Dishonored: Dunwall City Trials Review

Dishonored's first DLC pack is out, and it's something of a snack before the meal that is its new story-based missions arrive. Like a mixture of Batman: Arkham Asylum's challenge modes and the abstract Pure Time Trials pack for Mirror's Edge, the ten trial maps here push Dishonored's systems to their limit without the constraints of a traditional mission structure or narrative.

The first, Mystery Foe, is actually one of the best, tasking Corvo with collecting clues to identify and assassinate his randomly selected target. Getting spotted will cause the target to flee, and the mission to fail. It feels like a logical extension of the masked ball dynamic established in Lady Boyle's Last Party, but fleshed out to greater effect now that its free of playtester confusion. In short, this is how Lady Boyle's assassination should have played out.

A second stealth challenge, Burglar, tasks Corvo with cleaning out the valuables of a mansion. It's a ghost challenge that only comes into its own on Expert difficulty, completely removing Corvo's supernatural powers and forcing a more Thief-like playstyle. Good luck; you'll need it.

Back Alley Brawl offers standard combat waves in a closed arena. It prioritises long-term resource management, as the difficult spikes once the Tallboys begin to spawn. This is the most replayable of the included challenges, as it cuts right to the heart of Dishonored's fast and flashy improvisational combat.

Assassin's Run is rather weak, arming Corvo with just a crossbow and making him run through timed rooms to quickly headshot the enemies within. Oil Drop is similarly one-note, seeing Corvo shoot falling whale oil tanks in an almost iPhone-like minigame. Kill Cascade places a series of enemies on exponentially lower platforms and asks Corvo to chain drop assassinations together on them, but it unfortunately exposes the drop assassination detection condition for the finicky thing that it is.

Bend Time Massacre lets Corvo peer through a glass panel into a room full of enemies and plan how best to utilise his arsenal to take them all out in a single instance of Bend Time. It's a fantastic puzzle idea, and is complemented by the Kill Chain puzzle challenge. This places Corvo in a room full of non-responsive NPCs and tasks him with killing them all with no more than four seconds between each assassination.

Bonfires is a chance to flex your Blink skills as Corvo must touch shifting markers across the map as quickly as possible, but getting stuck in the angled environment is rather common. Lastly, Train Runner is a straight up speedrun, with its Expert mode adding enemies and obstacles into the mix. So, the individual challenges here are a bit hit and miss, but it's obvious Arkane has been as creative as possible in their creation. It'll keep you happily occupied until the story DLC materialises.

Developer: Arkane
Publisher: Bethesda
Price: $6.49
Web: dishonored.com