I'll start this off by saying that I'm a die-hard Hit-man fan. I loved Contracts, Silent Assassin, and especially Blood Money. I anxiously waited 6 damn years for the new Hit-man game. Unfortunately, it sucks. In previous Hit-man games, it followed a simple but effective formula. You got to decide what equipment you brought to each level, and you were placed in a wide open world with multiple ways to eliminate your target. This is all gone in Absolution. It was removed because the story has you rebelling against the agency. Are you f****** kidding me. Instead, you start each level with some loud pistol and fiber wire. Wanna snipe the target from long distance? Better hope there is a random sniper rifle laying around. Wanna blow up the target violently with explosives? Better hope there is random explosives illogically placed around the level. Why does the game make you play like this? It's because of more focus on story. In previous Hit-man games, the story was set aside in favor of random assassination missions. Sure, the stories were god awful, but who really cared about them? That wasn't what Hit-man was about. Hit-man Absolution focuses on telling a story, instead of random assassinations. But, the story is embarrassingly laughable. The game is extremely linear and scripted. One level has you sneaking your way up to a hotel room to kill your target. Once you get there, your target escapes, and proceeds to burn down the hotel. The rest of the mission has you escaping from the burning hotel while evading cops. No targets. I repeat, NO TARGETS. This is completely unacceptable for a Hit-man game. Nearly 75% of all the missions are like this. The others have you killing targets, but you are being forced to kill them to survive. The wide open, richly detailed levels of other Hit-man games are gone in favor of scripted, linear stealth missions where you sneak from point A to point B. Very disappointing. One change they made was very promising. When you put on a certain disguise, people who are the same as you will get suspicious. But, this is ruined by the AI being way to alert. You're telling me every janitor and cop know each other? It takes them about 2 seconds to see through your disguise and blow your cover. EVEN WHEN YOU ARE WEARING A MASK. This gameplay addition actually had potential, but they screwed it up. I could go on and on with all the misfires of this game, but I think I'll stop here. Overall, Hit-man Absolution is a generic stealth game that completely abandons every element that made the other games great. Thankfully, the ending has given me hope in this franchise. The ending has Agent 47 rejoining the agency, which means the next game could get back to its basic roots. It better, because I don't want to deal with another mess like Absolution.
Final Score: 34 out of 100
Final Score: 34 out of 100