Review - Hitman: Absolution

Game Name:    Hitman: Absolution

Developer:    IO Interactive

Publisher:    Square Enix

Platform:     PC (reviewed), X360, PS3

Genre: 3rd Person, Action, Adventure, Stealth

Engine: Glacier 2

Release Date: November 20, 2012

I've never been a fan of the meta game of stealth titles. Sitting in the dark, watching an NPC path back and forth until you’ve memorized enough to make your way through the level, usually with an immense amount of loading and retrying. Not really my thing. Despite my distaste for these factors, and the fact that Hitman: Absolution (H:A) incorporates most of them into its gameplay, I ended up enjoying the game a surprising amount.

As you’ve probably noticed from the trailers, or any gameplay videos you’ve seen, this game is visually spectacular. The new Glacier 2 engine IO Interactive (IOI) has created is stunning. The character models look and move great, everything is very fluid. Up until recently (see L.A. Noire or Dishonored), facial expressions, and faces in general, have been fairly poorly rendered in video games, but IOI pulls it off with ease in this release. Even though I didn’t particularly care about the characters in H:A, they were able to relay real emotion through their facial expressions and voices. I’m happy to see games moving to better facial expression rendering as I think its a huge factor in becoming immersed in a story and its characters.

One of the things that got a lot of attention with the Glacier 2 engine was the crowd dynamics, and they are definitely impressive. Everything is rendered smoothly; moving through crowds and blending into them to hide is genuinely satisfying. The crowds feel organic and alive, something you can interact with in a very real way. This is a feeling that I haven’t felt from a game before. Assassin’s Creed 3’s AnvilNext engine boasts similar technical stats as far as crowd rendering goes, and may be the only other title that can compete with H:A in this respect.

Agent 47 is one with the crowd.

You’re not going to come across too much that you haven’t seen in previous Hitman games as far as gameplay goes in H:A, and that’s not really a bad thing. The stealthiness of the game is focused on changing disguises (and there are LOTS of amusing disguises to play around with), hiding in closets or containers, silently killing off your targets, and then hiding the bodies in conveniently placed containers. They’ve also introduced something called Instinct. You can activate instinct to see points of interest around the level, the outline of NPCs through walls, the paths of NPCs via small flame paths, and it also grants you the ability to blend in to your surroundings. The amount of instinct you can use, and the rate at which you gain and deplete it, depends on the which of the five difficulties you’re playing on. For the most part, instinct is good, it opens up some new avenues to pursue your objectives, though you do feel like you’re sort of cheating when you use it, or at least I did.

This gives you an idea of what instinct shows you.

Controls wise, everything is tight; the transition between running, walking, and sneaking is seamless and very intuitive using a controller (can’t speak for keyboard/mouse as I didn’t use these). The one gripe I have has to do with button mapping, and many recent games have done this poorly. All interaction with objects (moving into a hiding place, hiding bodies, picking up objects, picking up weapons) are mapped to the same button! This made me rage quite a bit when I was just about to make it into the hiding spot before the NPC rounds the corner and sees me, and whadya know, there’s a weapon next to the hiding spot, so obviously, I want to swap this with my current weapon, right?! This was infuriating, much in the same way that Mass Effect 3 was when you were trying to hide behind cover, but instead you jumped over it, because all of those actions were mapped to a single button. This is a general complaint for all games that do this, but anyone interested in this game should know that this will come up. It by no means ruins the game, but be ready to encounter some frustration as you deal with it.

Another thing that ended up consistently pulling me out of, what would have otherwise been, a completely enjoyable gaming experience was the constant reminder of how below average my performance was. I’m bad. I know that. But does it really need to be rubbed in my face? The game allocates points for essentially every single interactive action in the game that you can perform. And the points can be negative! There’s nothing worse than starting a mission, making your way to your objective, and looking up to a -2530 score. Or later in the level, you’ve gotten a nice positive score cushion, shit hits the fan and you end up having to clear a room of guys in a non-stealthy manner, and you’re suddenly at negative six thousand. Sure, you might make enough points later to end positive, but seeing that giant negative number at the top of the screen, at least for me, was unacceptable. I therefore had to retry... and retry... and retry until I got that perfect, non-negative score. I think this is one reason I liked Dishonored so much. Get noticed, take out a couple guys if need be, and then back into hiding, and you didn’t feel like you had to restart the level. Though it was possible to recover sometimes in this way in H:A, it was a lengthy process, and you always had that glaring negative score to look at along the way.

Negative scores FTL!

The scoring wasn’t all bad though. It ties in with all of the content in the game, and there’s a ton: disguises,  weapons, objects, hiding spots, challenges, contracts, play styles. These are all things you can find or unlock for better scores and achievements. This gives the player a good amount of replayability, and also provides a nice metric for the multiplayer Contracts mode.

Once you get past the scoring bit, which may not even bother you, the plentiful content and wide array of environments you play through make for a fun gaming experience. You see a different site in each of the whopping twenty levels in the single player campaign and get to play around with new ways of eliminating your target. Like previous Hitman games, you are somewhat limited in the methods of taking out your single targets, having maybe 2 or 3 semi-scripted ways to take out a target. This can make things feel a bit linear, but for the most part you feel like you have enough options to make the experience your own. When you start getting into the multi-target missions, the permutations can make for some pretty interesting decisions to make on how to carry out your hit.

I’m not going to go into the story as I don’t want to spoil anything for those that are truly interested. But for the most part, I found the story pretty... meh. It’s not bad, it’s just not all that good. That aside, the voice acting and dialogue are well done, better than in most games. Overall, the sound, in general, is fine. Nothing super special, but certainly not bad. There are expected auditory (as well as visual) signals when you’re spotted, or about to be spotted, and the music fades in and out at the expected, opportune moments.

So there you have it folks! Hitman: Absolution. Overall, a fun stealth based game, that even non-stealth gamers like myself can get into. It’s chock full of content to see, and the five difficulties and wide array of collectables and achievements will leave anyone worried about replayability with nothing to really worry about. It has its shortcomings, and its annoyances, especially for a nit-picky pessimist like myself, but all things considered, IO Interactive has delivered a beautiful, polished, fun to play addition to the Hitman series.