Everything that made Hitman interesting was butchered. Disguises, the most iconic mechanic in the game, are useless here, since whoever wears the same suit as you will immediately know you’re an impostor, even if the suit carries a helmet that covers your entire head. All for the sake of a generic stealth gameplay based in hiding behind cover. In other games the MC has objects and skills that make sneaking in like that fun, but not here, so all that’s left is an experience where you hide behind a desk, wait for the enemy to move (sometimes can take up to a minute) and then move to the next desk, repeat process. Boring.

There are no contracts, most missions are moving from point A to B, which is probably the reason why the devs made disguises useless, since if they worked like in older titles, more than half the game would bee moving in a straight line with your disguise, but since they barely do anything, you’re forced to cover behind objects.

They removed the aesthetic inventory from Contracts and Blood Money to replace it with something more akin to Minecraft. The map was removed, alongside the ability to sneak your eye through locks to replace it with “instinct”, a wallhack mechanic. I find it funny how in the tutorial the game tries to justify this superpower by saying 47 has a developed instinct from training. Yeah so alpha, but this ability is also used to play stupid when you’re disguised, making you lower your head or scratch your scalp, and it RUNS OUT. Very cool superman xray 47 has got but appearently keeping his head down for more than a few seconds is too demanding.

When it comes to killing targets, most of the time there aren’t interesting ways to go about it (hardly ever there are, and you will likely miss them because you’re constantly battling against the scenarios so those damn white “ya busted!!!” marks don’t appear in your face), since the solution is usually at plain sight, and the games even tells you the routes the targets are going to take. “Hmmm the game is telling me this smoking guy is going to walk to that interactable gas station, I know, I’m gonna drop some gas and he will be set in fire, I’m a genius!”, it’s so lame that it’s not satisfactory. I have to say however that the game does NOT want you to explore at your pace, which means you won’t be able to learn patterns and stuff, so it makes sense that they are so handholding at executing targets.

Shooting mechanics were improved, obviously, they are what you would expect from a 2012 game, nothing extraordinary. Now you have mark&execute from Splinter Cell which is alright, I guess. Should note that first person mode was removed.

Saving system is one of the worst I’ve ever seen. You can no longer save whenever and wherever you want. Now you have to search for these symbols on the floor (adding to the idea that this is a linear game). What’s bizarre is that if you load from said symbol, everything you did prior to that in the same level will be reset. Enemies will resurrect and patrolling routes will start from the beginning as well as conversations. It’s similar to when you use Dark Soul’s bonfire. It’s stupid and it shouldn’t work like that.

When it comes to the story, being very linear and connected, the targets instead of being some criminals with status that you killed for a profit, are instead people that simply get in your way. The reasons to kill them tend to be pretty dumb. As a matter of fact the targets themselves are pretty dumb. They are insufferable idiots that behave like cartoons. Why did they put so many characters like that in a story you want us to take seriously? How can I take it seriously when there’s a masochistic sheriff, some cowboy that screams “yeehaa!”, some female assassins that dress like sexualized nuns (not as a disguise, it’s their literal uniform), etc? Not a single character is good. There is a part where you have to kill a scientist that hates pigs and has a lab where he seemingly just bombs (literally) pigs all day, and when he is presented he just bombs a bunch of poor pigs and then shouts an autistic laugh, it’s very cringe (and btw, to kill him you just gotta wait a few seconds for him to come down, you fibre wire him and hide him in a container, that’s his mission, it takes like 40 secs). Also to be completely honest I never cared for the girl, maybe because she has like 3 minutes of dialogue in the 15 hours that more or less take to beat the game, and nothing she ever says is interesting. The only thing about the story that kept me hooked was waiting for the moment when I would 1v1 mexican Great Kahli, after doing so, I just kept going for the sake of finishing the whole thing.

A lot of people say “it’s a good game, but not a good Hitman”, even taking it apart from the franchise and considering it its own thing, in what sense is it a good game? As a stealth game it’s boring and tedious. As a third person shooter it’s nothing noteworthy. As a storydriven game it's terrible since the story is pretty bad and so are the characters. So what makes it a good standalone game?

The fact this is what closes the original series is depressing. Everything about this game is trash. The storyline is a dumpsterfire. Clearly made the way it was to pander to the most casual of audiences in the most cringe ways. It also doesn't make sense in a lot of ways because the story retcons a lot of previous events.

The gameplay here is lacking in every single way you can think of. There's maybe two levels I personally enjoyed and the reason I enjoyed said levels is because they were like a short glimpse of hope for this pile of shit game. Said levels were similar to the classics, and that's what made me like them. Though, the issue with these levels is the fact that they're still overly restrictive.

I did not expect to replay this and dislike it so much, but this is currently tied with CN47 for my least favorite entry in the series. I have yet to play the reboot series (I have to buy them still) but hopefully those are actually good. This however, is a disappointing mess and I will most likely never play it again.

I have had an urge to replay the Hitman games recently for some reason, and this is the first time I have replayed this game in about 4 years since the HD Enhanced Pack or whatever they called it on PS4. I originally played this sometime between 2012-2014 on the Xbox 360 before then as my dad got it the year it came out.

Whenever the question of, "what is a bad game that you personally like?" is asked to me, this game is always my answer to that question ironically alongside IOI's own Kane and Lynch 1 & 2.

I'm unsure as to why it has stuck with me and I have a nostalgaic feeling for it, this game is awful on so many levels and here's why.

First and foremost, the disguise system is completely useless as in Absolution unless you use your already sparse Instinct to 'blend in' whilst walking, everyone wearing the same disguise as you will be suspicious of you. This makes the game one of two things for the player.

1. It is actively punishing them for using the most iconic feature of Hitman, and so they should go guns blazing which genuinely works most of the time
2. They should stick to cover 24/7, playing it like Splinter Cell Conviction, still not like a Hitman game.

As a TPS, this game is fine, but it's not a TPS and this is Hitman. The original vision for this game was to have an even more streamlined game than what we got in the finale but due to negative reception at E3 they had to course correct and the final game suffers from it, originally assassinations were only in cutscenes, and so the few targets the final game has don't really make any sense. Why am I killing this random scientist in Dexter's Lab? It has no plot relevance and is just shoehorned in, some levels STILL don't even have targets and are just A -> B.

The rating system is also just terrible, you will get docked points on anything and everything, from slightly trespassing to being spotted, I'm not even sure why these exist aside from leaderboards as they don't seem to have any effect on Silent Assassin ratings, again shoehorned in after the fact.

The plot itself that the game focuses on is just very nonsensical and stupid, it makes 47 out to be this depressed lunatic who all of a sudden has feelings for Diana, then proceeds to feel guilty the entire game about killing her, only for the end to reveal she was ok all along! Even though 47 in private seemed beat up about it, it's just dumb.

But why do I enjoy this game? I honestly don't know, I hate every mechanic of this game yet I enjoy it.

Thief 2014 had a prequel and it was Hitman Absolution lmao.
Honestly though this is not that bad it's just that disguises are absolute trash and don't do the job. Oh what's that, you saw through my disguise, fellow technician, how silly of me! This is the stupidest disguise system yet and Hitman 2's (silent assassin) one was pretty bad to me. The gunplay was pretty damn good imo (only fought when I failed lmao) considering this is supposed to be a stealth game. Yeah it felt like a generic 3rd person military cover shooter of the time but it's still good. Sound design was pretty nice. Story was good at best and a mediocre slugfest by the end, it went on for 2-5 missions too long at the very least. Graphics are pretty nice but holy balls those lens flares!!! SO MUCH BLOOMING HOLY MOLY! Doesn't help that your character has a bald ahh head which shines brighter than the Sun. Anyways, stealth gameplay was pretty "crouch to sneak and use cover or you're fucked" kind of thing. I didn't really like it. The assassinations can be fun but they were awesome back in the day. This is legit a downgrade in terms of the "Hitman" gameplay from all past games except for the first one but even then I'd say if its jankiness were ignored, even the first one had better "Hitman" gameplay. That just ruined it for me, I wish there was more of the using disguises and sneaking around and stuff than here. This game looks so same-ey for the most part that I had to play on the normal difficulty to get the Instinct hints, ain't no way I'm playing without those. I finished the past games with Expert and above for the most part with a handful of Silent Assassin and Professional ratings on the Expert difficulty. I just had a blast exploring those levels. These levels feel tedious without Instinct. Wish this was never included, Detective Mode ahh thing, some clear Batman Arkham inspiration can be seen in everything and the cutscenes just remind me too much of Arkham Asylum's one, similar tone/quality.
Anyways, this ain't a bad game, it's an above average game or at best a "good" game. I think that's the problem, it should stand out from the crowd as something better, like it did back in the day. I don't hate this game, just disappointed. If disguises were better, the cover system wasn't so annoying and the Instinct system wasn't there then this'd have easily been an excellent game. The story focus was annoying cus the story ain't worth it lmao. I really REALLY loved Blood Money's villain, just made sense and was cool af, this 2012 ahh writing was pretty bad and kind of reminiscent of Adam Sandler movies or something where swearing a lot somehow makes you cool or something, jeez the two main villains are so annoying in that regard they have no class and just feel awful but they have such high ranks you're like wtf? a 6/10 game but giving 7 cuz chicks be mad hot in this game, jk I just have a soft spot for Hitman games.

Positives:
-Gunplay feels good
-Penthouse level is fun
Negatives:
-The rest