Hitman Absolution

Now before I begin I need to make one thing clear. I love the Hitman series of games.

To this day Hitman Blood Money is one of my all time favourite titles and it would take one hell of a game to beat it. If you take into account my almost disturbing love for these games, and my desire to murder, it would be fair to say that I was the most excited human being in the world on November the 20th 2012 – the day of Absolution.

I had waited six long years for this to happen, and now that it had come would it live up to the hype?

My first impressions were good. The sound, graphics, controls and level design all lived up to my high expectations. It didn’t take long for me to settle back into my murderous ways and rekindle my love of fibre wire and silenced pistols. I was also pleased to see the return of ‘accident’ kills and the ability to hide in cupboards. Now at this point you may be expecting me to announce Absolution as the new Blood Money and the game of my dreams. But I won’t, I can’t.

As I played on, the sheen of this super polished game started to fade. Not fade in the style an illegal copy of Flashpoint would: more like the way the sheen of the top slide from a Silverballer would after a few rounds have been fired. The shiny stainless steel finish may be slightly dull but it is still an awesome piece. My primary niggle was the scoring system. Almost everything you do in Absolution has an effect on your score and your score affects your rating.

Now back in the day you would achieve the coveted rank of Silent Assassin by being, well, a silent assassin. You had to sneak in undetected, kill your target with one shot or the fibre wire and then leave. This took time, skill and patience. In Absolution you simply need to score over one hundred thousand points. That doesn’t sound too bad does it? Score loads of points by killing folks.

The issue is that in order to score these points you need to complete challenges. Challenges give you a score multiplier and allow you to gain more points for the things you do. Challenges? Score multipliers? That’s not very Hitman. What happened to killing people for money?

Your actions can give you a positive or a negative score and at times this can feel like it is forcing you into taking a certain course of action. It is no longer acceptable to knock a man unconscious and leave him in an ally. This would incur negative points. You must knock him unconscious and hide him in a bin in the ally. No bin in the ally? No knocking out of men.

It is important to remember that the above are just niggles. They do not detract too much from the huge quantities of awesome this game possesses. I also understand why Absolution brought these features in and it is all about moving with the times. As far as I am concerned the more people this game can appeal to the better. I would urge anyone who gives it a bash to go and play the rest of the series. It is hard for me to go into too much detail about what I love about Absolution as I do not wish to spoil it for those yet to play. The pace of the story is great and certain moments just ooze cool. There is a huge arsenal of weapons to try, people to dress up as and a nice selection of pointy objects to throw in folks faces.

Absolution is an almighty piece of gaming and a worthy addition to the series. However, if you think this is the best Hitman game there is: you haven’t played Blood Money.