Dishonored? Outstanding. Superb. A critical darling for good reason. Dishonored's DLC? Also outstanding! Genuinely integral to the lore and expanding the gameplay sandbox. Dishonored 2? One of the best ImSim puzzle boxes you'll ever play! Dishonored: Death of the Outsider? Utterly forgettable, clearly rushed
Not an instant recommendation, but if you like counter/parry heavy brawlers and don't mind a lack of story, you might get something out of this.
As someone who normally has lots of issues with Naughty Dog's work, these two games are exceptional in their attempt to grow the series up in many praiseworthy ways. Better gameplay, far more sensible writing, and I appreciate the amount of player agency. That said, this is with the caveat that the PC port does NOT run very smoothly, even on fairly beefy hardware. So be ready to have to tweak settings a bunch.
You have to understand something going into God of War 2018 - this is a game all about its story. If you're for that? You'll probably have a good time. If you try to treat it like the old God of War games though, and expect nothing but combat and melodrama? This ain't it. For me, I'm conflicted, as I enjoy both styles, and the way the 2018 entry tries to square things between them is heavily in favor of the cutscenes and dialogue as opposed to combat that truly feels intuitive. Also, unless played on PC, the camera controls are horrendously sluggish - do not play this on a controller if you have the option.
Vampyr was my 2018 GOTY and that remains the case to this day. From its handling of cause and effect to its tragic central romance, there are few action-RPG hybrids quite like this. Yes, it isn't perfect - you can tell it had budget constraints all over the place - but you easily look past them once you delve into its richly drawn world of London on the verge of collapse. I get that critics were harder on it at launch, but you won't regret giving this one a whirl. It's basically The Witcher with elements of Bloodborne thrown in for good measure! I just offer one quick bit of advice: don't choose the blood talons as your primary attack ability. You'll thank me later if you opt for either of the other two options.
You have to understand something when playing this one. As a cohesive whole... it's neither cohesive, nor whole. However, as a series of promising tech demos of what a good Call of Cthulhu game could be, you might get something out of it. You get to see it as an adventure game, an RPG, a stealth game, a walking sim, and even a (and I'm being very generous with this genre classification) first-person shooter. Yet none of these truly amount to a larger experience. It will be over before your know it, and you'll still not quite be sure what the point of it all was. Cyanide make good games. This isn't one of them, sadly.
I remember when I first had the chance to look at Kholat. I thought it'd be this incredible journey. It has a great starting premise of a real-life mystery and even Sean Bean narrating... and it is by far one of the lamest walking sims I've ever played. I'm not saying this as someone opposed to the genre either. I loved Dear Esther, Apsulov was an outstandingly good time even though its minimal gameplay gimmicks didn't hold up under scrutiny, and The Stanley Parable is one of the best examples of what this medium can accomplish. Kholat is nowhere close to that. Kholat is... watching paint dry, expecting something interesting to happen at some point, and then when it finally dries, exclaiming "Wait, that's it??" I appreciate the artistry of the audio-visual work but they're in service to a nothing-burger that I just can't recommend to anyone.
