Hitman: Absolution Review

I first came into contact with Hitman: Absolution at the MCM convention in London about a year ago and it was love at first sight. Being a fan of the series since the first game I feel like I have grown up with the series going up difficulty levels as my life progressed, my first kiss took me from easy to normal, first pubic hair, normal to hard, first time coming out of rehab from a death defying heroin addiction (I grew up fast) and I was at stone cold Purist difficulty.

For those unfamiliar with the Hitman series you play as the perfect assassin (Or… Hitman) who is tasked with murdering usually bad people who the mysterious Agency chooses without giving reason. Reasons do not matter to Agent 47, I don’t even think the bloke gets paid. It’s just what he does. I kill therefore I am.
Although the target is set in stone how you go about completing the mission is completely up to the player. Do you pride yourself on taking out your target without leaving a trace or without leaving witnesses? Massacre or mystery, the choice is up to you.

The release date was drawing near, I had already said no to a friend’s birthday party invitation because it fell on the same day and I had already made plans with some satay chicken and a late night stealthy murdering session so I said I had to work late that night. So there I was innocently browsing the internet when I saw Eurogamers review of Hitman. My heart sank, it had been given a seven out of ten.

7/10
70%
14/20
70/100

I try to put it in a way that didn’t feel like a strong kick in the gonads of my soul. 7/10 is good but I was expecting 10/10 GOTY 2012 this year and all years (Getting my hopes up is an understatement). So I waited for the 20^th unenthusiastically, I actually went to that party instead of waiting all night for the game to download and playing it into the early hours. It wasn’t until after lunch the next day did I think it was time to face my fears and launch the game with significantly lower expectations. I wore a ‘trying to be strong’ smile on my face as I launched the game which increased to a real smile, which increased to a demonic looking smile and laugh so broad and hearty respectively that people came in to check on me.

Oh man was it good.

Being a total (wannabe) hardcore (wannabe) badass I immediately loaded it on Purist difficulty which takes away the majority of the UI and any hints. Considering the first mission is a tutorial mission I feel this was not a good move as I spent the majority of the mission asking my friend on Steam chat what to do and what button to press. Still did it though so I guess I did amount to something DAD. Take my advice and keep it on humble difficulty level till you learn the new systems, after a while it’s hard to imagine that they were ever not part of the original series, especially the cover system.

I soon discovered that there was a surprising amount of mechanics added without making them feel forced. Some are small like the ability to shimmy across window ledges and move quickly while crouching and other are huge changes to the way you play like the instinct, fake-surrendering and the score system. My personal jury is still out on whether adding such an obvious score system where a country score, global score and your friend’s score is displayed was a good move or not. At times I felt more like I was playing an arcade game, just trying to beat my friend’s scores (not that this was necessarily a bad thing) and less like I was playing a single player epic. I would have preferred it to only turn on the second play through of the mission but that is just personal preference I’m sure lots of people don’t restart the mission anytime they get a single minus point like my perfectionist self.

After the marathon of consistently failing the first mission at every new area, I decided to discreetly slip the difficulty down to expert and not tell myself. With hard mode still being seriously hard and expert being the step up you can imagine the difficulties that lie ahead of you. For entry level Hitman players there are three modes that will hold your hand through the missions until you learn to walk yourself. For the veteran Agent 47 controller there are 3 modes that offer no guidance but have increasing levels of difficulty which means no prompts, no regeneration of instinct and health and scaling numbers of enemies and their alertness levels based on how sadistic towards yourself you are feeling.

The story isn’t great. I’m a big fan of a good yarn but I can forgive the developers considering they have 4 previous games and when you start getting to the third entry into a series the story tends to become a little convoluted. While the overarching storyline is lacklustre each level is a brilliantly crafted experience with so many different ways to make your mark on the game world and the inhabitants in it. The areas flow well together and no matter which path through the level (for example crawling through the sewer or scaling the high rise hotel) you take you will always end up in the same place killing the same baddie.

A lot of people are complaining about the exaggerated bloom and I can appreciate where they are coming from, especially when the light dances off your que ball like head just right. I’m not trying to be Count Controversial here but I actually liked it, its contrast with the dark areas when you are skulking around in the shadows gives me the feeling of the silent hunter which is I think is emotion the majority of Hitman players are looking for. The rest of the graphics are good even on the lowest settings but look great when anti-aliasing is at full and the texture detail is maxed. The environments really come alive when you get up to the higher settings and seeing the sprawling Chinatown with all the characters moving around and bright neon lights is an impressive scene if your PC is powerful enough to handle that many entities on screen. I would prefer if I got slightly better FPS out of the game considering the rig I’m playing on but when I dropped some of the settings down. Taking into account it’s a port I’m happy it at least allows for 1900×1200 resolution after the horror that is Dark Souls on PC.

IO Interactive’s new engine Glacier 2 excels at big crowd scenes like the Chinatown level where each npc can be pushed or run into and will react appropriately. IO boast that it can render crowds of 1200 NPCs even on the current generation of consoles which goes to show it’s not the hardware you use but how you use it (atleast that’s what my girlfriend keeps telling me). I don’t think it’s the best engine in terms of optimisation for PCs as I only got an average of 23fps on the benchmark with two GeForce GTX 680s running in SLI. The benchmark test does have a lot going on to be fair and techspot.com got a FPS of 57 in their test but running at slightly lower settings.

On the first area of the ‘On the Run’ chapter when the WAAAAAAAAABBBB WWWWWWWUUUUBBBB Horns that remind me of Inception so greatly began to play did I really start getting into the sounds of Hitman. I turned my headset up to max to really appreciate the attention to detail of the sound that the developers had gone into. Thunder roared, droplets dropped, floorboards creaked… I’m pretty sure a police officer farted. The sounds really immersed me in the atmosphere and I just got into the head of Hitman, whereas before I would rush through areas now I began to take my time, patiently scoping out the room and looking for the best path to take. It’s not often a soundtrack will affect me as much as Hitman’s so a appreciated a chance to actually get to write about it other than just “it wasn’t obtrusive.” The sounds that go along with slicing people’s throats are decidedly visceral which is always a treat.

While I appreciate the attempt to bring new players in on the Hitman experience, I think learning the hard way by dying continuously gives a better sense of gratification when you finally sneak past that one unarmed guard with his back turned to you and a severe hearing difficulty. All this tomfoolery with the ability to see through walls and pull your hat down over your face to get throw off suspicious onlookers is unneeded in my opinion, there is already radar and just make the disguises do more than provide you with 0.5 second delay on getting spotted by guards. I didn’t like playing with the interface but you can turn it all off if you want to keep that chalssic Hitman ‘you and your wits’ feel. The radar is incredibly helpful but I do feel like a bit of a cheat using it at times because it even shows you what direction enemies are facing.

I could not be more ecstatic that this was another great addition to the Hitman series as I have been waiting six and a half years for it. It has added so many new systems that add so much to gameplay without taking out what makes Hitman such a great stealth game. If you are still on the fence about whether to buy it or not watch a few gameplay videos that show-off the dozens of different ways you can take out your target. If you feel the desire to buy some hats there are about a dozen DLC items from guns to Deus Ex armour, my personal favourite being the Public Enemy Disguise which makes you look like a 50s gangter.

Recently I’ve just been happy if an AAA title is decent enough for me to take my time to complete so this has really reset the bar as very high in my eyes as I’m even going back to do the mission achievements even if that is just because I want to prove to my steam friends that I am better at hitting men than them.

With the contract system, achievements, DLC and replayable gameplay I can really see myself playing this game for a long time coming just like I did with Blood Money which is true praise indeed.

Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.