Hitman Absolution

The Hitman series of stealth video games involves super-clone assassin Agent 47 hitting various men (and women). The games are centered around disguises. 47 can be a master of disguise despite being a bald near-albino with a barcode tattoo on his head who’s tall enough to be a viable basketball player. It’s just video game logic. Anyway, Hitman Absolution is regarded as one of the worst in the series, albeit in a way that spawned the absolute best let’s play series I’ve ever watched:

There’s far more focus on story in this game, which would be interesting if it was good, but it isn’t. So let me explain just one series of events:

• 47 goes to “South Dakota” (the Danish IO Interactive devs do not know what South Dakota is and have apparently mistaken it with Texas). He’s there to pursue a genetically modified girl/hitwoman-to-be who’s been kidnapped.
• 47 on the streets of the South Dakota town kills several anachronistic greasers who are the friends of the man who kidnapped her. The connection is incredibly tenuous.
• 47 counter-kidnaps the kidnapper and kills him.
• 47 goes through an amazingly precarious entrance in an Uncharted/Splinter Cell hybrid that’s nothing like previous Hitman games. He goes this way to get to a supervillain lair.
• 47 kills three mad scientists in the supervillain lair, only one of which has the most tangential connection to the kidnapped girl.
• 47 leaves the lair and kills the giant hulking man who doubles as a luchador MMA fighter. While up to the player, he potentially disguises as the man’s opponent, beats him in a semi-fair cage fight to death, and then like every true master of disguise, takes off his mask in front of a large crowd.
• 47 stays at a hotel and fights off a group of hitwomen dressed as latex fetish nuns.
• Finally, in an actually sensible plot plan, 47 finds the girl is in the hands of the sheriff and goes to the courthouse/prison/whatever to find her. In this part of the mission you can disguise yourself as a judge and beat people with a gavel.
• This cannot last for master assassin 47 is (out of player control) surprised and captured by a creepy ineffectual sheriff. Instead of killing them the antagonists leave him tied to a chair like every good supervillain.
• 47 then escapes (SPOILER ALERT) and battles/sneaks through a wave of stormtroopers sent by the assassin agency. He pursues the sheriff, who has been wounded by said stormtroopers, to a church and finishes him off.
• Finally 47 leaves “South Dakota” for the final showdown. And thus ends the arc. Somewhere Jon Land is going “uh, I think that’s too absurd”.

All this is punctuated by some of the worst cinematography ever, long after most games had figured out the basics. This gets to the point where one of the lets players reasonably called a cutscene in it the worst ever. What makes this strange is that publisher Square Enix basically invented the use of cinema in games. Or at least perfected it.

As for the actual game, it is a strange combination of cargo culted stealth movement through levels, occasional platforming, and a simplified, often made too easy version of the Hitman formula. It’s not unplayable or broken, but if you want Hitman, either the earlier Blood Money or the later remakes are vastly superior.