A little while ago I was exchanging comments about this game and whether it would be worth buying with some people here, and I promised I would give some feedback. Well, now that I had the chace to beat it, I feel like I can give my opinion on it.

I'll go about it extensively below, but I could sum it up as: the game does feel like a hitman game... sometimes. Things are a lot more linear, several game mechanics are broken and the story is not very interesting; but I can feel agent 47 behind all that. My opinion is that this feels as an experiment on how a Hitman game should be, and I'm all for trying new things on a franchise. Except, they had refined it a lot on Blood Money, and they let go most of the strengths they had achieved in there. I just can't understand why.

Anyway, moving on to detail. You still explore the level to check all the "interesting" spots to see what items are there and how you could make use of them, and it is only after all this exploration that you go for the real run to beat the level. The fact that these interesting spots are indicated through this new "instinct" thingy instead of the good old map is secondary to me; in the end you act the exact same way and that's what matters.

Similarly, the whole seeing through walls thing... it's a dumbed down thing, to be sure, but it's not that unrealistic if you take it as 47 listening to faint footsteps, looking through keyholes, etc... it's not that unrealistic, but it's a lot more fun if it's you doing it and not some dumbed down game mechanic. But I can live with that.

Cover. Weeell, that's stretching it a bit, but I can live with that too. Hitman has always left the player to choose how to go about a level, so adding the option of cover based stealth is not wrong. As for cover based shooting... who cares, nobody should play hitman for the shooting, but it's still good that they try to improve that area too.

Aaand the points. It's well and good to be able to see your score on a level, even more so if you get to see it as you play and see when you lose points for some actions, etc... However, I don't want to see it all the time. Specially, I don't want to see it on my first playthrough, when what I want is immersion and not some stupid text telling me that I lost 200 points for knocking out a civilian. It's annoying as hell, and I couldn't find a way to shut it up.

Now we get to the bad stuff: costumes. These are the number 1 allure of hitman games, and the modifications done for this game are not very wellcome. People with your same costume will be suspicious of you as they know each other, people of other occupations won't be. It makes sense, only that it doesn't really. If you knock out the only chef of a high security mansion, nobody finds it strange the guy went suddenly bald; while any street vendor will be raising an alarm as if they had nothing better to do than to look out for unknown people. Finding yourself being shot at just because you are wearing a chef outfit on the street feels stupid.

There are still areas where, once you get the right outfit, you can walk around and explore as in older hitman games, but it only happens when the devs decided to let you do it. It's still great when it happens, though. And there are cases where there are 2 types of guards, so you get a disguise of the rarer type A and have to move avoiding type As while in plain sight of type Bs. That's really fun. Then, you need a keycard on the security room where only As are allowed, but wearing an type A disguise will get you spotted in miliseconds as everybody inside is logically of that type. That's not fun. I hear IO is planning to tweak the detection system now, let's see what they come up with.

Next, save games. Utterly broken. There's no forgiving this one. Basically, you need to finish each level in one run; which kills a lot of the fun of experimenting because it forces you to repeat over and over again the beginning of the level. Annoying as hell. The only thing that saves this is that the levels are far shorter, but then again, this is bad for entirely different reasons. Where did the huge, open levels from Blood Money go?

Story. Absolution is, by far, the most story driven game of the franchise, and story driven is generally good in my book. However, I can hardly stand 47 going emotional, it's so out of character from what he has always been in my mind. The story is cheesy, 47 keeps messing up in cutscenes what you work hard for in-game; and the cutscenes often break immersion. Say, you disguise as a security guy, fiber wire the target and throw him out of the building. Then, the cutscene starts and you have a conversation with the dying target as he lies in a pool of his own blood while magically wearing your suit again. WTF? Plus, all these cutscenes cut the levels in such a way that you no longer need to plan for an escape route: you just need to get to point A and that's all.

Equipment. You no longer have the chance to choose your equipment, and need to manage with whatever scraps the devs decide to leave there for you to use on each level. If the level has a sniping spot, you'll get a sniper rifle. If it has a good place for a bomb, you'll get remote bombs. It feels forced and stupid. Not to mention 47's suit has been upgraded to hide any weapons inside it, from crowbars to assault rifles, at any time. Even though it kinda makes sense story-wise, I find this limitation very annoying.

Finally, the skill upgrades. Whenever you get a good enough score on a level, you unlock a new upgrade. Kinda like how you got extra weapons on Hitman 2 for getting silent assassin rating. However, it feels broken to me: each level will grant you 1 single predefined upgrade, it seems. While getting an upgrade for blending in or being harder to spot on disguise after beating a level unnoticed makes sense, it doesn't to get a boost of accuracy. What's the point on me being tougher if I'm not spotted, thus never being shot at? If the player could at least select which upgrade to get next... but no. Just unlock the upgrade for the current level and pray for it to be stealth related.

This is a very good and balanced summary of the game.

It's a shame that Hitman: Absolution lost so much of the sense of exploration and experimentation that I liked in the older Hitman games. I always loved finding somebody with an interesting costume at the beginning of a sprawling level, disposing of them, and then seeing where I could go while wearing the costume.
Unless the level was timed, I enjoyed taking my time and putting together the perfect assassination plan. Often, if I was discovered, I considered it a failure and reloaded.

I always approached the Hitman games as puzzle/stealth games rather than action games, and from what I've heard so far, this new Hitman focuses a lot more on the action/stealth elements.
The immersion breaking features are also a huge shame, as I tend to role-play when playing through a game, and if a game takes place in a realistic setting, I expect it to follow (fairly) realistic rules (unless it's an arcade game).

I'm sure that many people will find the new game appealing, but I'm afraid that I won't like it due to much of what you've revealed.
And I was so looking forward to a new Hitman game too... :(

This reminds me that I should really get around to playing the Hitman games. Would Blood Money be the best spot to start?

I saw this review earlier, felt sad and pretended like it didn't exist.

Sigh.

Hopefully some kind of fan mods fix some of the... issues. More of the same is not always a bad thing.
I find myself really disheartened by the everyone sounds the alarm idea.

Havent played it, but it seems to suffer some similar (technical) problems to Deus Ex Human Revolution (in points) so I'll avoid getting ahold of it for the forseeable future at least.

I'd recommend getting the ultimate contract, it's the first 4 games on one disc. I got it for about a fiver which makes it almost the same as buying just one of the games individually.

I really enjoy the game
Its not as good 2-4 but its still great and if it wasn't for the lack of exploration it would be one of the best stealth games out there

Are there people who prefer the hitman series to the death to spies series (and who have played games from both) ?

Ohsnap, Death to Spies is like Hitman?
I have the first one (I got it for something like 20 cents at Half-Price Books), but never had the chance to play it. I honestly thought it was a point and click adventure.

I personally prefer the second one (Hitman 2: Silent Assassin), but I may be biased as it was the first one I played and also the first game of its type to come my way. I remember how impressed I was by the environments and the freedom offered (there was one particular mission where you had the option to poison your target with fugu fish - and I only discovered this option on my second play-through). I really enjoyed the challenge of attempting to get a perfect Silent Assassin rating in each level (made more difficult by the fact that each level offers you a limited number of saves, so you really have to plan ahead).

Blood Money seems to be what the general consensus agrees upon as the best Hitman game, although personally it was less memorable than the second one was for me.
I guess since it's one of the newer games, it would be a good place to start. I do recommend you give the second one a try too (or all of them, for that matter).

Blood Money is really good, and starts with a really annoying and linear tutorial level, so you'll get used to the mechanics if you don't mess around in it :)

Silent Assassin and Contracts are really good too, but Contracts starts with a stage that scared off my friends who hadn't tried Hitman before.
The original, Codename 47, is good too, but even I've come to the conclusion that it's lacking in some ways. It's a good place to start if you have a lot of patience and trust :p

The book is pretty good too, and it confirmed my suspicion that 47's disguises are more elaborate than the games' presentation leads you to believe :p
The movie is fun to watch, if you skip the wtf-scene (if you watch it on dvd, just press "next scene" when 4 guys suddenly pull out swords in a train. that scene is basically the equivalent of the main characters suddenly putting on astronaut suits and flying into space with jetpacks for a scene and then magically returning with no explanation or future mention in a serious modern drama).

Could you please elaborate more on the save game system? I never understand why they feel the need to change it. It was IMHO best in Silent Assassin and Contract, not so much in Blood Money. So how is it now?

It sounded like the only progress saving that you get is at the end of a job.

Well if that is so, that sucks big time, you mean they return it to Codename 47? *sigh*

I played both Silent Assassin and Blood Money recently and both had the same save system. You receive 7 saves each mission on normal.

As for Absolution there are checkpoints but too few and annoyingly spread out so that you'll need to replay several minutes if you fail and hurts experimental gameplay a lot.