Post by Tig on Jan 12, 2013 10:53:39 GMT -5
I said I wasn't going to bother but I was in a writing mood this morning. I took my rant from the Hitman thread in the old forum and expounded on it for my Gamespot review:
www.gamespot.com/hitman-absolution/user-reviews/806169/platform/ps3/
The Hitman formula has surprisingly remained stable from the "tactical strategy" games of the early 2000's. While games like the Rainbow Six series eventually fell from "plan, then execute" to "rush and kill", Hitman held on to its roots and only improved with time from the clunky original game to the smooth yet methodical Blood Money. The protagonist, 47, remained constant as well: cold, calculated, and brutal, with just a very base storyline to accomodate the player's level of violence. Traps could be set or throats could be cut or explosives could go off, adding infinite replay and a sense of control. I was partial to doing either close headshots with the pistol or far shots with the sniper rifle and feeling like I was making a signature kill each time. With the onset of Blood Money, players were given a plethora of options of using the environment, and yet one more option to ignore all that and just tackle the target head-on. Hitman: Absolution tried to hold on to that model of choices within choices. Everywhere you go in the game world you have options to hide, grab a makeshift weapon, grab someone to trade clothes, all parts of the old formula. It works, at first, and it would have worked all the way through the game if the developers had, well, calmed down. Absolution is full of Hollywood stereotyping, both in characters and in plotting, and in the end all the wonderful intricacies of being an assassin are muted by the brash noise of standard action entertainment as Io Interactive tried to make the game bigger, flashier, and definitely louder. Whether this was their decision or the decision of Square Enix doesn't really matter to me; it was a poor decision altogether.
The need to make the end contact of each mission more dynamic has overridden logic. Creeping around levels is more fluid and more entertaining than the slower pace of previous games, but how you approach your target includes some really stupid measures. In the second mission in Chinatown, the target is in a central pagoda surrounded by dirty cops and an impressive crowd of 100's of people. I spent hours trying for some kind of a stealth kill but nothing was working. Regardless, the mission was resolved by putting on the clothing of a guy my target had just spoken with 3 minutes earlier, go back to the target as if there's no chance he won't recognize me at that range, then have him walk with me to a secluded area. Seriously? Applying any sense of logic to the problem, how the heck am I supposed to figure that out without checking someone's walkthrough or just randomly trying stuff?
I'd be willing to forgive that a little bit but this is the same game where if you wear the same costume of one kind of guard or one kind of repair man, people wearing the same costume will spot you from across the room, forcing you into hiding positions and slowing your approach. That's a proper game mechanic to keep you from charging through a level, but the inconsistent logic of it not applying in all situations really taxes the game for people like me who want to win without having to look up previous gamplays on YouTube. What on Earth would possibly lead me to believe that the target won't recognize me when everyone and their dog was spotting me from 50 feet away in the previous mission?
Add to that one of the worst save point systems I've ever see. Every time I had to restart after a failure, the game put me all the way at the beginning of the mission. I literally had to wait through the same long bouts of dialogue and other delays over and over instead of just reloading to one point. There is a save point hiding in the map sometimes but they're not always existent or evident until certain events have taken place, making for LONG frustrating periods of just waiting when you're starting from the beginning.
Then there's just the general Hollywood drama syrup ladled all over the game. At first I thought the plot was feasible. 47 is a killer but he's not mindless and he always knew Diana looked out for him. Genetic experimentations and things previously hinted at in the Hitman universe were prevalent so the story started off on familiar yet intruiguing ground. Suddenly, like a Jerry Bruckheimer flick, everything is overridden for "oh wow gee cool" action moments and requisite sexuality and brutality. First we have the slaying of nuns in a hospital, then assassins dressed as nuns in latex gear. I'm thinking the developers have an issue with Catholicism but I won't dwell on it. A one point the game switches to a remote town locked in the 1950's, yet the setting is SO locked in the 1950's it seems completely out of place to the rest of the game. The "hicks" are beyond "hick", cops are stereotypical, and the AI goes from sharp-eyed to blatantly stupid in a blink just so you can dress like a judge and sit on the court bench in front of a bunch of hicks that should know who the judge is!
Further pushing the Hollywood feel are cut scenes that take over when you've tried so hard to make a kill, completely robbing you of your victory. In more than one scene, 47 is compromised for the purpose of the plot. Yes that's right, no matter how hard you try, you will fail a level because that's what the story dictates. The game has gone from Hitman to Uncharted, and not in a positive way. Even the graphics are over-produced as there are more lens flares than JJ Abrams's Star Trek and a color pallette that slid off a Disney cartoon.
It's as if a bunch of 15-year-old kids took over the plot and art direction. I really hope Io Interactive goes back to Blood Money and realizes what made it work, because Absolution completely loses the formula by the third mission. It's sloppy, it's juvenile, and, I really hate to say this, but it's just stupid in some places. 47 deserves better than this.
www.gamespot.com/hitman-absolution/user-reviews/806169/platform/ps3/
The Hitman formula has surprisingly remained stable from the "tactical strategy" games of the early 2000's. While games like the Rainbow Six series eventually fell from "plan, then execute" to "rush and kill", Hitman held on to its roots and only improved with time from the clunky original game to the smooth yet methodical Blood Money. The protagonist, 47, remained constant as well: cold, calculated, and brutal, with just a very base storyline to accomodate the player's level of violence. Traps could be set or throats could be cut or explosives could go off, adding infinite replay and a sense of control. I was partial to doing either close headshots with the pistol or far shots with the sniper rifle and feeling like I was making a signature kill each time. With the onset of Blood Money, players were given a plethora of options of using the environment, and yet one more option to ignore all that and just tackle the target head-on. Hitman: Absolution tried to hold on to that model of choices within choices. Everywhere you go in the game world you have options to hide, grab a makeshift weapon, grab someone to trade clothes, all parts of the old formula. It works, at first, and it would have worked all the way through the game if the developers had, well, calmed down. Absolution is full of Hollywood stereotyping, both in characters and in plotting, and in the end all the wonderful intricacies of being an assassin are muted by the brash noise of standard action entertainment as Io Interactive tried to make the game bigger, flashier, and definitely louder. Whether this was their decision or the decision of Square Enix doesn't really matter to me; it was a poor decision altogether.
The need to make the end contact of each mission more dynamic has overridden logic. Creeping around levels is more fluid and more entertaining than the slower pace of previous games, but how you approach your target includes some really stupid measures. In the second mission in Chinatown, the target is in a central pagoda surrounded by dirty cops and an impressive crowd of 100's of people. I spent hours trying for some kind of a stealth kill but nothing was working. Regardless, the mission was resolved by putting on the clothing of a guy my target had just spoken with 3 minutes earlier, go back to the target as if there's no chance he won't recognize me at that range, then have him walk with me to a secluded area. Seriously? Applying any sense of logic to the problem, how the heck am I supposed to figure that out without checking someone's walkthrough or just randomly trying stuff?
I'd be willing to forgive that a little bit but this is the same game where if you wear the same costume of one kind of guard or one kind of repair man, people wearing the same costume will spot you from across the room, forcing you into hiding positions and slowing your approach. That's a proper game mechanic to keep you from charging through a level, but the inconsistent logic of it not applying in all situations really taxes the game for people like me who want to win without having to look up previous gamplays on YouTube. What on Earth would possibly lead me to believe that the target won't recognize me when everyone and their dog was spotting me from 50 feet away in the previous mission?
Add to that one of the worst save point systems I've ever see. Every time I had to restart after a failure, the game put me all the way at the beginning of the mission. I literally had to wait through the same long bouts of dialogue and other delays over and over instead of just reloading to one point. There is a save point hiding in the map sometimes but they're not always existent or evident until certain events have taken place, making for LONG frustrating periods of just waiting when you're starting from the beginning.
Then there's just the general Hollywood drama syrup ladled all over the game. At first I thought the plot was feasible. 47 is a killer but he's not mindless and he always knew Diana looked out for him. Genetic experimentations and things previously hinted at in the Hitman universe were prevalent so the story started off on familiar yet intruiguing ground. Suddenly, like a Jerry Bruckheimer flick, everything is overridden for "oh wow gee cool" action moments and requisite sexuality and brutality. First we have the slaying of nuns in a hospital, then assassins dressed as nuns in latex gear. I'm thinking the developers have an issue with Catholicism but I won't dwell on it. A one point the game switches to a remote town locked in the 1950's, yet the setting is SO locked in the 1950's it seems completely out of place to the rest of the game. The "hicks" are beyond "hick", cops are stereotypical, and the AI goes from sharp-eyed to blatantly stupid in a blink just so you can dress like a judge and sit on the court bench in front of a bunch of hicks that should know who the judge is!
Further pushing the Hollywood feel are cut scenes that take over when you've tried so hard to make a kill, completely robbing you of your victory. In more than one scene, 47 is compromised for the purpose of the plot. Yes that's right, no matter how hard you try, you will fail a level because that's what the story dictates. The game has gone from Hitman to Uncharted, and not in a positive way. Even the graphics are over-produced as there are more lens flares than JJ Abrams's Star Trek and a color pallette that slid off a Disney cartoon.
It's as if a bunch of 15-year-old kids took over the plot and art direction. I really hope Io Interactive goes back to Blood Money and realizes what made it work, because Absolution completely loses the formula by the third mission. It's sloppy, it's juvenile, and, I really hate to say this, but it's just stupid in some places. 47 deserves better than this.
