It's no Bloody Money, but still a tonne of fun...
With the last Hitman title in the series being the highly acclaimed Blood Money, Absolution has quite the reputation to live up to. As returners to the series will know, Hitman puts you in the role of Agent 47 a highly skilled clone bred for the purpose of contact killing. The series is renowned for freedom and variety in the way that the player can execute the contracts providing limitless ways for you to kill the target.
Absolution sees Agent 47 on the run from the Agency, meaning that the charm of random contracts from previous games has gone as the objectives are tied together by a poorly knit story. As a result of this change the environments are less varied in their design and location. Part of the attraction of previous instalments was the games ability to take you from a vineyard to a suburb without any need for a reason to do so, it just made sense because you were a hitman. Sadly the focus on story has seen on of the more attractive features of the series take a back seat.
The gameplay itself still follows the familiar style, the main focus being stealth and discretion. Players are still able to disguise themselves as various npcs, make deaths looks like accidents and manipulate the environment so that targets end up doing the dirty work themselves. Saying that however, with the introduction of 47 being on the run, he isn't as anonymous as usual meaning that in some levels, particularly where it's less about assassinating a target and more about avoiding the police it turns into a more Splinter Cell like affair where it's a case of sticking to the shadows and avoiding the enemies line of sight. Similarly to Splinter Cell: Conviction, the introduction of what I guess can be described as sonar detection has been introduced, indicating how suspicious an AI character is and from what direction they're coming from. Sticking to the theme of taking inspiration from similar titles, Absolution has what they've coined 'Instinct', which can be compared to Batman Arkham Asylum's detective mode; highlighting various points of interest in the environment, whether it be a hiding spot or a weapon with which to deal with your target. As the difficulty increases the benefits presented to the player diminish including instinct, aspects of the HUD all the way down to just being a crosshair on the hardest difficulty.
Visually the game is up there with the best this year the environments looking as beautiful as ever. One particular aspect to note is the games ability to render hundreds of people in crowded areas, particularly a level where you are tasked with assassinating targets in the midst of Chinese New Year where the crowds are huge to say the least. It's a wonder how the game can render such crowds without any noticeable slow down.
With the addition of a Contracts mode alongside the main story there is no shortage of things to do in the game. Contracts allows player to create various missions that they can share online dictating the way they handle the target such as what disguise to wear and with what weapon to handle it, points being added to an overall score depending on how you handle the mission and how discreet you can be.
Overall the game is a quality title, however players going in looking for a worthy successor to Blood Money may feel they've been dealt a short hand. On it's own it's a solid stealth action game with various aspects that make the Hitman series unique, however it doesn't have enough of these aspects to be better than Bloody Money, sadly.
7/10
PC, PS3, Xbox 360; £29.99; 18+; IO Interactive
