Hitman: Absolution review: beautiful contracts
Hitman: Absolution is nearly everything I want from a video game. It's beautiful, big, and an absolute blast to play. IO Interactive has crafted a game filled with so many interesting sandboxes to play in, that it's hard not to come back over and over again.
Chinatown can be quite a daunting place to visit
This Hitman: Absolution review was based on a debug Xbox 360 version of the game provided by the publisher. The game will be available on November 20th on Xbox 360, PC, and PlayStation 3.
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replyAndrew Yoon posted a new article, Hitman: Absolution review: beautiful contracts.
Hitman: Absolution is nearly everything I want from a video game. It's beautiful, big, and an absolute blast to play. IO Interactive has crafted a game filled with so many interesting sandboxes to play in, that it's hard not to come back over and over again.-
So what of the publications that gave poor early reviews? Trolling for hits?
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I haven't read any of the other reviews--what did they say?
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That it was utter garbage. And after seeing a playthrough of the game where you killed a luchadore in the middle of a crowded bar after taking your mask off with a hilariously silly QTE sequence and somehow get silent assassin rank, I have to agree
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So... you agree but haven't played the game. Ok.
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From what I'm reading in other people's reviews, it seems people are upset that you *can* play it in ways other than sneaking around. I would very strongly disagree with the notion that the game "encourages" you to kill guards. It's certainly *easier* to kill the guards in certain parts of the game, but that's sort of the challenge, isn't it? There's no real "reward" for playing the silent assassin--other than the self-satisfaction that, hey, you did it.
My first time through, I managed to only kill two guards. And that's because I decided to blow up a gas station to take out two of my targets. Unfortunately, there was collateral damage. Still, to be able to do that was incredibly empowering. Was there another way to complete the level? Certainly. For example, in the luchador level, I cut the power, sneaked past the guards, made my way to the top of the arena and dropped the stage lights onto the arena. You don't have to play it that way, but I find it far more fun to play it that way.-
It's the principal of it all. It took blood, sweat, and MANY TEARS to get a Silent Assassin rank in previous games. You actually had to think. Replacing that with "QTE a wrestler to death in front of hundreds of witnesses....YOU WIN THE GAME" is sorta...sorta silly.
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Didn't care enough to read much, but wasn't there a couple of threads the other day here about PC Gamer hating it?
(does some digging)
http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=29197960
http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/10682/article/hitman-absolution-is-a-mess-gets-torn-apart-in-pc-gamer-review/ -
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Read this: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/11/18/wot-i-think-hitman-absolution/
It makes me sad, really. All I wanted was more blood money. And apparently I'm getting a toned down Kane & Lynch :(-
"Absolution is a clever free-form Contracts mode with less hits than the New Radicals"
Fucking amazing zinger. I like the cut of their jib. -
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"Seconds later I was dressed as a chipmunk mascot and as I scaled the side of the building, a preposterous man in a preposterous situation, I realised I was probably supposed to be amused"
I didn't even see that chipmunk costume. But once again, it's your choice to play it as silly (or as stealthy) as you want. For me, I see that as a plus--not a mark against the game. I do agree with the consensus that the story is absolute garbage, but it's the sandbox gameplay that I cared more about--not the nun-filled story. (Yes, there are SO many nuns.)-
That's basically the complaint though, the new game very often forces your hand or limits your options, and has only a few 'real' hitman levels with full sandbox potential.
It's just as I feared back when they showed off the library level, you get a choice to sneak through a set of rooms or shoot your way through, after which you are discovered regardless of your approach. That just won't do when previous games set the bar so much higher.
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To be fair, he's not the only reviewer to actually be very positive to the game in his review. It's got roughly an 85% on game rankings, putting it near the top of the holiday window releases. I haven't read much on it myself, but puts on flame retardant suit now ign also have it a high score, so he's not the only reviewer to get paid off to actually enjoy the game despite some not feeling as strongly for it. It's like, his opinion, man.
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I didn't mean for it to read like I was dismissing their opinion, but was rather hoping for a genuine opinion. Though I can see how it would be read that way.
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FREE HAT
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TF2 ruined everything
TF2 is awesome -
GG Valve.
:(
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Some people dont play videogames for the story and don't really care if it has one.
When I was throwing 10p pieces into arcade machines as a kid, they rarely had a story or you skipped through that stuff to get to the actual game.
I like a good story in games every now and then (which is why I love the Uncharted games so much) but sometimes I just want to run around and blow shit up, I don't need a story to make that fun as long as the gameplay mechanics are good :) -
What's what nearly means
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Haha "That's what nearly means"
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I would think nearly would be like... "this game is awesome, but the last twenty minutes were silly" or "I found this one character annoying and detracted from the experience" or "there were occasional framerate issues." Not "THE STORY IS AWFUL." That seems like a pretty glaring problem with a video game.
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Completely depends on what you want to get out of a video game. For many, an awesomely fun game with a shitty store would qualify as "nearly everything they want". For some others, it would even be everything they want. And for other still, it would be pretty much nothing they wanted!
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Good to see that PC Gamer's Tom Franics was plain old wrong.
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Having read a handful of very different reviews, I think I now understand what's up with this game. Apparently it's a good but not great stealth action game with a laughable story. PC Gamer and RPS are so disappointed because it's not the Hitman game that they wanted. They wanted more Blood Money--huge levels designed as puzzles that could be approached freely from many different directions. To be honest that's what I wanted too. Well it sounds like you get some of that, but have to endure a bunch of modern, scripted action game tropes along the way.
Definitely waiting to pick it up from the bargain bin now. -
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That's what it sounds like from the reviews I've read. A terrible Hitman game but decent on its own. I wanted a better version of Blood Money though :(
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The Conan review sold it for me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5XLrtLsGt_g
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The only source I trust (PC Gamer) gave it 62%. Apparently it strips away basically everything that made Blood Money an awesome game, the freedom, the open levels, ability to choose your own equipment, actually getting to kill your target as opposed to getting to a door at the end of the level or watching the kill work/fail in a cutscene...so disappointed.
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PC Gamer has amended their review a bit:
"A note from Tom: At the time I reviewed it for the print edition of PC Gamer, the PC version of Hitman: Absolution suffered from serious performance problems. These have since been fixed, and I’ve had the chance to verify that on our own machines. Since it’s still not out, there doesn’t seem much point in dinging it for a problem you won’t have. So in this online version, I’ve amended the bit that was no longer accurate.
To give you an idea, on a 2.8 GHz quad core with a Radeon HD 4800, it now runs at about 30-40 FPS on medium settings. It used to be 15 even on minimum.
The previously awful performance contributed to it feeling like a shonky PC port to me, and I took it into account in the score. Now that it runs decently, the game feels approximately 4% less shonky, and I’ve adjusted the score accordingly. This is about as scientific as the initial scoring process."-
Fair enough, but still...it doesn't change the overall message of the review.
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Download this game for free from Mygame9.com
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