Hitman: Absolution

I'd be a hypocrite to say I didn't feel the same way. My apologies good sir.
 
Looks like the game's coming along quite nicely. Here's some E3 footage--looks like the successor to Blood Money I've been waiting for.

 
Some gameplay, good to see that at least variety is there.
 
Okay that looks MUCH better. Definitely not as michael bay-ish as that awful trailer. That actually made me want to get it, where the trailer just put me off.

I like the realistic crowd sizes. Reminds me of the mardi gras level in BM.
 
Yep, I call them the 'water people' because you practically walk through them.
 
S'good name for it, love it. Assassin's Creed series has a lot of people-water too.
 
Coming out next week! You can get it 35% off from Green Man Gaming with this code: GMG35-FGR37-COY0B

Thinking of getting the Professional Edition for the booklet and making-of.
 
Has there been any good, non-sales based gameplay videos of it recently? I'd like to buy it with that sweet 35% off, but if the game is going to be sucky then I dont want to bother.
 
renamed the thread, this can be a general discussion thread now
 
Krynn72 said:
Has there been any good, non-sales based gameplay videos of it recently? I'd like to buy it with that sweet 35% off, but if the game is going to be sucky then I dont want to bother.
Click to expand...

Well there's a gameplay video posted by BHC, 7 posts above yours, which is pretty reassuring that this is a proper Hitman title (as opposed to the first footage of linear sneaking through a library).

Apparently a Polish magazine ('PSX Extreme') gave it a 9/10 (don't know how 'reliable' they are) and said it's around 15 hours long, the AI is good and the missions can be hard even at lower difficulties. Perhaps I'll try to get my hands on the review later and see if I can find anything interesting.
 
I wasn't gonna buy it anyway, but after that RPS review, I'm going to angrily not buy the shit out of it.
 
I've played the first two levels so far.

The first, is a tutorial. It goes over the basic controls and Hitman mechanics as well as teaching you some of the new features. All of the staple Hitman stuff is there; hiding bodies, different ways of taking out enemies and disguising and such.

The second is a small level, but very entertaining. It contains very large crowds, (rendered pretty impressively) and a target. There are quite a few ways you can take him out, and the one I chose was a real "aw yeah" moment when I pulled it off.

So far, apart from the smaller levels it feels like a Hitman game for sure.
 
I cancelled my preorder after hearing that it was a step back in terms of openness of gameplay vs Blood Money. I might get it later on but I really want some user reviews before investing anymore money in pre-orders.
 
After playing the levels after china town I'm a little concerned. Three levels of avoiding cops isn't all that fun, and I just ended up killing most of them in the hopes of getting through the level and hopefully onto some assassinations. I'm not saying I want Blood Money 2, but It would be nice if it wasn't so deus ex/splinter cell like.

EDIT: Ok now that I'm past the "escape the police" missions things are starting to look up.
 
I've only played the prologue/tutorial so far but the strongest feeling I have is that it's great to simply be playing a new Hitman game. I was getting really bummed out from the negative press it was getting from reputable critics, to the extent that I went in expecting it to feel like a completely different type of game. So it's at least a relief to find that the basic mechanics of choking guys out, dragging their janky ragdolls around and wearing their clothes is still satisfying. And it looks stunning (though runs a little sluggish when cranked).

I've read in several places that it nosedives for a while after the first couple of levels so I'm waiting to see if my opinion of the game survives that. Also the 'character driven' story has already started on a pretty dumb note and the QTEs are terrible, but oh well, that's the retarded state of videogames. My standards get pushed lower with each passing year.
 
Despite some terrible plot elements and shoddy voice acting I quite like this game. Not as a Hitman title, but as a new franchise in its own right.
 
The voice acting and story delivery in general is really weird. Bateson's delivery is great for every line. If they hadn't got him back this game would have really felt cheap, considering the overall package. Keith Carradine also puts in a good performance. But some of the others, eg. Birdie, are awful. And even when the good VAs are delivering their lines well, the dialogue from their mouths still has a roughly 50% chance of being awwwwful, juvenile, wannabe-edgy crap. The rest of the time it is passable. The overall plot is... worthless. Meanwhile, the whole time, the visual storytelling - in the form of CG quality, CG cinematic direction, character mannerisms in CG cutscenes, or artistic touches in levels like eg. a child's drawings stuck to the wall in the dressing room of a strip club - is excellent. I get a real Bethesda-like vibe of the writing not matching the art direction.

I'm enjoying this game mainly as a graphical feast. In gameplay terms I'm not really enjoying it much. So many parts are janky or just plain broken. It's bad enough that all guards respawn when you restart a checkpoint, but all their patrols get jumbled up also. Earlier on I restarted from a checkpoint, only to find that the game had respawned a guard right in front of it - so due to the proximity and my low Instinct meter, he saw me and busted my disguise every single time. That was the only save the game allows me, remember.

I hate the way the game handles disguises. If you're in line of sight of an NPC in the same costume, without Instinct meter then your disguise is flat out gone in a matter of seconds and you may as well reload (from what may be a broken checkpoint). The range at which your disguise gets busted with NO TIMER at all, is like 10 feet, if you're not in a crowd. It's like a broken, less forgiving version of the way Hitman 2 did things, but unfortunately I have no doubt it's working the way IO intended.

As is probably common knowledge, levels are broken up into segments. Some are truly pointless and miserable in their length, eg. a 100yd space of alleyway full of cops. If you were lucky enough to finish the previous segment in anything other than a cop disguise, you can walk straight through to the exit at no risk. If you're dressed as a cop, you have to spend a while dodging around behind cover in case the cops look at you for 5 seconds/from within the disguise-fail distance and decide to start shooting you. Neither approach is fun. It's a waste of time for the player and whoever designed that chunk of map. I have no idea why levels like that exist- sorry, I have no idea why 'segments' like that exist.

It's important to make that distinction because choosing 'restart level' will NOT restart you from the beginning of the level segment, instead it will restart you from the beginning of the 'level' - or what I'd be inclined to call a ****ing CHAPTER, since it could be as far as 5 segments prior. That's simple reading comprehension, you might think, except the point is that there is simply no way to start from the beginning of a segment if you have a checkpoint more recent than the segment start. Which you will, because some segments are large. Because they are not segments, they are entire ****in levels, but 'Restart Level' doesn't think so. rage. Just shitty design.

It's all frustrating because the makings of a great game were here. Instinct is actually kind of cool. The classic target-based hits are fun. But I'm about 10 hours in and there have been only about 5 of those. One of them was the tutorial. Two of the others re-used the same map. One of the remainder had a cut-scene at the end, rather than an actual hit. All of them have been pretty small. So yeah... eye candy. Occasional fun. Sustained frustration and disappointment.
 
Someone from IO tweeted saying the disguise system is indeed working as intended, can't remember who though.

EDIT: looks like they caved.

"We are currently looking at how to tweak the detection system with disguises."
 
Fanservice! HM:A launch party (I'm not in this bunch though).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ruinalex/sets/72157632076898060/

'there is simply no way to start from the beginning of a segment if you have a checkpoint more recent than the segment start'

Laivasseb I read your post with interest, if I reacall correctly you can load the segment via level select and that should start you at the beginning of the segment rather than where you did a checkpoint save. :)
 
I should have said 'there is no way to restart' rather than 'there is no way to start'. Backing out to the Main Menu and selecting a level is a bit of a continuity breaker and discards your score progress for that run. I also tend to stay away from level select options until I've completed one run, since it's hard to predict how a game will treat a playthrough that was started from the Level Select (eg. Max Payne 3 wouldn't unlock anything if you started from Chapter Select).

Sorry if any criticisms seem harsh. A massive amount of work and effort has obviously gone into this game, but design choices have made it unenjoyable for me. The more I play, the more criticisms I have.
 
On the difficulty, is it harder or easier than Blood Money?
 
I think it's harder simply because of the lack of saves and the near useless disguises. I'm playing on Normal.
 
I'll admit that attaining Silent Assassin in the Chinatown level was very satisfying. But, there was far too much fleeing in the game, rather than target elimination. The disguise system is more than a bit screwed up, as well, and if the developers would have tweaked the disguise system/instinct and included more assassination targets, this could have been a great game. Oh, and screw Hope, South Dakota.

Although, IO should be given props for implementing Contracts mode. It is something that is enjoyable, but also easy to refine in subsequent Hitman games.

Also, looks like another company is handling the next Hitman. One developer said the development cycle would be similar to the deal struck by Infinity Ward and Treyarch.
 
I gave up at the part where I realized the game was shit and about being the prey, not the predator. 4/10, regretful purchase.
 
Mirage said:
Also, looks like another company is handling the next Hitman. One developer said the development cycle would be similar to the deal struck by Infinity Ward and Treyarch.
Click to expand...
That was a terrible deal. They make one good game, one shit game, one good game, one shit game (although I'm not a fan of any cod games, this is just what I've heard from multiple fans). Probably going to be the same deal here.
 
Fun fact: Treyarch makes the good ones.

(although I'm not a fan of any cod games, this is just what I've heard from multiple fans)
Click to expand...

Nice save bro. You almost looked really uncool.
 
I don't see anything wrong with cod games, I personally just don't like them.
 
I'm finding this game a bit of a chore at the moment. I'm finding there's moments where I'm enjoying it, and there's moments when I just want to turn it off. Just when I think the game's getting good, usually on an assassination mission, it throws in another "evade the police" or "evade the guards" mission. I feel like they should have either made a new Blood Money, or a stealth action game, because the hybrid isn't really doing it for me at the moment. Coupled with the near useless disguise system and horrible detection, I'm just finding it more frustrating than anything.

The ability to save would also be nice, as having to do 20 minutes of work over again just because somebody saw through your mask across the room really sucks.
 
I gave it a try-out, and yeah, its honestly not that fun. I had a few moments of fun when I gave up trying to play it like a hitman game, and instead threw knives into everybody's skull, but after that wore off, I just uninstalled it. Blood Money was great, and I would have been more than happy to fork over some cash monies if they kept a similar formula, but they just took it a different direction and its one I'm not keen to buy into. Lose the supernatural "instinct" shit, keep the "escape" theme to a minimum (but don't remove it entirely, its fine in appropriate doses) and then it will be taking steps in the right direction.

The saddest thing is that I saw this coming months and months ago, and so did many other people. It was like watching a slow motion car crash.

Game looks pretty good aesthetically though, the artists did a good job. Though I didn't understand why you could still see 47's barcode tattoo around the bandages, after he supposedly cut it off. That was confusing.
 
Another small peeve of mine is Hope, South Dakota. Such a huge portion of the game is set there, and while the levels vary slightly, it still feels really samey for that whole period.
 
Krynn72 said:
Lose the supernatural "instinct" shit, keep the "escape" theme to a minimum (but don't remove it entirely, its fine in appropriate doses)
Click to expand...
Instinct I think might be fine if it wasn't so intrinsically tied to the broken disguise system, but it is, so meh. Speaking of appropriate doses, though: escape as a theme can be cool, yes, and all of the previous games had some kind of escape/evasion section. Silent Assassin had the set-up mission in St. Petersburg, Contracts had the escape from SWAT at the end and Blood Money had the funeral which was kind of an 'escape'.

The difference was that IO had the good sense to limit these moments to a tiny period in the entire game. This made sense because not only did it heighten the dramatic impact, it also limited the amount of time you were exposed to gameplay that was fundamentally different to the gameplay you'd come to expect in Hitman. The gameplay of those parts was innately different, in the sense that SA and BM essentially became slaughterfest showdowns from the point you're told 'they're after you' (the one in Contracts was still more or less a conventional mission, but it was still quirky and a bit of a bitch).

Absolution tries to craft nearly a whole game out of that 'they're after you' moment, without understanding that it doesn't make sense to even BE a Hitman in this setting. Why the hell would you worry about stealthy kills if the police already hate your guts and you're at a massacre site where 50 goons want to kill you? With an entire army after you, why would your targets ONLY be the 5 pursuers in kinky nun latex? Why not ****ing just defend yourself against everybody like 47 did in SA and Blood Money? Not only does the 'escape' theme create a heap of bullshit evasion missions that are flat out not fun, it destroys the stealth logic of half the remaining hit missions.

But tbh, picking holes in the story and setting is like kicking a dead rat around. The story plumbs such depths of stupidity that... well, I dunno. Put it this way, I went for a piss during a cutscene, which I think might be a lifetime first. Anyway yeah, I finished the game and it was a huge chore. I have nothing good to say about it, except for the graphics and art direction. Big fart.
 
morgs said:
Another small peeve of mine is Hope, South Dakota. Such a huge portion of the game is set there, and while the levels vary slightly, it still feels really samey for that whole period.
Click to expand...

Yeah, Hope, South Dakota was an annoying location, though they added some variety to it, I didn't like the general aesthetic.

Honestly, I think the developers made more work for themselves than necessary. I didn't purchase Absolution for the cinematic story, I wanted levels that encourage experimentation.

There were some good missions though, such as Chinatown, Attack of the Saints (esp. the Cornfield), and Skurky's Law.

Overall, I guess I just wanted locations that were diverse enough, that also were self-contained. Aside from that, maybe a few tweaks to the game systems, but nothing drastic.

At the risk of sounding like a Purist, I had more fun with Blood Money. Also, at least Blood Money didn't have a pathetically dimwitted wrestling segment. What was IO thinking with that?
 
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