Hitman Absolution.

Some people might ask why I would review a game that came out in 2012. Well, because I know that there are lots of gamers like myself who :

Have a huge backlog of games and haven't gotten around to a lot of them and now finally find the time and drive to.

and/or

Don't want to spend $80 plus another 30 to 40 for a season pass for new games which tend to not be worth the price anyway, so instead we buy slightly older games on sale from steam or other sites.

I think Hitman Absolution can be bought for about $10.

Anyway, I decided to finally beat this game.

The first thing I noticed about it is that the graphics were really nice. Detailed, crisp and clear and on top of that , times when the level is filled with people like the Chinese market level never stuttered or dipped in frame rate.

The story really didn't interest me.... You work for "The Agency" and they trick you into killing a friend of yours and then want you to kill some girl but then you end up trying to rescue her. The agency doesn't like that so they come after you and the girl and your job is to save the girl. That's it in a nutshell. I think that the Hitman movie that came out in 2015 is about that same premise.

While I didn't care about the story, I did enjoy the gameplay. Sneaking around trying to find interesting ways to kill targets. Finding weapons and disguises to use was all pretty fun. The mechanics were a bit frustrating at times though and I hope the next game fixes this. If you're disguised as a cop, you cant hang around other cops for long because they will realize you aren't one of them. AS if they know every cop on earth and they realize you're not one of them.

Though if you have a plumber disguise they let you walk around freely unless you wander into a hostile area.

The good thing is that there are many ways to finish the levels. In one level you could knock out a judge and use his disguise to walk around the court house freely and make your way to the prison cells, or you could disguise yourself as the crazy gnome destroyer with tinfoil hat and have the judge sentence you to jail instead.

None of the characters were all that interesting. I cant really think of any that stood out with the exception of the Saints and that's only because there were a lot of them and they wore PVC nun outfits. Nothing is really told to you about them they are just more assassins hired to take you out. They are pretty easy to beat and weren't used very well.

While this series is a stealth series, in this game I found it almost necessary to finish some levels with guns blazing and taking out all kids of cops, soldiers and assassins with shotgun blasts to the face and throwing stealth out the window.

Hand to hand fighting starts a QTE event and is hard to mess up. I found that after knocking someone out or killing them, I didn't really have to hide the body unless I really cared about losing points.

There are a lot of weapons to use in this game. Anything you can pick up you can pretty much use. Bricks, gas cans, tiki dolls, books, golf clubs, mannequin arms, and other various objects. Then you have knives, scissors, and other bladed weapons, and also a ton of different guns, from shit guns, hand guns, machine guns and lastly you have environmental hazards. You can drop a whale skeleton on people, you can shoot someone with a harpoon, or drop a skid of bricks from a crane and even let a stoves gas leak to cause an explosion.

There are tons of ways to get the job done and that is the real fun part of this game. Steam tells me that I played for 19 hours. To me, that is a long time for a single player game. For the last level I couldn't wait to get it over with but luckily the last level wasn't long at all.

in the end you save the girl and go about being a hitman again for the next game which is coming out soon.

So long story short, I enjoyed the game for the most part and would definitely recommend it to others who like the series or stealth games in general, but don't expect too much from it. Its fun but it never becomes a great gaming experience.