Hitman: Absolution (PC, Xbox 360) Review

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.