Still, it's always a blast to try to break things in a game like this. Your Dishonored experience will likely differ from mine, and you will likely come away from the game with interesting stories of how you possessed a fish and snuck underneath a moat to dodge a pack of marauding Tallboys, or how you threw a grenade in a last-effort attempt to disable a dangerous pylon, only to be shocked to find that it actually worked. Swapping Dishonored stories with Kotaku's Kirk Hamilton over the past week was almost as fun as the game itself. And for me, few gaming experiences have been more enjoyable than dropping into Dunwall and finding creative ways to take down enemies, sneak through streets, and get revenge.

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Playing a video game usually feels like battling against a designer's mind. Can you figure out exactly how to get past this obstacle? Can you find the solution to this next puzzle? Can you move quickly enough to defeat this boss?

Dishonored is different. Playing Dishonored feels like entering a designer's playpen. You're given a set of tools and encouraged to experiment with them, to break them, to explore and adventure and read and fiddle and sneak and kill. Freedom never felt so good.