So I played through maybe 1/4 of the game, so guess I am really out on a limb on this, I mean, how much can you really judge a game from if you haven't played a substantial part of it? However, from what I have already experienced, I do feel somewhat disappointed. It seems that IOI has strayed a little too far away from the masterpiece they achieved when they got around to the fourth chapter in the series, Blood Money. I thought they finally made the complete Hitman game, in the sense that they included all the gameplay elements that would make the perfect assassination game: The customisation of weapons, the often huge levels with an extraordinary level of detail and possibility of different approaches, the refined system for disguise etc.

Blood Money was a really good game, and it did a lot of things right. However Absolution seems to have left some of those things behind and kinda taken a whole new approach to the Hitman franchise, and as I see it, transformed into a sneaking game, where yes, you do kill people. As I sat playing Hitman 5 I got around to making comparisons to games like Splinter Cell and alike, the game indeed seems to have more in common with games like those, than those that make up its previous history. I also caught on to the fact that IOI for some reason has chosen to split the same levels up into smaller sub-levels, breaking the whole experience up and in a way also destroying the very thing that made Hitman so good, large levels where you have multiple ways of engaging your targets, whether that would be mass murder or perfect assassination.

The inclusion of gameplay mechanics that seems like the developers played Arkham Asylum, perhaps took a little too good a look on some of the mechanics in that game - annoys me, and even though they made the disguise system a little more realistic, got to give them that, it is still extremely criticisable to seem them mess it up, I mean, getting spotted by a cop after having spent 20 minutes trying to sneak through a level just because you ran out of instinct is just... Well it kinda ruins the game in a way. I guess I could be a little too nostalgic, but I do not see this as a HItman 5, but rather just, Hitman Absolution, like Metal Gear Revengeance is not Metal Gear Solid 5.

This is just my short opinion on the game, and it might be subject to change as I go through the game, but man... I do not feel too optimistic.

What's your opinion folks?

The Hitman games of the past have been nothing if not very consistent. This all came to a head in 2006 when Blood Money was released and it was basically a love letter to the fans. It contained every good feature of the past games as well as some did some really great iteration (the first time I saw the gun range in the basement my jaw dropped). Fast Forward to 2012 an I feel like IO may have let too much of that admiration and hype from the fans go to their head. In trying to refresh the franchise, they've meddled with a winning formula and as a result I think a lot of people are upset.

Not SIMPLY because Absolution isn't the game they fell in love with in 2006 but largely do some of the really incomprehensible design decisions that got made. Personally I don't mind the changes they made to disguises, the disguises of the older games were way too good, you killed the highest ranking guard you could find, took his uniform and the level was pretty much won. At least now you can't be complacent just because you're dressed as a cop. It's also logical.

However the way the game ranks you, the way it splits up levels, the changes to the removal of the loadout system, the story these are all seemingly illogical changes. They've removed winning features of the franchise in service of a story that is totally unnecessary and lackluster.

Customizable weapons and upgrades and all that stuff are exclusively the territory of Contracts mode now which I really don't have much interest in playing because - at least on the PC - barely anyone has fucking created any. In every Hitman past, the first thing you do before entering a mission was select your loadout, this would sort of define how you wanted to play the mission. Now that feature is no longer present and the only reason I can think of is because the story has set you up as a 'rogue agent' who is on the run. Narratively I suppose it makes sense and if I was at all interested in the story for a hitman game, I might be able to let that one go but the story is shit so now they've removed a gameplay elements people liked in service of a story no one likes. Super.

I am okay with them splitting the levels into smaller bits because they really pack those levels to the brim with stuff. The level of detail in some of environments is pretty impressive and it has some of the best crowds I've ever seen in games. However the way they handle scoring and mission performance as a result of the split levels, is truly baffling and really frustrating especially if you are attempting to get Silent Assassin.

Personally I prefer Absolution over Blood Money, to me it just seems like a better game,.

There is an aspect I am disappointed with, but its not the quality of the game. This is my first real go at a Hitman game. I have played the first level of both the previous games, but nothing beyond that. However, hearing all the crazy shit that seems to populate the series, I was eager to dive in and try it out. Which brings me to my problem: I don't feel like their tutorial properly prepares you some of the stuff that comes after. The linear stuff is easy, but when you have a more open area (Chinatown for example) its easy to get lost and not really have any idea where to go, or how to make use of the information you gather. I've tried some of the contracts stuff, but I'm at a loss of how to deal with the scenarios. I don't know how to deal with crowds, or how to isolate people are make good use of distraction items. Unfortunately, the best way I can think of to figure it out is by using a walkthrough, which I don't want to do.

I should note though that when I do find one of the special ways of killing people, it is immensely satisfying, but I just wished they better prepared me for how to go about doing that, especially when almost everything I do leads to a negative score, which is only enforcing in me that I am playing it wrong, without helping me figure out how to play it right?

@MildMolasses I think the implementation of a "score" is the big fault of this game. Like you said before in this thread, it gives you negative points for playing it "wrong" and therefore is discouraging you from the experimentation that made Blood Money and the other games in the series so awesome. Another thing that discourages the experimentation is the checkpoint system. It's really frustrating to have to sometimes restart a whole level because you haven't found a checkpoint, or that checkpoint is so out of the way that I don't want to use it. I also think this has to do with IO really wanting to have a driving narrative in the game, They clearly have an idea of what they want 47 to be like, which isn't really lined up with what my 47 was in previous games.

"Low expectations, no disappointment."

I'd be more disappointed if this game came out and it was too similar to blood money, even though I really liked that game.

It's a fun game and sometimes I feel like it's to linear, then I look back at the challenges and relaise how wrong I was.

@rebgav said:

It's an okay game. It's a step backwards as a Hitman game. They did some good stuff with the characters but the level design and some of the new systems just don't fit properly and get in the way of enjoying the game. Their handling of the story is poor, which is a shame given that they've obviously put effort into the villains.

Between this and the Kane & Lynch games, I think that IO have proven that they can create great characters, that they can create stylish visuals, but they seem like they're struggling with gameplay. K&L2 was brought down by its simplistic and repetitive gunplay while Hitman: Absolution is stuffed with systems which just don't come together in a fun way.

Overall I think that Absolution is quite underwhelming. Not the shit-show I was expecting but the focus on combat and combat-avoidance added nothing to the experience for me and I would have liked more opportunities to explore the locations and discover my options rather than feeling like I was being shoved along by an impatient designer. Also, fuck that checkpoint system.

That's a fair and balanced summation. Apart from calling it an 'okay game' - which I would begrudge doing, since I've had so little fun and so much frustration with it - I'd echo your post word for word.

I've just completed the level in the 50's-looking podunk town and I'm really lacking in desire to play any more. For practically every move I make in the game, I feel like I'm encountering a design choice that has inadvertently made my actions more difficult or less fun. Nevertheless, nothing in the game is inherently bad, just badly handled. The story execution is a great example - fantastic visual design on the settings and some of the characters (including physical mannerisms), spoiled by a gobbledygook plot, and terrible writing and voicing in parts. Making a story that tries simultaneously to be 'character-focused' and disposable grindhouse trash doesn't really work. As it stands I'm not sure the resemblance to an exploitation movie is even intentional, rather than being just an accident of juvenile directorial perspective.

my only real disappointment is there isnt any sniper level like the sniper challenge level , sure theres a few asassinations that can be achieved with sniper rifles but i just got misled and thought that the sniper challenge meant there was going to be at least 1 level like that in the full game.

A little dissapointed!?

Have any of you tried the Contracts mode? That's basically Blood Money, you get to load-out and 47 is not constantly on the run there so there's alot more room for trial and error.

At some point (The flower tower to be exact) I just decided to just stop looking at the score and just go wild. It made the game much more fun. You still get unlocks even if you don't get silent assassin or a particularly great score.

Before you decide to toss the game out, try contracts

I don't get the gripes? Blood Money was fun but giant open levels? I don't think so, it is just an illusion. I like the instinct meter and point shooting. Moving in cover is very fluid and allows for slipping past guards. If you want to confine yourself to a point system then go ahead but you can always replay levels how you want. Upgrading guns in bloodmoney was superficial and I never used the loadout menu anyway, I usually just took fiberwire and needles anyway. I'm not a big stickler for visuals but compared to past Hitman games. This one is like they polished that tied into a dorodango

Too much weight is being put onto the points system.

When I first started knocking guys out, I too was disappointed to see negative numbers popping up. But this is *no different* to blood money. The only thing that is different here is that this information is being surfaced to the player dynamically.

That score system is all in service of getting "Silent Assasin" or the highest grade you can achieve at current skill level. Don't forget as well, that stashing a body completely negates the negative score you got by knocking them out. - Seriously, try it. Knock a guy out, then stash his body - you're back to where you were, points wise, before you even knocked him out. And also, achieving the main goals of the level gives you a massive score boost of 30/40/50/60k. Knocking out those guards don't matter in the long run, unless you're shooting for a "Perfect" run.

And those "Perfect runs" in blood money, also punished knocking out guards. So, less has changed than you might think.

First time you play through this game? Go nuts. Kill whoever you want. Knock guys out. Stab civilians who witnessed your crime in the neck, and coldly push their corpse off a ledge to hide them. ENJOY YOURSELF. And when you're done with the game, go back and do it all over again differenty and if you really want to, shoot for Silent Assassin on every level - THAT is when the score should matter to you.

It's different to Blood Money, I'll grant you that. But not *that* much different. It's a great game which I feel is being sadly misunderstood by most long-time Hitman fans. (I am a long time Hitman fan)

I only have one gripe, sadly it's just really big.

I just don't like the suspicion stuff for your disguise. I much preferred how it worked in Blood Money where you were in disguise as long as you're not entering forbidden areas and so on.

One can argue that it works better since it was weird that a bald man could stand next to a security guard while wearing a guard uniform. On the other hand I find the whole "use instinct to rub my bald head to reset people's suspicion" to be even worse.

At least it felt more that I could focus on the puzzles with working the level when I had the guarantee that my disguise would work as long as I didn't act weird.

Absolution is strayed pretty far from what makes a Hitman game. Here are things that are very strange:

• The levels are small or broken up into chunks. Hitman is about planning, executing, and extracting. The most rewarding part of Hitman is when your plan goes perfectly and you feel like a badass, because you were not detected in a dense level consisting of so many NPCs. This brings me to my next point...
• The damn MAP! Without a map, how can I plan my attacks? The only way to plan a successful hit now is to play the same level over and over again until I know what every NPC is going to do. I understand that they put 47 in a weird situation where he is being hunted down, but it just kind of sucks that all of the planning is gone.
• Also, you cannot customize your weapons anymore. This is a shame because it takes the last part of the strategy out of the equation and makes the levels even more linear. As far as I know, the levels do not spawn random weapons so once you know where the weapons are, you complete the mission that way every time. This is a very small detail, but it's hard not to nitpick at this point.
• The enemies that I killed throughout the game didn't have the same kind of characteristics that most had in Blood Money. The cool stories that were concocted to make each target seem despicable in their own little ways is not present. I found the villains in Absolution to be caricatures or just boring.

But really, I was not that disappointed because I read reviews beforehand, knew what to expect, and decided to rent the game for a weekend. This is probably my least favorite Hitman, but I still had fun with it. There are definitely some levels that give you some freedom. It's just a shame that so much was changed.

I actually played every Hitman game except Blood Money...I know, I know. So, I'm really not sure what to do. I was going to just skip Blood Money and play this game, but the reactions seem to be so mixed, and the games seem to be different enough that maybe I should play both.

Things cant remain the same forever. I cant expect Absolution to be the same as Blood money as even toward the end of BM they were pushing a story forward. The pros of having a story is that it makes for interesting scenarios and characters but seems to force a more linear feeling angle to the game. I would like to see the next Hitman game step back a little to the sandbox mission type of "here is a mansion that takes up a suburban block, find a way in and kill your target before getting back out and into your car" type of thing. I'm enjoying Absolution a lot but I do feel like I would still have appreciated being able to pick my equipment before each mission and feel a little boxed in with the kill target, move to door that takes you into next area feel of the game. The checkpoint system irritates me a little and would have preferred them be reused rather than a one off due to the fact it re-spawns all enemies, I feel like it should have been a level progress checkpoint rather than a location/spacial waypoint or better yet use a regular save slot method. Ah well still having fun.

(PS Playing on normal first time through in-case some of these points become irrelevant on other difficulty levels).

@Bobafeet said:

@MildMolasses I think the implementation of a "score" is the big fault of this game. Like you said before in this thread, it gives you negative points for playing it "wrong" and therefore is discouraging you from the experimentation that made Blood Money and the other games in the series so awesome.

Totally, I really hate the way the game has been dissected like that, any illusion is thrown away because of it. I only got this impresson from the QL so I have no idea if you can turn it off and ignore it or not.

Another small thing again from the QL, is that it might as well be Hitman: Arkham City. I remember Hitman games of old having some really vibrant colourful levels as well as dark ones naturally, but everything I have ever seen of this games looks far far too brooding. I'm sure that is the direction they wanted to take it in but I'm not such a fan of that in the context of Hitman.

I don't know, I'm about a quarter of the way through the game too, but I'm having a lot of fun. I haven't been detected by anybody, and I'm taking my time with it like one should with a hitman game.

I love the division of the levels into sections. They're like really fun puzzle boxes that you have to solve one-by-one, and I really enjoy the challenge. Within those boxes the things you do are very familiar to any hitman fan. I just got my first real Silent Assassin rating and it was so satisfying to do. Also even if the levels are smaller, most missions will have a large open section where there is a lot to do. It's not like they've abandoned what makes hitman hitman, they just added in these tighter puzzle boxes between the more open levels that are really tense and fun. Considering how many missions there are in the game, I'm going to say the amount of those open levels will probably match what Blood Money had in terms of content.

One can ask this about any game and I'm not sure it means anything.

So, what I have gotten so far from general forum opinion is this: Blood Money is perfect, and because of this any changes make the subsequent game less than perfect.

To clarify: Is Blood Money a perfect game to make any others redundant, or are there flaws in Blood Money that could have made a subsequent game better?

It's very uneven and I can't say I dig how useless disguises are on expert. Difficulty curve is also all over the place - some levels are complete walk overs and other's I've found impossible on expert, lowering to normal and breezing through. I think there's been some very excellent levels (gun shop, no angel streets or something), but there's also been a lot of quite shitty filler story missions that aren't that satisfying.

I have likewise been pretty disappointed with Absolution. I always enjoyed them for the hiding in plain sight aspect which just dosn't seem to be working for me so far in the game. I Have had a number of stages now where they are more active and people shoot 47 on sight by default, no time to even poke around in regular attire. To diminish that I can get a disguise but they only seem to work for a few seconds at most with intuition burning. Most of the time while disguised I find myself hugging walls, rolling around from cover to cover and hurling objects to make people look/move away. It is fine stealth gameplay, but it isn't what I really want out of a hitman game.

There was a second slightly open stage that I reached but as I had a chef outfit on from much earlier, random cooks on the street would see me in passing and somehow instantly blow the disguise. I've always rather enjoyed the old hitman games, especially blood money. But with Absolution I just seem to be struggling to get through it.

I want to be able to assess a location, hide in plain sight (for longer than the few seconds of intuition) and figure out an elaborate way to make it through. Thus far though it is always just grab a disguise then sneak about crouched in cover because out of it the disguise will be blown in seconds as everyone in the stage can see through that disguise anyway.

The one mission which actually played like a Hitman mission that I have seen thus far has been the second one. Since then they have largely been segmented linear stealth segments of going from point A to B by sneaking around.

@BaconBuTTy said:

Too much weight is being put onto the points system. When I first started knocking guys out, I too was disappointed to see negative numbers popping up. But this is *no different* to blood money. The only thing that is different here is that this information is being surfaced to the player dynamically. That score system is all in service of getting "Silent Assasin" or the highest grade you can achieve at current skill level. Don't forget as well, that stashing a body completely negates the negative score you got by knocking them out. - Seriously, try it. Knock a guy out, then stash his body - you're back to where you were, points wise, before you even knocked him out. And also, achieving the main goals of the level gives you a massive score boost of 30/40/50/60k. Knocking out those guards don't matter in the long run, unless you're shooting for a "Perfect" run. And those "Perfect runs" in blood money, also punished knocking out guards. So, less has changed than you might think. First time you play through this game? Go nuts. Kill whoever you want. Knock guys out. Stab civilians who witnessed your crime in the neck, and coldly push their corpse off a ledge to hide them. ENJOY YOURSELF. And when you're done with the game, go back and do it all over again differenty and if you really want to, shoot for Silent Assassin on every level - THAT is when the score should matter to you. It's different to Blood Money, I'll grant you that. But not *that* much different. It's a great game which I feel is being sadly misunderstood by most long-time Hitman fans. (I am a long time Hitman fan)

I was going to come back to say this. Clearly the game is built for repeated play of the levels, which is why all those challenges are in there. The idea I guess is to go fuck around in the sand box, while learning the ins and outs along the way. And once you earned a bunch of bonuses, you go in like a bad ass motherfucker, with everything you learned, and keep it nice and tidy and high scoring. The perfect run is supposed to be the last thing you do, not the first

Peoples problem - expecting Blood Money 2...not taking this game as it is.

@huntad: You can customise your weapons.

@SASnake said:

Peoples problem - expecting Blood Money 2...not taking this game as it is.

People expect this restaurant to serve good food because their last meal here was amazing? Why can't they just enjoy the unrecognizably burned mass sitting on their plates for the same price? Gawd it's like nothing will satisfy these people.

Disappointed only because I expected some things to be different. Once I accepted that I starting having ablast.

I'd love for larger open levels instead of the smaller sections, but I'm just stoked we have a new Hitman at all.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun put up a conversation piece between two of their writers about the game, and I think it contains an interesting assessment:

Adam: Speaking of Dishonored, I’ve played three stealth games recently and they approach the concept completely differently. Mark of the Ninja – which is brilliant – is about light and sound, with an interface and style that’s entirely about communicating that.

Dishonored is almost entirely about motion – it looks at the problem of infiltration, avoidance and escape and realises that it’s best understood through architecture, and navigation through architecture. It’s why I can forgive some of the AI foibles much more readily than I expected I would. The buildings matter more than the guards and their design is consistently intelligent.

And then there’s Hitman, which has so many potentially interesting systems but doesn’t, on the whole, put the player in interesting areas to use them.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/11/23/hitman-absolution-verdict/

I'm a first timer with this series, and it's not quite clicking. I can appreciate the slick style, but the nature of the game mechanics is leaving me cold. As long as 47 doesn't get overwhelmed, I'm finding that I can steamroll my way through the bulk of the levels by going loud without any consequences. I wish I cared about the score, but it's just not grabbing me. Pulling off a convoluted but stealthy kill is fun, but it's not motivating me to replay levels.

With the Splinter Cell series' progression, I could at least say that yeah, the stealth aspects are giving way to combat, but the mechanics in place were still silky smooth (here's to grimly hoping the upcoming game maintains at least that) . Here, both the stealth and action controls aren't quite fully baked, making the protagonist an awkwardly lumbering killdozer.

I enjoyed the game, but overall there seemed to be less crazy ways to assassinate people. Sure, every now and then I'd stumble into a cool death, but it was generally pretty mundane compared to Blood Money.

I'm finding my ability to react on the fly and smoothly move from cover to cover has increased my ability to navigate levels quickly and effectively. Very satisfying when almost spotted and toss a screwdriver in his face and hide the body and keep moving.

I'm liking it so far. I'm almost halfway through on Normal and I'm having lots of fun! I have played all of the previous Hitman games too and while Blood Money was good, this doesn't seem any worse to me. It just feels like they took all of the systems and really honed them and made them better. The disguise system, detection, intuition as well as general character movement and AI are all so much better this time around. The only aspect of Blood Money that I miss is some of the variety of locations and characters, but that made sense in the context of the story of that game (Since it was all flashbacks; they didn't have to be linked in any way).

I see some people complaining about the "hiding in plain sight" aspect has gone and I don't really see where they are coming from. You are still quite able to dress up as an employee, for example, and wander around the area right in front of the bad guys and they don't bat an eyelid! You can still scope out the movements of the other characters to figure out what is going on (Just not using the map, although in previous games that only showed movement; you couldn't see what the characters were actually doing through the map alone) and plan your movements around that.

Overall I think this is a good modern Hitman game and the Contracts mode is cool, though it is lacking a bit in highly rated contracts currently.

Yeah i'm disappointed in it. I think the PC Gamer review was spot on. The last few missions are terrible, and at that point in the game i just had to push my self through it.

Blood Money is one of my all time favorite games. Absolution won't even crack my top 30.

@haffy: "I'd be more disappointed if this game came out and it was too similar to blood money"

Wrong son. I just want what they gave us in blood money and a bit more, i think that is not that demanding.

I think those who are newbies to the Hitman series (myself included) have no real problems with this game, other than the disguise thing being pretty much broken. I really liked what the game did, I always hated stealth like games, but this year I played this game and Dishonored, and I am now a fan of stealth games.

I will try Blood Money, but I won't try to compare it to Absolution. I think the dev team was trying something new and it worked for a new audience.

Agree with the general concensus. Like the op i made it through about a quarter of the game and got bored. As a stealth game it seems fine, but I didn't want to play a stealth game, I wanted to play a hitman game.

I finished this last night, it gets more and more confined in what you can do, I think they kind of forgot what a hitman game was supposed to be...

As a fan of the Hitman franchise, to me it seems the biggest faults of the game are the smaller levels and the whole "being unable to choose equipment before the beginning of a mission" thing. Those 2 things alone would make me think much less of Absolution. With that said I haven't played it yet, but I think I'll eventually pick it up....with extremely lowered expectations. I'm really hoping IOI will listen to some of the criticism and fix the aforementioned faults in the possible sequel.

@envane said:

my only real disappointment is there isnt any sniper level like the sniper challenge level , sure theres a few asassinations that can be achieved with sniper rifles but i just got misled and thought that the sniper challenge meant there was going to be at least 1 level like that in the full game.

Oh...just wait for it...there is ONE area late in the game that is very similar. Where they start you with a sniper rifle and you can knock people into holes to hide their bodies as you shoot them. Its pretty great and I agree the Sniper Challenge was actually really fun and honestly a entire set of mini-game scenarios like that would be fun to have as DLC or something.

As for everyone complaining about the score stuff you do all realize you CAN neutralize the penalties right? If you strangle someone with fibre wire yes you are going to lose a ton of points but then you will gain a silent kill bonus and if you hide the body a hidden body bonus which will then neutralize the penalty. If you shoot someone you need to shoot them in the head again you get a head shot bonus then if you hide the body point deductions neutralize. Its urging you to play as a real assassin would by being professional and always cleaning up your messes. I personally actually really liked it as you can see here. I think honestly all of the decisions make sense. The only real downside for me is that there is a tad too much running from the cops/agency whatever in the game but them adding player agency for 47 as well as actually drastically improving other things in the game made me tolerate the sections that were not as thrilling as others. Its a great game and I think everyone just needs to keep an opened mind about it. Its a GOOD thing the series is evolving and for gods sake at least IO was smart enough to include enough classic hitman stuff that it feels like a hitman game still. The game I'm worried about is the NEXT hitman game as Edios is apparently taking the helm regardless of how well this game does. I feel like I could post a lot more here but I've got 15 minutes to get to work so... I'm going to cut this post short here.

Yeah I was disappointed. It's a good game, just not a good Hitman game.

I'm not bothered about the score system or the new costume system. The elephant in the room is the bad levels, great for Sam Fisher, just not 47.

I think the problem seems like they designed the levels around the narrative, instead of coming up with great scenarios and fitting the story around it.

The real shame here is that previous Hitman games pretty much own a genre, theres already plenty of sneaking games.

I thought Hitman Absolution was going to really suck, but it turned out well. I thought the instinct would have over simplified the game, but it seems okay after all. Could use some fine tuning. But the instinct system to see enemies through walls, seems okay. It's a system, however, that is too forgiving. I think only people that make foot-step noise, or speak, should be displayed on the instinct view; you know, people who make noise. It should be a 'fog of war' type of logic found in RTS games.

The disguise mechanics are messed up, by how sometimes a guy across the map is suspicious of you; that's stupid.

Also they should have included a custom difficulty setting. This way you can fine tune everything from disabling instinct, but having difficulty on normal; etc, etc... It would be interesting if in a custom difficulty setting one could modify the AI route timings, to altering.... for example: If the AI usually waits at a position for 20 seconds, apply a modifier of -5 seconds or so. To change it up. Also, with a setting, objects that need to be acquired (an ex: fuses) could be put into other parts of map on each play.

I don't like being 'assessed' every moment of the game, by a score system. If anything, show me at the end of the mission only. Isn't there a setting to remove the score from the interface?

While playing the game, it felt too guided. It's a story driven game. I thought to myself "seems like the new Max Payne, without the slo-mo". There are 'sandbox' type of levels but they are mixed in with linear maps.

I liked the cover system. Fist-fighting was interesting, but the button icons seemed too small (or unclear).

It was a lengthy game. Seemed overall like a nice game.

There is a lot of people that started playing Hitman with Blood Money and thinks that's the real Hitman experience. That's OK, of course. I prefer Hitman: Codename 47, the first one, and I see Absolution as purer Hitman experience in the vein of Codename 47.

@rebgav said:

@Brendan said:

To clarify: Is Blood Money a perfect game

Don't be ridiculous. Hitman: Contracts is a perfect game. Blood Money is just perfection's younger sibling.

I think Hitman: Codename 47 was the perfect game and Blood Money as a goofy intent to seduce younger audiences.

@Conzed92: Having beat it last night,I wouldnt say 'disappointed' ,but my expectations were for a Hitman game, not a 3rd person action/adventure game with light sprinkled stealth mechanics. I like it, dont get me wrong but the disguise system is really broken(to the point that sometimes you just have to go guns blazing). I like the game, its just not Hitman 2/Blood Money

I'm about 1/3 of the way through and I'm extremely disappointed. I couldn't really get into any Hitman games until Blood Money, which I really liked.

I hate most stealth games because they're about sneaking around until you get spotted and then you try again. That's no fun to me. Batman and Deus Ex: HR were exceptions because I felt like a powerful predator and could dispatch every enemy that I came across without being detected. I liked Blood Money because I could hide in the open. It was about learning the level and planning the hit based on exploration.

Absolution is the type of stealth game that I hate with open Blood Money levels sprinkled around. I wish I was playing it on the PC so that I could unlock all of the levels and only play the kind that I like.

I'll never really understand the love that people have for Blood Money. It's a good game, sure, but I hardly ever considered it the peak of the Hitman experience. For whatever reason, Contracts has been my favorite Hitman game as it's the only one that I've sunk tons of hours into and is the only Hitman game, thus far, that I cared enough to get a Silent Assassin rank on every mission.

The gun customization was nifty, but really didn't add a lot, since I rarely used guns on my first run through and I don't really remember the levels being any bigger. Like someone earlier said, it was more of the illusion of wide open levels than anything. Sorta like one of the Moscow missions in 2...anyway, I'm rambling.