Dishonored

Picked up the GOTY version on Steam, but I likely won't have time to play the DLCs.

I was interested in playing another stealth game, since the last one I played was Deux Ex: Human Revolution, but it can get quite tedious, and I'm hoping to finish more than one game a month.

The controls are very fluid, the graphics well done and nicely stylized, the story is good although slightly predictable, and the voice acting is superb.

I started out going with stealth, then switched to murdering everyone to speed up the game. In a level load screen, I see a tip that says that killing people makes the world more chaotic and more rats and ghouls will exist in the new levels as a result. Hmm, must try to avoid killing people unless necessary. Also, I should avoid knocking people out near a swarm of rats, which will then eat the unconscious person...

The runes and bone charms upgrade system they have is pretty neat. You can pick up to 10 bone charms to be active, which give small perks (move faster in stealth, breaking glass is quieter, mana potions give you more mana, etc.). For the rune powers, I went with the blink ability early, and it was very useful. Also, getting the sight power has been amazing -- I can find all of the money and interactables much more quickly, so I can buy more upgrades and get through the game faster. It's almost like the Batman vision. After that I got faster movement, time dilation, possession, and shadow kills. Okay, possession is really sweet. For the levels with dogs, you can possess the dog, run through most of the level, then leave the dog and finish it up quick. Very good for getting through this quickly. Blink and the vision allow you to regen the mana spent on them naturally, but possession and slow time take more mana than you regen, so you have to keep drinking elixirs.

Also, I remapped the keys very early so that the heart, blink, and vision were 1, 2, 3. The rest of the hotkeys map to items that kill things which is less of a priority. I can also mouse wheel to them. Or just straight up kill them with my sword, which is by-far the easiest thing to do.

I started this game in April 2014, played a bit in August and just now finished it up in January. It took just a bit under 20 hours to complete the game. I'd highly recommend it for anyone that likes a good stealth game, where you don't have to play stealth. I think they force you into stealth much less than in Deux Ex: Human Revolution.