Since Hit-man: blood money was such wonderful childhood favorite of mine while I was back in school, I was largely excited about the release of Hit-man: absolution. But unfortunately, upon playing a few hours of the game I feel not only underwhelmed by the experience but feel foolish for wasting money on it. If you took away the title, Hit-man, and replaced the game with any other name, this would honestly be a game that would be forgotten in 3 months down the track.
My first complaint is that many of the features that made the franchise so worthwhile seem to be missing here. While the graphics and art design are impressive, the level design is too linear and restrictive and it completely limits the amount of freedom of choice you can have during most missions. Its a disheartening far cry from the massive, open world the original Hit-man games had that used to allow you to play the game however you wanted, and let you assassinate your targets in whatever fashion you wanted.Not only that, you are now incapable of upgrading your weapons or choosing what weapons you'd like before the each mission commences. It automatically decides what weapons you can have and most of time you are without your silenced weapons, which makes the more challenging difficulty options too frustrating and taxing to play. The stealth game play isn't much better. The disguise system, which was all too effective in hit-man: blood money is practically useless here. The excruciatingly cheap and moronic AI can now not only detect you from a mile away, even with your back turned to them with your disguise on, but now you can not going anywhere without having your cover blown every 5 seconds. The game forces you to rely on instinct mode, which is not only useless on the harder options but it depletes really quickly, and the only way you can replenish it is from killing people. But guess what? you actually get penalized if you kill anyone else but your targets. The issue is here, the instinct mode is just simply too poorly implemented on the harder modes while it is simply too easy to use on the easier options. Not only that, for a hit-man game, you literally don't get to do any killing here at all. Most of the missions involve getting away from the police or trying to navigate yourself around henchmen, which gets tiresome and frustrating after a few minutes.The checkpoint system here too is horrible. While dishonored had a smart save system that allowed you to save anywhere in particular, no matter where you were, This has a checkpoint system that only saves during some points in the game. You can literally move through an entire area full of adversaries undetected, only to get caught and sent back to the very beginning, where you started. Not only is it hugely infuriating, but it takes away the satisfaction of playing the game and it punishes for even the smallest mistakes you make, which makes the game difficult to enjoy. A lot of the most basic features of the previous hit-man games seem to be missing too, like for instance you can't even look through keyholes or even poison food or drinks to incapacitate or kill enemies.You can't even enter first person mode anymore. There doesn't really seem to be much of a story here either, not one you care for and since jesper kyd didn't return for this sequel the music is very mundane and generic. I have only played a few hours of the game however its simply too tedious and agitating to play and I probably won't end up finishing it. For me, this could be the biggest disappointment of the year, even though this year hasn't been too good for gaming in general. IO interactive are normally a pretty reliable studio who frequently do a solid job when it comes to developing games. But it is obvious that the majority of talent behind this franchise is now gone, beside David Bateson. You have got to have honestly never played Hit-man blood money or any other hit-man game for that matter in order to believe this game has any redeeming qualities whatsoever. It is just another lazily made and toned down sequel, made to cater to today's call of duty generation, who are unsophisticated, undemanding and lack really any taste to discern from what is good and what isn't. This just simply feel like a hybrid between splinter cell and batman, rather than a legitimate hit-man game. Just get Deus Ex for a better stealth game instead, or any other game for that matter.
My first complaint is that many of the features that made the franchise so worthwhile seem to be missing here. While the graphics and art design are impressive, the level design is too linear and restrictive and it completely limits the amount of freedom of choice you can have during most missions. Its a disheartening far cry from the massive, open world the original Hit-man games had that used to allow you to play the game however you wanted, and let you assassinate your targets in whatever fashion you wanted.Not only that, you are now incapable of upgrading your weapons or choosing what weapons you'd like before the each mission commences. It automatically decides what weapons you can have and most of time you are without your silenced weapons, which makes the more challenging difficulty options too frustrating and taxing to play. The stealth game play isn't much better. The disguise system, which was all too effective in hit-man: blood money is practically useless here. The excruciatingly cheap and moronic AI can now not only detect you from a mile away, even with your back turned to them with your disguise on, but now you can not going anywhere without having your cover blown every 5 seconds. The game forces you to rely on instinct mode, which is not only useless on the harder options but it depletes really quickly, and the only way you can replenish it is from killing people. But guess what? you actually get penalized if you kill anyone else but your targets. The issue is here, the instinct mode is just simply too poorly implemented on the harder modes while it is simply too easy to use on the easier options. Not only that, for a hit-man game, you literally don't get to do any killing here at all. Most of the missions involve getting away from the police or trying to navigate yourself around henchmen, which gets tiresome and frustrating after a few minutes.The checkpoint system here too is horrible. While dishonored had a smart save system that allowed you to save anywhere in particular, no matter where you were, This has a checkpoint system that only saves during some points in the game. You can literally move through an entire area full of adversaries undetected, only to get caught and sent back to the very beginning, where you started. Not only is it hugely infuriating, but it takes away the satisfaction of playing the game and it punishes for even the smallest mistakes you make, which makes the game difficult to enjoy. A lot of the most basic features of the previous hit-man games seem to be missing too, like for instance you can't even look through keyholes or even poison food or drinks to incapacitate or kill enemies.You can't even enter first person mode anymore. There doesn't really seem to be much of a story here either, not one you care for and since jesper kyd didn't return for this sequel the music is very mundane and generic. I have only played a few hours of the game however its simply too tedious and agitating to play and I probably won't end up finishing it. For me, this could be the biggest disappointment of the year, even though this year hasn't been too good for gaming in general. IO interactive are normally a pretty reliable studio who frequently do a solid job when it comes to developing games. But it is obvious that the majority of talent behind this franchise is now gone, beside David Bateson. You have got to have honestly never played Hit-man blood money or any other hit-man game for that matter in order to believe this game has any redeeming qualities whatsoever. It is just another lazily made and toned down sequel, made to cater to today's call of duty generation, who are unsophisticated, undemanding and lack really any taste to discern from what is good and what isn't. This just simply feel like a hybrid between splinter cell and batman, rather than a legitimate hit-man game. Just get Deus Ex for a better stealth game instead, or any other game for that matter.