After nearly seven years since Hitman: Blood Money, IO Interactive is back with their latest Agent 47 title, Hitman: Absolution, complete with more baldness and black suit apparel. The title sees Agent 47 being betrayed by those he once trusted and now hunted by the police, he suddenly finds himself at the center of a dark conspiracy and must embark on a personal journey through a corrupt and twisted world, in his search for the truth.

Our best assassin Dylan Burns was put on the case to find out just how the latest Hitman title has come along, and whether it lives up to the previous stealth titles that many fans have fallen in love with.

Hitman: Absolution has muddied its waters. The story is interesting enough and full of wacky characters and situations, but it has lost that clinical, professional feel that the series perfected in Blood Money.

Click here for the full review.

Sadly unsurprised, given the media releases and that trailer it seemed kind of inevitable that it would fall this way. I could live with a more "compressed" Hitman game but hearing that you "have" to use "instinct" is disappointing, more disappointing is the mention that your clinical approach to a hit is ruined by some cutscene that makes those efforts useless.

lol. Did you preorder for the phat loot?

i was suprised GG gave it such good scores. Baj even said it was his most favourite stealth game of all time.

last edited by ravn0s at 14:20:09 21/Nov/12

Baj even said it was his most favourite stealth game of all time

Does he normally like really hardcore stealth games though? It seems to me, from various reviews I've read, that it doesn't appeal to people who like really hardcore stealth-in-and-assassinate type of games, cos it takes liberties and isn't too strict and uses cutscenes and quicktime events and other stuff during assassinations, etc. But for people who aren't huge fans of stealth games, but like cool action games with some stealth thrown in, those types seem to be liking it.

I pre ordered way back thinking the steam price of $45 was a mistake and to get in before they changed it. Downloaded files last nite, go to play after work today and saying files are corrupt, go thru the checking of files etc. still no good so back to downloading again.

Sadly unsurprised, given the media releases and that trailer it seemed kind of inevitable that it would fall this way. I could live with a more "compressed" Hitman game but hearing that you "have" to use "instinct" is disappointing, more disappointing is the mention that your clinical approach to a hit is ruined by some cutscene that makes those efforts useless.

Play instinct mode. Seriously it is beyond hard, it is quite near impossible. You only have a crosshair and that is it.

I've picked it up for dirt cheap and am giving it a bash through on Professional Expert level, Professional Purist level is bloody hard and fun, but I'll give that a full bash on another play through - it's a mode that punishes hard especially when you don't know the levels at all, it's geared towards having played the game already and having prior knowledge of areas etc.. in fact I'm pretty sure it says it there on the description of the difficulty level.

So far the game has that Hitman stalk and plan on the go feel to it that I enjoy though the environments are small and cramped which makes you feel rather unnaturally confined and feels, to me, to go against the grain of the previous Hitman environmental options (as it were). As it is I have used instinct on the tutorial mission and when I was doing the King hit to get an instinct kill in quick so I could vanish away while the opportunity was there. I'm not finding that I need to use it to plot paths as you can still observe patrols and there is a hell of a lot of hiding spaces. Using it though does give you a fairly big leg up on the game, on the "enhanced mode" I imagine it will play almost like amore sneaky cover shooter, albeit with better suits.

I am disappointed with the cut scenes which very much intrude upon my playstyle. 47 is portrayed as becoming more human, being less clinical about his approach to everything so there is an explanation for the "softening" of 47's traditional persona. I actually don't mind the story so far though I think it intrudes into the actual gameplay a little too often and has the habit of attempting to force the one style of gameplay - where as previous Hitman games always generally allowed more open options.

Also GG reviews are very hit and miss for me, there is no way this is the best stealth game ever, not even close to it, but that doesn't mean it can't be someones favourite stealth game (Thief series wins for me in that regard).

It looks interesting, but I'm already playing through and enjoying AC3 and I figured I don't need two 3rd person assassin games on the go at once, don't have enough time to play what I've got as it is!

My brother is interested in getting it though, so I might just wait till he gets it then borrow his copy when hes done.

I played through the whole game and thoroughly enjoyed it