Revisiting HITMAN: ABSOLUTION - Does the stealth hold up?

I’m always a bit behind when it comes to video games. I don’t get a ton of time to play them, but I’m also something of a completionist. Owning any new console means that I’m subjected to all of those damn achievements, and unfortunately I have a difficult time ignoring them, to the point where I get so caught up in spending copious amounts of time tracking down hidden items (looking at you, Crackdown) that I fail to move on to other games.

But I do collect them. I’ve been compiling a bunch of stuff that I haven’t played yet, and Hitman: Absolution is one of them. I jumped right into it after I finished Dishonored, figuring the stealthy gameplay I’d adapted to would be suitable again.

Unfortunately, I quickly found that Hitman: Absolution wasn’t about stealth. It really didn’t reward the player for doing things without alerting anyone, nor did it want you to. It didn’t care if you went in guns blazing, so long as you got through the linear checkpoints it set up. And worse than that, the options given to the player — things that get people excited because of free choice — are not the right ways to play, or so the real-time points counter tells us.

At first, though, I tried to play the game as stealthily as possible. I started out in Hard mode, because that’s normally the way I like to play my games. I like a challenge, but I also like to enjoy exploring the world without worrying about getting perfect scores or being unable to progress because I’m simply not accustomed to the game. Granted, Hard was probably not the best choice for a novice of Hitman: Absolution, but I wasn’t aware of that at the time.

Things worked out well in the beginning with the tutorial. It was straight-forward, and fun to sneak around the various baddies of the level. It felt stealthy, but if you messed up, you could also just pull out your silence pistol and make sure the mistake was eliminated.

When it came to the next levels, however, I quickly found that there wasn’t much point to not raising awareness. Hitman: Absolution offers various costumes for your character to don, so that his black suit and the barcode on the back of his head don’t stand out against the regularly-clad enemies. You can pick up a guard costume and blend in, or opt for a gardener’s uniform and pretend like you’re simply picking daisies before quickly smashing the living daylights out of an unsuspecting victim with a hoe.

These costumes are fun at first, and I had a great time attempting to sneak around guards wearing the same costume. But Hitman: Absolution only allows you to get so close to people wearing the same costume as your character — if you’re a guard, and they’re a guard, they’ll start to notice they don’t recognize you. I applaud this brand of realism; of course people will start to suspect someone they’ve never seen before.

This becomes problematic in levels where other outfits are hard to come by, though. In a level full of guards, a guard uniform doesn’t do you much good — you’d be better off wearing your regular black suit, and maneuvering behind cover, then walking in the open and risking sudden exposure because someone across the room happened to spot you with your back turned to them.

The gameplay often feels stilted, then. There’s entertainment involved in finding the right outfit for the level, but more often than not, there’s not a good outfit to wear. You’re left vulnerable, and forced to use this thing called Instinct (a bar that, when used, allows you to blend in, recognize where enemies are moving, etc.) that breaks the realism of actual stealth. Taking out the impact of uniforms adds to the difficulty, but it also forces the player into a certain style of play that doesn’t allow for exploration or creativity.

Hitman: Absolution really should be about the creativity of the kills (or your choice to not kill), but the limited pathways of the game pigeonhole the gamer. And that’s odd, because Hitman: Absolution features a number of challenges meant to make things more engaging. On the harder difficulties, these challenges just aren’t worth the effort — you’ll spend more time trying and failing to do them than simply completing the level. The spark of an idea is there, but the actual effectiveness is suspect.

It’s difficult to absolve the game of these faults, even though they’re not game-breaking. The story is all over the place; the checkpoints are egregious; often the level leaves out the most important part of its point — the actual hit of the target. It all comes together to leave a rather tasteless experience in the mouth, and a huge departure from the stealth aspects that originally made the franchise a favorite.