Originally published December 2016

Welcome back to my series of reviews on the various Hitman games in the franchise. At first, I discussed the humble beginnings of the franchise, Hitman: Codename 47. Then, I moved on to its direct, or maybe not so direct sequel, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, which felt like an actual game instead of a proof of concept, but it was still pretty bland. I then moved on to the disappointingly confusing Hitman: Contracts and grumbled about how the games still seemed unable to live up to their potential. At last, I finally reached Hitman: Blood Money, the game that most fans and critics consider the one to put the others to shame, which it did. Blood Money revitalized my interest in the franchise and I was finally ready to press on into newer territory. Today, I'll be discussing the "black sheep" of the franchise.

Disclaimer: Rather than doing what I've been doing with the previous Hitman games, I've actually decided to finish this one and try the different modes it has to get a full perspective. It was a much more stable game with fewer bugs or crashes than any of its predecessors, so some of the unfortunate frustration was actually removed from the experience. Naturally, I have a lot more to say about this one.

Hitman: Absolution

I remember the weeks leading up to Hitman: Absolution's release. It didn't go well. A trailer was released with some scantily clad nun-assassins shooting rocket launchers and blowing up a hotel with Agent 47 inside. It's a ridiculous trailer. The nuns look absurd. The action-hero aesthetic conflicts with the gameplay style of the Hitman franchise. It does a poor job of representing what people expect of the series, though, some of the events of that trailer do take place in the game. If you haven't seen it, it's worth a watch to see how much different it is from what you might have expected from the series.

Then the game came out and... it didn't do as well as they'd hoped. Critics considered it another decent, if not solid, Hitman game. Fans, however, still weren't too impressed with it. My opinion? Both sides are right. There are some particular choices in Hitman: Absolution's design that are smart and interesting. There are also other decisions that go against what I and many others want out of a Hitman game. Perhaps the best place to start is the point from which the game's paradoxical issues stem: the story.

Tall Tale, Tall Order

The other Hitman games, as I've mentioned, don't include much of a story. There's something there, certainly. You can look it up on various wiki pages and it's all quite absurd. However, none of those plot lines leading up to Absolution were anything more than a backdrop to what you were doing. In fact, the story was quite irrelevant to the game; the missions didn't really revolve around the plot much. You were given a target to kill, and at the end or beginning of the next mission, you got a briefing or cutscene that detailed more about the story. Hitman: Absolution, however, does things quite differently.

Absolution starts off well enough. Agent 47's handler from the previous games, Diana, has gone rogue and the agency wants her eliminated for all the trouble she's caused in the process. 47 is selected for the mission and, after a brief tutorial to teach players all the tricks, does the job. As she fades away, she requests that he take care of a girl she stole from the agency, who may be another 47-like clone. He agrees and places the young girl, Victoria, in hiding. The agency, however, doesn't appreciate 47's decision, so now he's on the run. While staying incognito, 47 attempts to find out more about the girl. So, he has to kill some people to get that information. Eventually, some other low-life individuals start looking for her and it gets complicated.

It's not a bad premise, by any means. The problem is that it leans a little too into its premise throughout the game. As opposed to before, where missions never deviated much from the format of well-orchestrated assassinations, Absolution does things differently. This game wants players to get to know the targets and their associated henchmen before taking them out. It also wants players to really earn the assassination by forcing them to go through missions that are radically different from the traditional formula. In Hitman: Absolution, the missions revolve around the story. There are one or two assassination scenarios sprinkled in there where it feels like a traditional Hitman mission, in which none of the events that transpire have anything to do with the plot. But in most cases, to get to the assassination playground, you've got to do a fair amount of sneaking around first.

The fact that the developers are trying to craft a story around the game isn't an issue for me. I don't necessarily care that much about 47's goals and aspirations, I just think he's a cool anti-hero, so I'm willing to see whatever story they write for him without being that invested in it. And man do they come up with some really weird crap. The Hitman universe has always had a dark sense of bizarre humor around it, and even more of that is on display here. The visuals and sound add a really grimy tone to the game, making it feel a little like a slick and shiny exploitation horror film from the 70's. It's got some eccentric characters who might as well have been plucked out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre; though, some of them would probably feel right at home in Roadhouse as well. In addition to those nutballs, it still has the sexy-nun assassins to veer the game into the comic book realm of something like Wanted. Personally, I legitimately enjoyed the weirdness they came up with. It adds a lot of unique personality to what has often been a somewhat lifeless universe.

Despite my appreciation for the risky story-telling the developers chose for their game, I still cannot shake the fact that this isn't quite what I wanted or expected from a Hitman game. The downsides weren't so significant that I didn't have fun, but the story simply interfered too much with the gameplay.

Part-Time Assassin

As I mentioned, there are only a few missions in the game that feel like traditional Hitman missions. The Hitman formula is typically: you're dropped in an area, given a target, and left to your own devices to kill them before disappearing to do it again in the next mission. These areas are often sandboxes filled with people with whom you can use to blend in. These types of arenas with the target wandering around still exist in Hitman: Absolution, however, the missions are rarely that short and simple anymore.

Instead of just being dropped into the sandbox environment to do your hunting, you usually have to make your way to the destination first. The second real mission of the game requires Agent 47 to navigate his way up through a dilapidated hotel with a bunch of mob goons patrolling the area. This would be the first of many missions in Hitman: Absolution that required players to spend a lot of time infiltrating the area without giving you any targets to kill by the end. I was certainly a bit disappointed to find that I couldn't eliminate any target when I reached the end, and I think a lot of people felt the same. There were probably plenty of players who didn't like the tone or story as well, but it's this drastic change to the Hitman formula that I think turned a lot of fans off.

Some people just want to be dropped into a location and given the toys they need to do some ridiculous assassination tricks. I think the fact that so much of the game's run-time was just getting to the assassination arena, fans were likely disappointed. Since I'm not a die-hard fan who's been involved with the series since the beginning, I'm a little more open to the changes they've added to the game's formula. Though, by the end, it did start to wear on me a bit.

The process of infiltrating the locations takes a while. A long while. It often spans multiple map zones that have their own layout and patrolling guards. I wanted to get those Silent Assassin high ranks, so it usually took even longer and ended up being a whole lot of hiding and non-violent takedowns, since killing non-targets lowers the score more than it would if I were to simply pacify them and hide their body. With the hotel level, it spanned two separate zones with multiple entry points. When I finally reached the top, I still didn't have a target to assassinate. Instead, I had to quickly escape the area from the police without being seen for what felt like five missions. Essentially, it took a good 90 minutes before I got another mission where I actually had targets to kill and it felt like a Hitman game again.

In defense of the changes, there's something appealing about being that much more involved in Agent 47's methods and missions. It didn't feel as removed as watching a cut scene take place and seeing him do all the sneaking to get into position. This structure adds more of a risk/reward by lengthening the missions and forcing players to try different methods of getting to and eliminating their target. In some ways, the sneaking missions gave me a nostalgic feeling for playing the traditional stealth games like the Tenchu series. However, playing passive-stealth levels isn't why I play Hitman, and there's a lot more of that navigating than I'd like in Hitman: Absolution.

A decent workaround that the game provides to alleviate this issue is the addition of Contracts. Contracts is the "map-editor" mode of Hitman. There's not much editing to it, but it allows players to take environments and maps from the game and make some NPCs on the map as actual assassination targets. It adds a little more purpose to the scenarios than the story mode provides and allows players to go back through some of the more boring areas again with a different goal in mind. The mode even has an option that appears when the game is paused. If you're playing one of the boring levels without a contract, you can simply pause the game and select the contract option to play a different version of the map with an actual target to take down. You still have to progress through the story missions as intended, but it's at least a nice method of making the game a little more interesting.

If you do take the time to complete the story, there is a bit of a consolation prize. You can use the level-select to go back and play the missions over again a little differently. This means that you can skip the sneaking sections and jump straight to the sandbox if you want. Even though I appreciate the risk/reward the sneaking levels provide, I have no interest in playing those missions again, unless I intend to just play it like a Call of Duty shooter and kill everyone in my way. This is a distinct possibility since Hitman: Absolution has some of the smoothest controls and most useful mechanics of any of the games yet.

Master of Death

Of all the Hitman games I've played so far, I like Absolution's controls and movement the best. This probably isn't too surprising, considering it's more recent than the others. With each game that is closer to the modern market, the mechanics have gotten easier and easier to use. Naturally, the interface and mechanics of Absolution also use elements common with more modern games than its predecessors.

The reason I want to mention this is that, despite the fact that the developers decided to make a Hitman game where you're doing more infiltration than killing, it is still probably the easiest to play. I still like Blood Moneymore because it gives me what I want from the franchise, but Absolution is still very competent and capable of making its content fun. The mechanics added and improved upon in Absolution make Agent 47 feel like he has a real edge on his enemies in a way he didn't before. This may make the game easier, but I've found it also streamlines the experience and makes it fun enough to make up for the other unfortunate decisions.

The main new mechanic that Agent 47 has in Hitman: Absolution is his "instinct." By using instinct, you get something similar to the x-ray vision of the Batman: Arkham games. Objects of interest, guards, and assassination targets are highlighted in this view. This gives you an immediate and easy method of scouting the area, as opposed to what it was before, which was often a more tedious affair. It streamlines the process of locating weapons the level has for you to use, or specific items your target may use that you can sabotage. The instinct view also allows you to see the path on which guards are walking, allowing you to completely predict where a guard will end up and circumvent them accordingly.

Instinct is a consumable resource for Agent 47 and becomes more easily consumed on harder difficulties. How do you consume it? While in disguise, instinct can be used to help disguise 47's face as he passes in front of guards who might realize that he isn't one of them. It can also be consumed for the "Quickshoot" mechanic, which is something similar to the "Dead-Eye" of Red Dead Redemption, or the "Mark-&-Execute" method of Splinter Cell. When Quickshoot is activated, the world slows down, allowing you to mark targets. When the meter runs down or Quickshoot is ended, 47 quickly shoots all those marks, immediately eliminating the threat. This mechanic is a bit too powerful in a game where those types of encounters don't mesh with the overall gameplay, but I'll gladly take another Dead-Eye mechanic in a game that is far more interesting and fun to play than Red Dead.

If you feel that instinct gives Agent 47 too much of an edge against his enemies, Hitman: Absolution continues the tradition of having multiple difficulties to balance out the skill. I played the game on Normal difficulty, which was the right balance of fun and challenging for me, but there are 3 higher levels of difficulty that adjust the UI, the intelligence of guards and targets, and the use of instinct. While I don't feel the need to completely remove the UI or load the maps up with huge numbers of guards like the hardest difficulty promises, I still ended up playing specific missions in Hitman: Absolution again on a higher difficulty just to force me into a different playstyle and I had some fun with it.

Part of the reason I'm so willing to play through it again is the amount of choice I have in playstyle. Blood Money was what I was expecting of the franchise from day one, but due to some unfortunate circumstances, the game kept crashing on me and preventing me from proceeding. Hitman: Absolution, while not quite what I expected, still gives incentives to try different methods of accomplishing the mission. The game keeps your score as you play, giving you a pretty good idea of how you're doing, where you might have screwed up, or how you might be able to fix it. It also has a list of side objectives and challenges for each mission that act as goals and achievements for the level, such as beating the mission without using any disguises or using an explosive weapon instead of a typical gun, etc. The side objectives provide a decent reason to go back and try something different in the various scenarios of the game. Hitman is all about experimentation and it's never been easier to experiment with the murder methods in the franchise before this.

TL;DR (Conclusion)

I had a blast with Hitman: Absolution, however, I can certainly see why it's considered the black sheep. The story influenced the gameplay a bit too much, which led to the removal of many tried & true sandbox missions that made Hitman: Blood Money so special. The story also created a world that may have been too absurd, even for the Hitman games. However, I still enjoyed some of the changes made to the formula, despite the flaws. I didn't mind playing a more traditional stealth game. I liked how some missions, while too long most of the time, built up the impact and the weight of the task at hand. I enjoyed the grimy low-budget, high-resolution look of the ridiculous story. I thought the tools they gave players to streamline the experience and give Agent 47 an edge in the gameplay were smart and satisfying to make up for the more unfortunate changes. In the end, I'd still say that if you've never played a Hitman game before, Hitman: Blood Money is still a good place to start, but if you can't get that game to work, Hitman: Absolution is worth a try.

Do you agree or disagree? Tell me what you think in the comments below or on Facebook!

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