After hearing so much about the campaign in reference to Titanfall 2, I felt like I had to give this a shot. I already owned it due to wanting to play Modern Warfare Remastered at launch, but I sampled the zombies and multiplayer and kinda gave up on. Most of the time, a good zombies experience is all I want.

The last COD campaign I played to completion was MW3, so immediately the fact that I beat this shows its at the very least a good game. The variety, the fact there are side quests, and the solid enough story stuff (if less engaging than earlier CODs) already puts it ahead of any of the Call of Duty games this gen in the campaign department, and honestly? I may go back and 100% it.

The multiplayer? Yeah, no. I've maintained that advanced movement was actually great in Advanced Warfare, but afterwards, none of the developers had any desire to use it. They keep it in anyways. For this game, it's the wall running that kills it. Not ONCE does it feel necessary, and after the campaign used it maybe 3 times, I can't even say that they needed it for that. Just remove it, keep the zero g stuff. Outside of that, the multiplayer is just bleh anyways.

So now, zombies. I may come back and update this portion, but it's... weird. Lots of great ideas are there, and the theme is STELLAR, but everything feels off. Like, I just can't get into it. If I do go for the platinum, I'll have to play a lot of it, so like I said, this part may get some revisions.

So, yes, the 3.5/5 is pretty much solely for the campaign. Is the game worth it just for that? Eh? Maybe? Not for a lot of money, and you definitely aren't getting a Doom or Wolfenstein level experience, but it's still fun. I did think Titanfall 2's campaign was sorta overrated, and honestly, this is probably on par with that for me. Titanfall 2 just makes it up with outstanding multiplayer, and this doesn't have that.

I struggle to find a way to talk about this game in a way that won't seem like I'm just playing it wrong, because that's what's happening. I'm playing it wrong. However, I think there's a lot of elements of this game that just don't work if you don't play it "correctly", and if you aren't already in the groove, it's nearly impossible to get there.

It took me two attempts to get through the first Dishonored. The first time, I tried to do stealth no-kill because I try to play games the way I myself feel like I'd go about it in real life, morally. This went... awfully. It's hard. Extremely so. I got frustrated, put it down, and didn't come back for years.

The second time, I tried to drop all of that, killing when things went wrong, and enjoyed it a good bit more. I still didn't fully engage with everything the game had to offer, but I felt satisfied with my playthrough. Then the dlc decided to up the difficulty, so I dropped out and didn't play Dishonored 2 until now.

As soon as I started Dishonored 2 (on normal difficulty), I realized that the game immediately decided that I had to have retained everything I learned and that there was no warm-up necessary. It's SO much harder. SO MUCH. So I should just get good, right? Well...

So my problem with Dishonored 2 is that it does not ever give you time to catch up to its skill level before throwing new elements at you... and that's if you even learn how to use the base level gadgets and powers effectively at all. I was constantly dying despite shedding any pretense of full stealth/no kill, and it kept compounding frustration to the point that I always took the easiest route, linking enemies then shooting with sleep darts, followed by crossbow bolts as soon as I ran out of the darts.

That's such a lame way to play, right? I'm very aware. What else was I supposed to do, though? It felt like every attempt at experimentation lead to frustration, so I took the path of least resistance every time. This also had repercussion on non-combat scenarios- why would I spend time reading the extra lore if I felt like I was going to be stuck on the next part for 20 minutes? The game became something that I tried to rush through, and this game is absolutely NOT meant to be played that way.

I blame the game for some of this, but I already know that some of the issues are still on me. I wasn't playing for immersion or just to explore, I was playing because I wanted to experience Dishonored 2, probably in just one playthrough. I'm not the target audience. These games are made for people willing to go through multiple times, just soaking in everything and seeing all the crazy stuff they can pull off. I think there's a world where I could be one of those players MAYBE, but it just felt so overwhelming all of the time.

It's still a good game, though. I can see how a new game+ playthrough could allow crazier combos of powers, I didn't even touch bone charms really outside of applying the ones I found, and there's a lot of paths I didn't even explore. I had some of those crazy revelatory moments that you're supposed to have, such as when I discovered an easy way to take out all the clockwork soldiers in the mansion with just one rewired trap. I just wish I could actually consistently pull off that stuff, instead of panicking as soon as I get caught and killing everyone just so I can get back to the task at hand.