Agent 47 brings new tricks to his profession...But are they good?
I have played and own all the Hitman games and love them all. From the go I could not wait for this game to be released, constantly excited for it! So when it did finally come out I installed it and got playing it at roughly 1am.
First thing to hit me was the Graphics. I run a i5 2400k, 2GB 460GTX, 8GB ram PC. I can play it on High if I want some frame rate drops or on normal/med if I want it smooth. Either way, the game looks stunning. The environments, the setting, the atmosphere, Agent 47s barcode all done to an amazing detail. Everything looks amazing and polished. However, the bloom effect were slight over-powering, with the bloom bouncing off Agent 47s shiny head being a slight distraction, but you get used to it.
The music is great! Fits the scenes perfectly and extremely adaptive to how the current situation plays out. Sneaking through the level? No problem, here some suspense background music, oh wait, you just strangled a guy with fibewire - here;s a sudden 5 second dramatic piece to add to that tension. Oh look, your blasting your way out of a firefight! Here is an dramatic action music piece to match the scene. So whatever your play style, the music fits with it perfectly.
The biggie, Gameplay. What the previous Hitman games have are still here. Some parts are more up to scratch and actually improve on the originals while other are either dumbed down or actually don't seem to work. Lets start with the negatives, and the most easily look at one. The disguise system. So in past Hitman games, you could easily walk around with people like you and blend in and out of a scene. However, not so with Absolution. Now the game assumes all police officers know all police officers. If you are in a police mans outfit and another policeman spots you, you get a suspicion indicator slowly grow. This make the disguise system, especially on the difficulty Hard or above, broken. Sometimes it easier to just use cover throughout the whole level or simply kill everyone with your weapons. With such interesting disguises I was looking forward to playing about with them, but it felt more trouble than it was really worth. Now my second kind-of negative point is the instinct. Or at least it was a negative point when I first heard about it. Then I remembered that in the old Hitman games there was a thing called a map showing where everybody was. Instinct is a great feature to replace the map with as it makes the game more difficult and challenging while also being a helpful tool to predicting enemies movements and, as a last resort, run away/gun everybody down.
Onto the more positive gameplay aspects. Its still Hitman. You still get assigned targets in most missions and still have many ways on taking that target down. And man is it fun taking down those targets, either with a sniper **** or by making it look like an accident and exploding a gas cooker. The crowds, well, this is where it aces the previous Hitman games. The crowds are amazing. Remember in Blood Money, that level with the crows? The Murder of Crows? The crowds in that was impressive. Now in Absolution they are spectacular. And they feel so alive. Most of the crowd interacts with each other, and you cxan just stand idle listening to them gossip which in actual fact can turn out to help you. One time I was in chinatown and over heard these couple of bystanders talking how the target gets his usual hit from a drug dealer who lives on the 2nd floor. So right then I had a window of opportunity, just by listening to the crowd. There were also a large number of hilarious moment I **** at while listening to people. It can be funny but it certainly makes the world feel much more alive and living.
There are hundreds of challanges and unlockables to get. Things such as going through a level wearing just a suit, but to get another challenge called Chameleon which is to put on every suit in that level, warranting another playthrough. Then there's Contracts mode. A fantastic multilayer edition to the game. The creator of the contract has played through the level and targeted selectable people who are the contracts, the creator then kills these targets in a way he wants then makes for one of the few exits scattered across the level. This ends the contract and then it gets uploaded, allowing players to try and beat the score or the leader-boards. It is a lot of fun to play and to create contracts.
Quickly the mention the story. Yes, there is one and play a significantly bigger role then in previous games and It actually is good. A good story with great characters and settings you can't go wrong with that, and absolution doesn't.
Overall, Hitman is still Hitman. It may feel different in parts and with a core mechanic of the previous Hitman games broken in most places, the game does set itself apart from the previous games but only slightly. Its a welcome edition to the series and its glad to have Agent 47 and his red tie bac
