Hitman: Absolution (PC, Xbox 360) Review

I’ve been a big fan of action stealth shooters ever since the genre was started, and in my opinion there just aren’t enough of them.  I became hooked on them beginning with Thief: The Dark Project, the Splinter Cell series, and of course the Hitman series.  This latest installment has been long overdue, taking over 6 years since Hitman: Blood Money was released on the PC.

Hitman: Absolution is the fifth entry into the series and gets a shot in the arm with IO Interactive’s Glacier 2 engine, and is published by Square Enix.

While previous games have taken place in different locales across the world, Absolution takes place solely in the United States.  The game opens by telling the story that Diana (Agent 47’s handler at with the International Contract Agency) has sabotaged the organization and has gone rogue.  Others within the Agency assembled and tasked 47 with taking out Diana, who has taken a young girl, Victoria.  Not much is known about Victoria except that she is a valuable Agency asset, apparently biologically engineered much like Agent 47.

The first mission serves as a training scenario for those uninitiated with the Hitman series, and also demonstrates new features to the game.  The training mission shows the player how to use the on-screen HUD, how to use distraction and stealth, and provides tips on effective ways to deal with obstacles.  One welcome addition to the gameplay is an Instinct meter, which fills up as you do awesome Hitman-type things such as stealthy/creative kills, hiding bodies, or completing an objective.  This ability allows you keep track of enemy positions and anticipate their path, even through walls, and also allows Point Shooting, where you to mark and queue up multiple assassinations a la bullet-time.

At the end of the training mission, Ageny 47 discovers that Diana betrayed the agency “for the greater good” and kidnapped Victoria to save her from experimentation from Agency doctors.  The Hitman promises to protect the girl, and takes her away to a Catholic orphanage.  Now that 47 is rogue, he requires Intelligence from a former colleague named “Birdie”, and must do some “free” work to earn his help.

The story has many twists and turns and follows a story arc rather than unrelated random hit contracts.  The missions progress as Agent 47 tracks down Victoria as she is kidnapped by others who want to sell her to the highest bidder.  Of course, the Agency is trying to find Victoria while also hunting 47, and other parties become involved once her value is revealed.

Some of the characters are a little over-the-top, and the story starts to take on some comical aspects of an episode of “The Venture Brothers”.  Blake Dexter, a stereotypical rich Texan with thick accent and cowboy hat is hard enough to swallow, and the introduction of a mad scientist who blows up pigs with landmines and a league of “hot nun assassins” is just a little much to continue taking the story seriously.

The voice acting is brilliant, even if some of the characters are a little over-blown.  David Bateson returns as the voice of Agent 47 (although his reprisal required much fan outcry to seal this position), and Keith Carradine voices the main antagonist, Blake Dexter. Marsha Tomason takes over the character of Diana Burnwood from Vivienne McKee, and she does such a good job that you wouldn’t know unless you read the credits.    Other well-known actors that lend a hand to the latest Hitman series are Powers Booth as the head of the ICA, Traci Lords as Layla Stockton, Steven Bauer as Birdie, and Vivica Fox as the head of the Nun Assassins.

The soundtrack is again top notch, but instead of Jesper Kyd (the composer for Hitman: Blood Money) the music is composed by Thomas Bartschi and Peter Kyed.

Like all the previous Hitman games in the series, there are multiple ways to reach your objective, and many optional extras.  You can play the game as an action shooter and always have guns blazing, or you can go completely silent and try to do everything unnoticed.  There is a point system for each section of the missions that rewards you for finding hidden items, completing objectives and performing kills that look like an accident, but points are detracted if you take out a non-marked NPC.

There is a lot of satisfaction when completing missions “as a ghost”.  If you slip by unnoticed, blend in, and make all of your hits look incidental then you extract the most points.  In one mission where you have to protect Birdie, you have to take out three Agents in crowded Chinatown.  If you stalk them and observe what they’re doing then you can let “nature take it’s course”.  Sabotage a fuel pump while one takes a cigarette break, rig a trap, and frame an Agent looking for information.  No one ever knew you were there.

Blending in can be one of the more frustrating parts of the game, but very satisfying when it works.  Even though you wear a disguise and implement your Instinct to fool others, many times people see through your ruse.  In this case they will start to follow you, and it’s best to walk into a private spot, fake surrender, and take them out.  While this protects Agent 47, you lose points for taking out a non-target character, but you can gain some back by hiding the bodies.

Because there are so many ways to finish a mission, you really need to play each one several times to find out the “right” way that provides the most points.  The first playthrough is like running reconnaissance as you gather information on your marks and build a strategy.

New to the series is a multi-player mode, which is unlocked once you complete a mission.  This “Contracts” mode cranks up the longevity of the game far beyond the twenty or so hours it takes to complete the main story.  In this mode you can create your own hits within the game’s levels and challenge your friends to complete your contracts faster than you.

There are five difficulty settings from Easy to Purist, bust most people will pick Normal (which is the default).  Honestly this mode is hard enough unless you’re familiar with the game’s dynamics.  Enemies react faster and are more keen-eyed in harder difficulties, in addition to there being more of them.

The environment is a lot more organic, and options appear on the screen on what you can do with an object (or person).  If you have your trusty fiber wire out and sneak up behind someone standing at a ledge, you are given the option to Push them or Garrote (strangle) them.  If you don’t have your wire ready then you have the option to Subdue them rather than kill them, but you can snap their neck if you like.

If you do find yourself in a firefight, there is an excellent cover system on par with Gears of War.  You can snap to cover, quickly switch cover, pass by a window or door unnoticed, and lunge over your cover.

Thankfully if you do find yourself in trouble you can usually contain it by disposing of the local witnesses.  Only enemies in the immediate vicinity are aware of the danger (unless you’re really noisy or reinforcements are called in), so you can’t ruin a mission by having every hired gun on the map looking for you.

As mentioned previously, you can use Point Shooting to take out multiple targets simultaneously.  While the bullet-time execution is cool, you may not use it except for the few times it’s required by the game.  If you’re using an Xbox 360 controller, you can gently squeeze the trigger to steady your aim and get a Precision Shot.  This is much more intuitive than having to press a key to “hold your breath”.

Although the PC version of Hitman: Absolution can be played with a traditional keyboard and mouse, playing with an Xbox 360 controller is much easier.  The game cues change automatically whenever a new controller is detected.  The buttons to interact with objects change from colored controller buttons to keyboard keys and vice versa whenever the player starts using them.

This is the best-looking Hitman game to date, as it should be after six and a half years.  On the PC version you can crank up the visuals to Ultra mode, which not only uses 16x antisotropic filtering, but implements FSAA and DirectX11 tessellation.  Our Intel i7-920 with GeForce GTX 460 was able to handle this mode at around 30 frames per second in 1080p resolution.  Medium detail looks almost as good, and it is really hard to pinpoint major differences between them.  We noticed a tremendous improvement in Ultra mode by just turning tessellation off.

Each map is extremely detailed, and you can even see scars and textures on Agent 47’s skin.  There is a lot of lens flare, but it is not overly gimmicky.  The worlds are very realistic and many effects are just breathtaking, but there are a few elements that just don’t look right, like the water from a waterfall looking like puffy clouds.

One of the most noticeable aspects of the game is the sheer number of people in crowds.  There can be hundreds of characters on the screen at one time, with absolutely no slowdown.  Each person has their own agenda: some are talking on cell phones, some ordering food, and others just trying to get from A to B.  All of the characters seem organic and don’t seem to be following path rails.  Agent 47 can easily push through crowds like a Boss, much like in Assassin’s Creed.

The Hitman series has always been a cult classic among gamers not only because of its sense of style, but the ability to complete the game in various ways.  Hitman: Absolution is a lot more accessible as it is easier to control, even for Hitman novices.  The graphics compare better than  many recently-released games, and the voice acting is exceptional.  Some of the characters within the story are a little larger-than-life to be believable, but that’s a very minor complaint.

Agent 47, slipping on your red tie again feels good.  Please don’t disappear again for another six years.