgrades in the game are related to combat. There are a couple of non-combat power-ups, such as the blink upgrades, and the eye-thing. But there are no real good upgrades for non-combatants. Combine this with the fact that the combat upgrades are actually pretty cool, like who doesn't want to summon a swarm of killer plague rats? And the game constrains the player even further, by encouraging one play style over the other.

"Blah, blah, blah", between stabbing.

This isn't me criticizing the terrible dialogue, I said that I wasn't going to go for the generic criticisms and I meant it. No, my problem is how boring these in between scenes are. Between your stabbing grounds you'll be forced to make tracks back to the revolutionary town in order to talk with the locals and be given the opportunity to hunt for more collectible doodads, before you can have fun again. This isn't to say that I dislike slowing the game down to try and build the world in which we are hunting, I love that idea. In fact in Deus Ex: Human Revolution when they did that I loved it. But in that game the acting and the dialogue were actually good, and so it was easier to immerse myself in the world. 

One of the worst things that a video game can be is boring. Even offensively bad is a better fate than being boring. After all, which do you remember more, for better or for worse, Haze, or Metroid: Other M? Now both of these games are pretty bad, but one of them is remembered, albeit mostly as a "how not to" guide, and one of them most of you forgot existed until just now. And that is the real crime that Dishonored is guilty of, it's boring. 

The stabbing gameplay is mostly fun. Partially due to the incredible shortness of the campaign. But at the same time it just goes to show how little Dishonored does above competently. If the game was longer it probably wouldn't have been as loved, as it probably would've suffered Borderlands 2 syndrome and become so long and arduous that the good bits turn bad from repetition. 

Conclusion

So if I was a publisher-approved game critic that measured everything with numeric ratings that undermine the concept of complex subjective opinions, what would I give Dishonored? Probably a 3/5 on a good day. Not atrocious, not overly good either. Most of my real issues with this game come from the lavish praise that was layered on it by games journalists. As always, if you disagree, think that I missed something, or don't think that I was hard enough on it, please comment.