Enter Corvo Attano, the Royal Protector and protagonist of Dishonored. Returning from his mission, Corvo meets the empress and delivers a message. After some exposition, assassins kill the empress and abduct her daughter. When the dust settles, the Royal Spymaster arrives and declares Corvo a traitor for the murder of the empress. After six months in prison, Corvo is left a message and the key to his cell. The message explains how Corvo may escape and how to seek vengeance against those who conspired against the empire.

Right from the get-go, this game displays unique dynamics. You can choose to be merciful and never kill anyone, or a sociopath, killing every person in his way. Compounding the dichotomy is that the story and its ending changes depending on how you play. Merciful acts result in a stable city, whereas killing causes a much darker ending. Another interesting thing is the supernatural powers system. These powers range from teleportation to stopping time to possessing others. These powers alter game dynamics completely by adding entirely new ways to enter your foe’s domain. Just walk in the front door possessing a guard, or enter via a sewer pipe with teleportation called Blink.

In your possession are three main weapons and some nice doohickeys. Your sword and gun’s uses are obvious, but your crossbow is built for both stealth and open combat. One can either kill with incendiary or normal bolts, or use sleep darts to quickly knock out guards that cannot be subdue easily. Once dead or knocked out, hiding the person must be addressed or else another guard may stumble upon him and raise the alarm. This sounds annoying, but provides a lot of amusement if you are imaginative. Knock a guard out and throw him on top of the toilet if you want, or stack them all up in a big pile for an awkward awakening.

Unfortunately, there are some glitches in this game that are extremely frustrating. Sometimes when you reload the game, bodies will glitch through the floor and die, causing you to have to restart the mission if you’re going for no kills. Even worse is that one can fulfill all requirements for certain achievements awarded at the end of the game, and not receive them.

The way we see it, Dishonored is a game definitely worth at least looking at. While there is no multiplayer, three DLCs (downloadable content) are scheduled to be released by the Spring of 2013. Still a bit pricey at $55, it’s better to rent this game for now if you are not one to explore every avenue of a game, given there’s no multiplayer and replayability is somewhat finite. But this is an amazing game with something for all players. No matter how you play it, it’s satisfying the whole way through. Thus we give this game an 8/10 if only for the extemely annoying glitches. Now show us what you can do, assassin!