Late to the Party: Hitman: Absoultion

Price I paid: I don’t remember. It was part of a bundle on humblebundle.com.

Stealth games are a lot like sushi to me. I don’t like sushi but I do like wasabi, so I sometimes eat sushi as an excuse to cry tears of joy and horseradish as I shovel wasabi into my face. I don’t like games that focus on stealth, but I like some of the amusing and stressful situations they create and some of the mechanics they use.

Hitman: Absolution had a rough start, but the same situations turned from annoying to fun when I stopped trying to go for the top score and just played how I wanted to play. I wanted to do a level all in one go. If someone caught me doing something mildly to undeniably illegal, I did what I needed to avoid getting shot to death. If I knocked out a few pedestrians or police officers along the way, so be it. I really hope no one takes that last sentence out of context and puts me on a list. 

A simple "Hey, why I don't I try to do the whole level without changing my disguise?" devolved into a bloody gunfight with every NPC in the level.

Because of my constant blunders, the game quickly turned from Hitman: Absolution, a game about a legendary assassin, who is as silent and untouchable as a ghost, to Oops: Killing Spree, a game about mass murder, incompetency, and bad luck. Considering disguises are one step up from utterly useless, I ended up getting caught a lot. That comes from a mechanic that makes it so people who share the same outfit as you are always suspicious of you. While I like the idea of other police officers looking at me suspiciously because they don’t recognize me, when I’m in a level where half of the Chicago Police Department is on the scene, I feel like not recognizing a few officers would be understandable and not a cause to immediately gun them down.

Hitman: Blood Money was the only Hitman game I played before this. In Blood Money, I liked making kills look like accidents and searching the levels for creative ways to whack my targets. In Absolution, the levels are sometimes so big that finding the few interesting things it contains can be a chore. Additionally, the graphics give everything a glossy finish that makes most of the usable items blend in to the unusable environment.

Finding creative ways to eliminate your enemies is always a welcome change from guns and garottes.

The game has three parts. In part one, the monotony of the objectives and the repetitive missions were mind numbingly awful. My enjoyment faded after about an hour of play, forcing me to break up my playtime into small chunks over days or suffer through the same cycle of hide, get caught, and restart. Every level where I actually got to kill someone led into at least two levels where my only objective was to avoid the police while moving from one side of a level to the other. Honestly, I thought the entire game might play like that, and I almost quit a few hours in.

Part two and three were much different. They put me in an environment where, instead of avoiding police, I was killing people who were objectively worse for humanity than Agent 47. I had to avoid bodyguards, police, and witnesses, but it was something I had to plan for while executing the hit and that made it exciting. In addition, the level design and story improves in part two and three.

Maybe I just suck at this game.

I spent about 15 hours on the story mode. There is some replay value with trying missions different ways, and it offers a way for players to create and share missions of their own with some limitations. However, if you’re not into getting everything right, you’ll probably just play the missions once.

Despite a rocky start, some unfortunate UI choices, and a few glitches that disrupted the game from beginning to end, I enjoyed Oops: Killing Spree. If you have any interest in AAA stealth games, it’s worth a look. If you’re not keen on stealth games but you see it as part of a bundle or on sale, it’s a fun and enjoyably stressful ride that is worth the discounted price.