Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2012-10-12 06:43 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2012-10-12 06:43 pm
[ SECRET POST #2110 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2110 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
01.
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02.
[Teen Wolf]
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03. [WARNING for rape/child abuse]
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04.
[Lady Gaga]
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05.
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06. http://i48.tinypic.com/a14a4p.png
[contains possibly self-harm triggery images of scars; text isn't about self-harm, though]
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07.
[CSI:NY]
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08.
[Teen Wolf]
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09.
[Skins]
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10.
[Mary McDonnell and David Strathairn]
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11.
[No. 6]
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12.
[Glee]
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[ ----- SPOILERY SECRETS AHEAD ---- ]
13. [SPOILERS for Warehouse 13]
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14. [SPOILERS for Joker Blogs]
http://i47.tinypic.com/2hecxnt.gif
[image possibly triggery; character with gun in mouth]
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15. [SPOILERS for Doctor Who]
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16. [SPOILERS for Pitch Perfect]
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17. [SPOILERS for Marvel Comics (Avengers vs. X-Men)]
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18. [SPOILERS for Avengers vs. X-Men]
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[ ----- TRIGGERY SECRETS AHEAD ---- ]
19. [WARNING for rape]
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20. [WARNING for rape]
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21. [WARNING for suicide]
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #301.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
Dishonored proper review, sans toilet stalls/cops
I...
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this is the greatest game of the last 10 years. Not shitting you. That's not hyperbole. I've loved a great many games over the last decade or so -- Metal Gear Solid 3, Half-Life 2, Vampire: the Masquerade Bloodlines, The Warriors, Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl and Call of Pripyat, Fallout 3 and New Vegas, and most recently Deus Ex Human Revolution -- but while all of those games are awesome, and many of them I'd put physical copies of in my pants (mmmmmm) they don't quite measure up. MGS3 Subsistence was perfect, and it still doesn't measure up.
The setting shouldn't work at all. It's this crazy mash-up of Thief, Deus Ex, Bioshock, with a healthy dose of Half-Life 2 -- the original, with its starker lighting and grander scope. It's like they dropped the 1600s black plague into a Victorian London that got 1940s-level tech a half-century early. It shouldn't work. But it does. It works brilliantly. Perfectly. Everything comes together cohesively, which is surprising given how many elements are involved. Not even Thief had gelled its blend of styles and themes as perfectly.
The design is a high point. I remember when HL2 came out, I thought the environs were fantastically done, all dirty and cluttered and kinda old, the lighting perfect. It doesn't hold up today, of course, but lives on in Dishonored -- junk and dirt and loose papers and garbage and bodies just everywhere. The lighting is masterful, surpassing even that of HL2's which at the time had some of the best, most realistic lighting I'd ever seen.
The gameplay... what can I say? It's brilliant. The levels are fantastically designed, particularly the ones in the first 2/3rds of the game. Thief fans were definitely behind some of this, the design aesthetic, the open-ended nature of the missions. And even towards the end, when it becomes a journey a la Half-Life 2 or perhaps Thief's Lost Quarter mission as you attempt to reach the Cathedral, the design philosophy doesn't let up. And you can approach things any way you want. I almost completely bypassed most of the last mission just going in along the girders and other infrastructure.
The powers you get... Blink is very powerful. Almost too powerful, really. And yet, if you fuck up, it'll be the only thing that saves you sometimes. The other powers have their uses, especially if you like being an asshole -- summing a swarm of rats is great fun. The weapons you get -- the pistol is ridiculously powerful, but it's so damn noisy. You have quieter options with the crossbow, yet you do have to be careful with projectile drop.
There's a darkness to this game I haven't seen in a while. The whole situation is dire and creepy, with the plague everywhere, so many rats... the police state, everything seems to be crumbling down around you and though you're on a mission of revenge, deep down you know it's not going to mean much as Dunwall rots away from the inside. The weepers drive the point home -- they're everywhere, even as little as 10 feet away from the nearest City Watch patrol. It's clear the city simply cannot handle the sheer amount of strain the plague is putting on it, and it shows.
I love that there's little things that are never fully explained, like the Outsider, or Pandyssia or the other Isles, or the exact nature of Corvo's relationship to the Empress and Emily. It helps present the idea that there's a much bigger world outside Dunwall. I can't be the only one who noticed that the Abbey of the Everyman preaches against the Outsider and, you know, everything else, yet they do not seem to actually worship anything.
Remember when we were all wondering if Bioshock would lead the charge of less dumbed-down? And then it came out? But despite its gameplay problems, what it was trying to do story-wise, and what it was trying to present in terms of themes, were new territory for the current generation of gamers, and proved that there's an audience for deeper things than Generic Manshoots. Bioshock 2 took that up a notch, adding a strongly personal element to it; and say what you will about Call of Duty, but Black Ops brought a genuinely cerebral plot to the frat crowd (probably why they hated it.) And the fact that Deus Ex Human Revolution was 90% faithful to the original game, I considered that a fucking miracle in 2011. If Dishonored sells well, and I've been doing my part in yelling at everyone I can to buy a copy, it'll be proof that we can finally bring that certain je ne sais quoi of the old days and the old ways (I hesitate to use "immersive sim" because I still think it's a stupid term) to a new audience.
tl;dr: 10/10, drop what you're doing and play this now god damn your eyes
Re: Dishonored proper review, sans toilet stalls/cops
(Anonymous) 2012-10-13 12:06 am (UTC)(link)Re: Dishonored proper review, sans toilet stalls/cops
Re: Dishonored proper review, sans toilet stalls/cops
also, really impressed already with how your choices affect the world around you. in a lot of games that give you an option for stealth or violence, waltzing in and killing everything in sight is often as effective as sneaking around, and the consequences aren't that serious. it makes the stealthy aspect seem a little pointless.
i've been pretty brutal so far in the missions, and it's amazing to see the city getting perceptibly worse because of what I'm doing. it's not just the increase in guards, but the increase in rats and weepers and the way characters are beginning to treat me...it's really the only game in recent memory that's made me feel like my shitty behavior has actual consequences beyond making combat more likely.
anyway, this isn't directly related but i've been playing Resident Evil 6 simultaneously and it's mind-boggling at how bad it is in comparison. Like...Dishonored is a culmination of everything good done in gaming in the past 10 years, while RE6 feels like the nadir of every unbearable popular trend in gaming today.
Re: Dishonored proper review, sans toilet stalls/cops
(Anonymous) 2012-10-13 11:23 am (UTC)(link)Re: Dishonored proper review, sans toilet stalls/cops
(Anonymous) 2012-10-13 04:06 pm (UTC)(link)My brother rented it from Redbox and after about 3 hours decided it wasn't his type of game. From the few minutes I saw, it really did remind me of Bioshock which, while I enjoyed the storyline, didn't really enjoy gameplay. (First person mode gives me nausea sometimes.) And revenge isn't the most driving factor for me unless it's halfway into the storyline.