I've been playing the pirated version on my 360 dev kit. I don't play any 360 games anymore, but really just couldn't wait for the Steam version to unlock.

I don't like that you can just pull weapons out of your ass and they instantly appear in your hand, where as in previous hitman games if you had a large weapon you would have to hold it in your off hand or toss it away, now you can just hold whatever.

QTE are soo fucking fast on Purist mode that I couldn't get past the bar level because of it and had to drop the difficulty down because of it.

I got past the part with the nuns and haven't played more.

Hopefully I will appreciate it more playing steam version with keyboard and mouse at 2560x1600 with everything looking sexy.

Not gonna pass judgement until I replay it on PC and actually take my time with it. 360 Version I was still just fucking around.

I miss Jesper Kyd.

Even if this game isn't what I wanted, they still made another hitman game and I hope enough people purchase it for them to continue on with one of my favorite game franchises.

From what I have seen so far, I don't mind the changes but AI issues and some balances seem to be a main problem. For those who have played it: do you think a patch on those two subjects would improve your overall experience?

From what I have seen so far, I don't mind the changes but AI issues and some balances seem to be a main problem. For those who have played it: do you think a patch on those two subjects would improve your overall experience?

@ZeForgotten: Gametrailers has never been a great source of reliable reviews, but they pointed out a lot of issues related mainly to AI, including the noise-lure mechanic. I'm pretty sure that a patch will come out really soon to fix that, so I'm still on board to purchase Hitman Absolution. Another question: do enemies/NPCs bleed out? A minor thing, but it would be weird for a Hitman game not to have that aesthetic.

@ZeForgotten: Gametrailers has never been a great source of reliable reviews, but they pointed out a lot of issues related mainly to AI, including the noise-lure mechanic. I'm pretty sure that a patch will come out really soon to fix that, so I'm still on board to purchase Hitman Absolution. Another question: do enemies/NPCs bleed out? A minor thing, but it would be weird for a Hitman game not to have that aesthetic.

From what I've seen so far of Hitman: Absolution, I kind of bummed out. I'll wait for more information (and perhaps a quick look) before making any definitive judgement calls though. As of now, I'm just glad that I didn't preorder it.

It really astounds me how quick people are eager to be swayed by negative opinions of things when there are positive opinions of the same thing.

It really astounds me how quick people are eager to be swayed by negative opinions of things when there are positive opinions of the same thing.

@Demoskinos said:

It really astounds me how quick people are eager to be swayed by negative opinions of things when there are positive opinions of the same thing.

It is well known that people prefer discussing negative things rather than positive things- and thus are more willing/liable to be affected by negative things. >_>

Even more so on the internet. :P

@ZeForgotten said:

@Demoskinos said:

It really astounds me how quick people are eager to be swayed by negative opinions of things when there are positive opinions of the same thing.

It's still popular to just hate things from the beginning.

What? Where's the hate?

@Yummylee said:

@ZeForgotten said:

@Demoskinos said:

It really astounds me how quick people are eager to be swayed by negative opinions of things when there are positive opinions of the same thing.

It's still popular to just hate things from the beginning.

What? Where's the hate?

It's really popular to bring up "hate" whenever a discussion scrutinizes a game. Scrutiny and complaints are the beefy meat of video game discussions because they reflect intelligent expectations and commendable standards, yet some people are just too tempted not to accuse others of hate hate hate just because they had something negative to say.

I don't know if I'll get it but I will gladly watch TheAuZZieGamer play through it on Youtube.

@ZeForgotten said:

@Demoskinos said:

It really astounds me how quick people are eager to be swayed by negative opinions of things when there are positive opinions of the same thing.

It's still popular to just hate things from the beginning.

What? Where's the hate?

@Yummylee said:

@ZeForgotten said:

@Demoskinos said:

It really astounds me how quick people are eager to be swayed by negative opinions of things when there are positive opinions of the same thing.

It's still popular to just hate things from the beginning.

What? Where's the hate?

It's really popular to bring up "hate" whenever a discussion scrutinizes a game. Scrutiny and complaints are the beefy meat of video game discussions because they reflect intelligent expectations and commendable standards, yet some people are just too tempted not to accuse others of hate hate hate just because they had something negative to say.

@Jaqen_HGhar said:

I am a huge fan of all the previous Hitman games (hell, I got the Silent Assassin rank on every mission in 2 and Contracts), and some of these things does worry me. But then I realize that it doesn't really matter that much. Sure, it seems the main story of the game has become more cinematic, more set-piece like, telling a more personal story of Mr. 47. That makes perfect sense, and I think I am going to like that. While it would be a bummer if that was all there was to the game, we still got the Contracts mode. That is where the old style of "enter map, kill 1-3 targets, get out" will come to play every time. And seeing how these Contracts are made by players, I bet you can get a lot of crazy missions to do.

But hey, I haven't played it yet, so I might be totally wrong. I am hopeful though.

And regarding the wrestling match (which you can beat in other ways according to IO), in the Blood Money Mission Curtains Down (the opera) you can dress up like a WW1 Executioner and shoot one of your hits on stage with a real gun instead of the prop. In front of several people. The disguise you wear is a military suit and a hat. You can then walk calmly out and make sure to detonate explosives, having a chandelier fall on your second hit. So acting as a wrestler in an illegal cage fight, killing your opponent... not that outlandish really.

I am also trying to remain positive about it. The outlandish thing to me about the cage fight is when he takes his mask off before killing the guy. Was it supposed to look like an accident?

Were you able to get Silent Assassin on the Opera level by shooting the guy yourself (in the disguise)? I had always either swapped out the pistols or sniped the guy from the top box.

@Yummylee Good read, thanks.

It's interesting to see AC3 and Absolution receiving some mixed responses with with me still waiting for the PC version. It will be a neat psychological exercise for myself, to see if/how the influx of this feedback will affect my own opinions on them when so much of it is ahead of my own playthroughs.

@Yummylee said:

So I noticed some people have managed to snag the game early, and of course the entire thing can be found on youtube. I just so happened to be one of the lucky ones, and while I haven't completed it yet, I've gotten up to the part in the library with all of the cops from that debut gameplay demo way back when.

Now I'm not very far, but I've played enough to establish some thoughts and overall, I'm kinda mixed. I'll do up a list of pros and cons as of now, after playing through what are essentially the first 4-5 chapters:

Pros:

• Game looks great, especially the facial animations, and it has some effectively moody atmosphere. Agent 47 is one impressive character model overall; almost disturbingly bright blue eyes, though.

• A lot of customisation at your fingertips; you can play as strict as you wish by essentially turning off everything and relying on your own instincts and patience. Sure, playing this as a shooter is now more accessible than ever, but at the same time the stealth stuff has been expanded about as much.

• Solid amount of incidental dialogue to listen to throughout the environments.

• Streamlined controls and interface, so you won't be accidentally pulling out your gun in the middle of a crowd or something. Plus the game has done a good job in hinting at what you will clearly grab the attention of the guards.

• Weird, wacky and at times downright terrifying rag-doll physics in full effect!

• Much more versatility when it comes to how you want to sleuth, not the least of which of course is the cover system and the ability to move around whilst crouched.

• Having a scoring meter up top, and not to mention all of the challenges and item/costume checklists and what have you, make for some incentives to perhaps play through levels multiple times even if there hasn't been a whole lot of variety as of yet.

Cons:

• As you may have already gathered, this is a much more cinematic game than prior Hitman titles and there are a lot more cutscenes and an actual driving narrative behind it all. What this then means, as of now where I'm at, is that there's been a noticeably distinct lack of any actual Hitman'ing. Plenty of stealth gameplay, but nothing like setting up traps or anything like that. There was the Chinatown mission of course, which is also segued rather haphazardly into the story, but that's all so far. Just a preference of mine, but I liked the all-business nature of previous games were you just had a selection of missions that dump you into an environment to go wild with little context besides ''you're an assassin, now go assassinate''. Plus I've just come from going through a set-piece where 47 has to escape from a burning building; very straightforward, and I'm now starting to see what they meant when they said this was going to be a much more linear game.

• Most of the game so far has mostly been separated across a selection of disappointingly small environments. Nothing to match the sandboxes of prior games as of yet.

• 47 sounds weird; it's the same voice actor, but he sounds like he's actually from Chicago at times and doesn't have the same soft spoken English accent of the original games. Total nitpicking, though, since for the much larger amount of dialogue Bateson has to work with to build upon the character, he's done an alright job so far.

• Disguises aren't nearly as reliable as they used to be as people can very quickly see right through them if you're not using your 'Instinct' ability to hide. Also simply turning your face to the ground is kind of a silly way for Agent 47 to 'blend in' and if anything only makes him look even more suspicious.

• When you die, there's no slo-mo where you get to pop off a few guards to potentially save you, or at the very least to watch 47 hilariously stumble to the floor.

• I haven't got there yet, but that cage match QTE video that's doing the rounds lately is.... man, that's just wrong.

• EDIT: Oh, and you can't look through keyholes. Your minimap's there, but it doesn't distinguish civilians and guards, so you have no idea what to expect when you open a door and are to simply trial and error it. Really can't fathom why they would remove such a feature.

Overall I'm having fun, but I'm not finding it to be quite as engaging as previous games and I'm not nearly as curious to head into chapters to do things differently; it all feels so surprisingly enclosed and claustrophobic. After around 3 hours now I think, I'm getting the feeling that I'm not going to encounter any such levels as expansive and that offer up so much diversity as the Hotel level from Contracts. I have to imagine a lot of Hitman diehard fans are probably going to be feeling pretty sour about the game at that.

Of course I can't stress enough that as far as I know, I could only just be scratching the surface, and I would love to return after another 3 hours to say how the game's completely turned around. The gameplay and the options they give you is impressive and a massive step up from previous games. It's just that so far, they haven't given me much need to really utilise them besides cutting around a lot corners in cover. Hopefully this is just all the fault of a slow start.

So how's everyone else been finding it? And for the folks who are further on, can you confirm if the game gets better as it goes on?

I'd just like to say, David Bateson never played 47 as a soft spoken English accent...he played him in his normal South African accent.

@Yummylee: Damn.. I really do hope it opens up to more Hitman style missions.. After my dissapoint-ment with RE6 and AC3 I have high hopes for the return of Hitman, everything looked so promising.. I played Blood Money to death! Have you done the greaser mission they showed off in the 10 minute demo? that at least looked open and open-ended?

Also that QTE Wrestling thing.. I have no words..

@SASnake: And you had to quote my entire post to say that?... Whatever, point is he sounds different.

@Genkkaku: Nah, I haven't played much since my last update, though I am most definitely looking forward to that 50s style sandbox mission.

@Demoskinos said:

@AhmadMetallic

@Yummylee said:

@ZeForgotten said:

@Demoskinos said:

It really astounds me how quick people are eager to be swayed by negative opinions of things when there are positive opinions of the same thing.

It's still popular to just hate things from the beginning.

What? Where's the hate?

It's really popular to bring up "hate" whenever a discussion scrutinizes a game. Scrutiny and complaints are the beefy meat of video game discussions because they reflect intelligent expectations and commendable standards, yet some people are just too tempted not to accuse others of hate hate hate just because they had something negative to say.

Its not that its people straight up deciding not to play the game because of the scrutiny without weighing in the positive things people have said about the game. Scrutiny is fine. No game is flawless. Again what bothers me isn't that people dont like a game but that they decide not to play or buy it simply based on negative feedback without seemingly ever trying to factor in the positive and weighing them against each other.

Or, you know, people have made those decisions prior to writing out their post and don't feel the need to write out their entire thought process? Or, the things that are quite clearly missing from this game are the things that people who liked the previous games wanted from them?

But no, according you, everyone is hating this game without actually thinking about.

@Yummylee: Alright cool, at least there is still hope for that! I still can't wait to play it (despite it's very un-Hitman shell), bummer I have to wait till tomorrow for it to unlock on Steam..

Smaller levels really kills it for me, I installed Blood Money today and played the first 3 levels, its still so good!

Do they turn 47 into some kinda good guy with a conscious by the end? I really disliked that about syndicate.

@ZeForgotten said:

@Ghost_Cat said:

@ZeForgotten: Gametrailers has never been a great source of reliable reviews, but they pointed out a lot of issues related mainly to AI, including the noise-lure mechanic. I'm pretty sure that a patch will come out really soon to fix that, so I'm still on board to purchase Hitman Absolution. Another question: do enemies/NPCs bleed out? A minor thing, but it would be weird for a Hitman game not to have that aesthetic.

No idea, I'm not at home at the moment, sadly. So I can't even check if they actually do.
Never had the need to wait around because a bullet to the head usually solves my problems :P

Just got done watching this video that touches on some of the problems and the good parts about the game It has a little more info than I could give you, at the moment.

Thanks for the link! I enjoy Totalbiscuit's videos. Curious to see his take on the game. Watching now. :)

From all of the reviews and impressions I've been hearing, I am very disappointed that this Hitman game doesn't give me what I want from a Hitman game. I will wait on this one and get it when it's cheaper, or rent it.

Bummer that some of the potential wasn't fully realized, but I still think I'm gonna pick this one up. I've been looking forward to it all year and I'm willing to look past some jank if it means I can stab a guy through the mouth with a katana while wearing a chipmunk costume.. (maybe i should see a therapist). But I think we all have the same question on our minds... the one true question; Hows the Ave Maria? :D

The disguise system basically only affording you 2 seconds of time between pieces of cover is a deal-breaker.

Yeah, I know, you could get caught if you idled around guards in Blood Money. IT STILL TOOK LIKE 20 SECONDS FOR IT TO HAPPEN. It didn't go from opening a door into a room full of dudes to gunfight in 5 seconds.

@Terramagi said:

The disguise system basically only affording you 2 seconds of time between pieces of cover is a deal-breaker.

Yeah, I know, you could get caught if you idled around guards in Blood Money. IT STILL TOOK LIKE 20 SECONDS FOR IT TO HAPPEN. It didn't go from opening a door into a room full of dudes to gunfight in 5 seconds.

This is actually a very odd change for iO to make considering the history. One of the problems Hitman 2 had was that a certain degree of exposure, even when wearing the appropriate costume, could result in detection. That by itself isn't a problem but for the fact that your level of exposure changed, often quite drastically, depending on the area of the game. It was a case of the game being obtuse in ways that the player couldn't reliably predict. In Blood Money this was changed to a more transparent system of clearly defined costume camouflage: your costume either a) doesn't work at all b) works in certain areas or at long distance or c) works 100% (unless you stood still next to a guard or something dumb like that) for a given section of the level. It was a positive change and made Blood Money a good deal more approachable for a wider audience, sort of in the same way Mark Of The Ninja shows you exactly what the parameters of detection are straight up. It's really weird for them to go back on this to a system that is sliding scale and tied to a button function to affect concealment.

@YOU_DIED: It is pretty stupid, but it is also an illegal cage match, or so they said somewhere. So it's not odd that one of the wrestlers die.

I believe you could get the Silent Assassin rank if you did it yourself, but you had to time everything very closely. I only did it once or twice for fun, so I don't remember. It was a lot easier to just swap out the gun, so of course I would do that.

This is the thing that worries me about all the reviews and rumors. It seems there are less ways to do the hits. Hell, the Curtains Down mission had at least two, if not three ways to achieve a Silent Assassin rank. You had several other ways to do the hit without being detected. But at least there will be the Contracts mode for that kind of fun.

Ah...damn, I guess I expected this. They made a big budget game in 2012, so of course it's not like Blood Money. Oh well, Absolution can't take the previous games or my memories away from me.

Hope to hear more about it when it is released worldwide, but it's looking pretty grim so far. It's probably the only game out the rest of the year I was going to pick up. I just have a feeling this will end up making me feel like Max Payne 3 did. As with Hitman, I loved te hell out Max Payne 1 & 2 and those games pretty much dominated my original Xbox memories. I played Max Payne 3 when it was cheap and hated the fuck out of it. The game forced you to rely on cover too much, and I was not a fan of the "Man on Fire" asthetic with constant cutscenes. I understand Rockstar wanted to make their own take on it, but I felt they just ruined everything that made the character and series awesome. I'll stay hopeful and see the QL and review from here, but honestly I'll probably just end up re-playing all the original Xbox ones on my old CRT!

Aw, and I was looking forward to buying the PC version tomorrow. Nevertheless, I'm still gonna get it.

Great writeup on Absolution. Thanks, @Yummylee .

@kerse said:

Do they turn 47 into some kinda good guy with a conscious by the end? I really disliked that about syndicate.

I've watched the few first levels of a walkthrough, and they kind of give him a conscience at the outset.

Hope to hear more about it when it is released worldwide, but it's looking pretty grim so far. It's probably the only game out the rest of the year I was going to pick up. I just have a feeling this will end up making me feel like Max Payne 3 did. As with Hitman, I loved te hell out Max Payne 1 & 2 and those games pretty much dominated my original Xbox memories. I played Max Payne 3 when it was cheap and hated the fuck out of it. The game forced you to rely on cover too much, and I was not a fan of the "Man on Fire" asthetic with constant cutscenes. I understand Rockstar wanted to make their own take on it, but I felt they just ruined everything that made the character and series awesome. I'll stay hopeful and see the QL and review from here, but honestly I'll probably just end up re-playing all the original Xbox ones on my old CRT!

@adam1808 said:

@kerse said:

Do they turn 47 into some kinda good guy with a conscious by the end? I really disliked that about syndicate.

I've watched the few first levels of a walkthrough, and they kind of give him a conscience at the outset.

Man why are people afraid to do the non good guy story. He doesn't even have to be a bad guy either, I would love some more grey area games out there.

@kerse said:

@adam1808 said:

@kerse said:

Do they turn 47 into some kinda good guy with a conscious by the end? I really disliked that about syndicate.

I've watched the few first levels of a walkthrough, and they kind of give him a conscience at the outset.

Man why are people afraid to do the non good guy story. He doesn't even have to be a bad guy either, I would love some more grey area games out there.

So would I. But this game just seems to go overboard on the characterisation of everybody. Every single character has some kind of perverted fetish, spouting absurd "look at me I'm a morally despicable character" lines and 47 is the good guy purely because he was screwed over. It's essentially a revenge quest, which seems out of place for a Hitman game.

EDIT: 47 also has another reason for being the good guy, but that doesn't seem to be the big focus so far.

@adam1808 said:

@kerse said:

@adam1808 said:

@kerse said:

Do they turn 47 into some kinda good guy with a conscious by the end? I really disliked that about syndicate.

I've watched the few first levels of a walkthrough, and they kind of give him a conscience at the outset.

Man why are people afraid to do the non good guy story. He doesn't even have to be a bad guy either, I would love some more grey area games out there.

So would I. But this game just seems to go overboard on the characterisation of everybody. Every single character has some kind of perverted fetish, spouting absurd "look at me I'm a morally despicable character" lines and 47 is the good guy purely because he was screwed over. It's essentially a revenge quest, which seems out of place for a Hitman game.

EDIT: 47 also has another reason for being the good guy, but that doesn't seem to be the big focus so far.

I'm pretty over revenge quests like that and I tried to get out but they keep pulling me back in, there's gotta be more interesting ways to write that stuff. Maybe people just don't have the time? 2 years seems like ample time though for a good writer, I don't know. Maybe they're worried other things won't sell and with the state of the industry a poorly selling game could shut your studio down at this point.

@kerse said:

@adam1808 said:

@kerse said:

@adam1808 said:

@kerse said:

Do they turn 47 into some kinda good guy with a conscious by the end? I really disliked that about syndicate.

I've watched the few first levels of a walkthrough, and they kind of give him a conscience at the outset.

Man why are people afraid to do the non good guy story. He doesn't even have to be a bad guy either, I would love some more grey area games out there.

So would I. But this game just seems to go overboard on the characterisation of everybody. Every single character has some kind of perverted fetish, spouting absurd "look at me I'm a morally despicable character" lines and 47 is the good guy purely because he was screwed over. It's essentially a revenge quest, which seems out of place for a Hitman game.

EDIT: 47 also has another reason for being the good guy, but that doesn't seem to be the big focus so far.

I'm pretty over revenge quests like that and I tried to get out but they keep pulling me back in, there's gotta be more interesting ways to write that stuff. Maybe people just don't have the time? 2 years seems like ample time though for a good writer, I don't know. Maybe they're worried other things won't sell and with the state of the industry a poorly selling game could shut your studio down at this point.

Either you write globetrotting story of near-future modern military conflict or you write a bloody revenge tale. That's seems to be the takeaway from this generation on the whole.

@adam1808 said:

@kerse said:

@adam1808 said:

@kerse said:

Do they turn 47 into some kinda good guy with a conscious by the end? I really disliked that about syndicate.

I've watched the few first levels of a walkthrough, and they kind of give him a conscience at the outset.

Man why are people afraid to do the non good guy story. He doesn't even have to be a bad guy either, I would love some more grey area games out there.

So would I. But this game just seems to go overboard on the characterisation of everybody. Every single character has some kind of perverted fetish, spouting absurd "look at me I'm a morally despicable character" lines and 47 is the good guy purely because he was screwed over. It's essentially a revenge quest, which seems out of place for a Hitman game.

EDIT: 47 also has another reason for being the good guy, but that doesn't seem to be the big focus so far.

Lest we forget that 47 has had brushes with his humanity in the past. At the start of Hitman 2 he was living in a monastery with a priest and denounced killing. I don't think the characterization of the ensemble cast is "overboard" at all many of his other hits have had similar very loud quirks. In my mind Hitman has always been a hop skip and a jump away from being in the same wheelhouse as a Tarintino film.

@Demoskinos: Fair point. I guess it's just the heavy use of cutscenes that broadcasts that side of Absolution more so than in the previous games.

@adam1808 said:

It's essentially a revenge quest, which seems out of place for a Hitman game.

Silent Assassin was essentially a revenge/rescue quest. That's the least of my problems, unless he falls in love with a pretty girl, humanizing 47 is alright.

Goddamnit... So I headed back in just now and, the game just keeps throwing these little inklings my way that make me shake my head. For starters, there's guards around here that are wearing gas masks, but when you steal their outfit, Hitman completely disregards the gasmask! Like, I can understand why since that would make getting around a whole lot easier if you could just hide your face, but then don't put in guards who wear gas masks since it looks ridiculous for a Master of Disguise to not even disguise himself properly.

Furthermore, once I reached the next area, despite being in complete stealth mode, the game switches to a cutscene where Bad Guy starts shooting at me as if he knew I was coming all along... Then the game gave the impression that this was to be another sandbox, but no, it's quite literally a straight line to the guy with some occasional valve turning to give you the necessary shortcut to reach him. Following the only other path besides shooting your way through, you find another valve, turn it, and this then releases some scolding hot steam on him which 'kills' him.

First things first, when it then switches to a cutscene none of his men are even there anymore; secondly, you can blatantly see a bullet hole or two as if he's been shot despite me not shooting a single bullet across the entire game let alone this level; and finally, after I burned him and he flopped into ragdoll before the cutscene triggers, my target that I'm also meant to save is very clearly lying there next to him in shock or something. But then when it reverts to a cutscene she's then been kidnapped and is being held hostage by some other guy behind a grate... Like, how did that happen??

Thing is I'm trying so hard to like this game, and I am to some extent--the stealth gameplay can be intense even if it's all so much more linear and of a smaller scale--but there's so much stuff like all of that that just keeps getting in the way, as if the game just wants to push me away.

Also BTW, that complaint I brought up earlier about scripted conversations cropped up. See to sneak past a horde of guards, you're to get close enough in a close by room to initiate a conversation where they'll all sorta huddle up, giving you a chance to slip by. But again, you have to get close enough exactly, otherwise the guy who starts up the scripting will literally just stand there completely destroying the illusion that I'm apart of some dynamic world like in prior games.

Sigh... Yeah, an OK stealth game overall so far, but it's a pretty bad Hitman game.

@Demoskinos said:

@adam1808 said:

@kerse said:

@adam1808 said:

@kerse said:

Do they turn 47 into some kinda good guy with a conscious by the end? I really disliked that about syndicate.

I've watched the few first levels of a walkthrough, and they kind of give him a conscience at the outset.

Man why are people afraid to do the non good guy story. He doesn't even have to be a bad guy either, I would love some more grey area games out there.

So would I. But this game just seems to go overboard on the characterisation of everybody. Every single character has some kind of perverted fetish, spouting absurd "look at me I'm a morally despicable character" lines and 47 is the good guy purely because he was screwed over. It's essentially a revenge quest, which seems out of place for a Hitman game.

EDIT: 47 also has another reason for being the good guy, but that doesn't seem to be the big focus so far.

Lest we forget that 47 has had brushes with his humanity in the past. At the start of Hitman 2 he was living in a monastery with a priest and denounced killing. I don't think the characterization of the ensemble cast is "overboard" at all many of his other hits have had similar very loud quirks. In my mind Hitman has always been a hop skip and a jump away from being in the same wheelhouse as a Tarintino film.

I'll actually have to agree to this. The story is perfectly fine; though there really isn't all that much of an actual story as of yet besides ''save the girl'', the characters and the way the game portrays 47 feels in tone with the series, just it's a little more upfront than usual of course.

47 himself is still the same 47 as most should remember (the stupid wrestling thing is still stupidly stupid, though), only they're giving him just a wee bit more substance.

Oh, and I've now reached the bar where K&L's Kane himself is just hanging there smokin' a cig. Such a cool little cameo they've got here, though it's too bad Brian Bloom didn't return to voice him.

EDIT: Anywhoo I now naturally decided to beat down on Kane, just to check if he'd drop anything neat, only to then start a bar fight. Oops :P

@Yummylee: That's reassuring. But then the story is probably the least of the game's issues.

Haha, so now I'm just going around smacking bottles over peoples heads and I'm being rewarded points for executing successful stealth kills?! Oh, this game. It's crazy jank like this that reminds me why I love the older games so much.

EDIT: Right, so after further 'experimentation', I'm also allowed to use the bat I found to just smack everyone to the ground, but I can't use to strangle them from behind. Though I also totally strangled this sheriff taking a piss in the toilets, with another standing right next to him, dragged his body away a bit, took his uniform and... no reaction whatsoever from the other guy despite him blatantly looking right at me. This is probably the most Hitman-esque the game's been so far!

Goddamnit... So I headed back in just now and, the game just keeps throwing these little inklings my way that just make me shake my head. For starters, there's guards around here that are wearing gas masks, but when you steal their outfit, Hitman completely disregards the gasmask! Like, I can understand why since that would make getting around a whole lot easier if you could just hide your face, but then don't put in guards who wear gas masks since it looks ridiculous for a Master of Disguise to not even disguise himself properly.

Furthermore, once I reached the next area, despite being in complete stealth mode, the game switches to a cutscene where Bad Guy starts shooting at me as if he knew I was coming all along... Then the game gave the impression that this was to be another sandbox, but no, it's quite literally a straight line to the guy with some occasional valve turning to give you the necessary shortcut to reach him. Following the only other path besides shooting your way through, you find another valve, turn it, and this then releases some scolding hot steam on him which 'kills' him.

I was more than half way through the game and I had the it lock up twice, the send time causing me to lose all save game progress. First time was during a cut scene where all the weapons disappeared from characters hands, and the second was after a death when it locked up during a save.

It's a shame because only a few days ago I was all set to pick this game up on day one. It's just even more heartbreaking that they took six years to bring it back only to ruin what made it great, and I was waiting all those six years for another great Hitman game. Part of me still wants to pick it up since it's the only new game out the rest of the year I planned on buying, but it's too hard to drop $60 for a decent game, but bad Hitman game. Sounds like the Contracts Mode is the one consistent thing that all reviews, good or bad, have been saying is the best part. I'll probably pick it up when it is super cheap for that alone.

Has anyone heard anything about the PC version? Heard it wasn't optimized too well or something. Hope that's not the case.