Dishonored
The trials of Corvo Attano make for the year’s most flexible first-person action game, as the assassin uses brute strength and dark arts to wreak his own brand of vengeance on the higher-powers out to frame him for murder. Dishonored’s trick is in the way it hands the keys to said vengeance over to the player; the choice for a bloodless reprisal entirely within the realms of possibility. This same freedom of choice prevails through the ever challenging and gratifying adventure, as the storyline branches and the game’s setting of Dunwall morphs depending on the player’s approach. Nothing less than spectacular.