Starker on 5/4/2019 at 04:23
Quote Posted by froghawk
As frustrating as Absolution is, I think Codename: 47 takes the cake for worst Hitman game. They both have their moments, but those jungle levels in 47 are yikes. Also, 2016/18 are absolutely better games than Blood Money if you take off the nostalgia glasses. (sorry, been playing a LOT of Hitman lately)
Hitman 1 may have been janky and the later levels had ridiculous difficulty, but it was never outright offensive to the Hitman formula like Absolution was. And I think you're selling Blood Money short. It's not just nostalgia glasses, it's a genuinely top notch game.
Thirith on 5/4/2019 at 05:22
I loved the levels I saw of Blood Money, but after Hitman 2016/18 I found the controls extremely awkward. (I never played it when it came out originally.) I still wish they'd done a DLC of the series' best levels reimagined in the recent engine.
froghawk on 5/4/2019 at 05:44
Blood Money is great, but it's a less consistent game in a lot of ways. The forced shootouts in the last 3 levels really highlight that. They hadn't totally refined a lot of things about it yet.
I have no interest in a DLC of remade levels for the new game because the level design in the new game is the absolute best the series has ever seen. Many of the levels are also clearly inspired by older ones (Whittleton Creek is an expanded version of A New Life, for example, and bits of A Vintage Year made their way into Sapienza or Columbia), so I think they're already doing a good job of updating the old stuff.
There were several bits of Codename: 47 where you had to commit mass murder, which I'd consider a lot further away from the core ideas of Hitman than Absolution was. There was no way to pacify anyone. The Lee Hong Assassination and Traditions of the Trade were great, but the latter was better in Contracts and the rest of the game really doesn't hold up. I also think you're selling Absolution's best levels short - Blackwater Park was quite good, for instance.
Starker on 5/4/2019 at 06:03
There was a way to play it sneakily, though. Difficult, yes, impossible, no:
[video=youtube;yi4AZFngQ0Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi4AZFngQ0Y[/video]
froghawk on 5/4/2019 at 06:15
Damn, I didn't know you could garrote scarface. I know there's a way to snipe him if you remember to get a sniper two missions back. Still, that involved a LOT of murder, and there's certainly no way to avoid it on the last level.
Pyrian on 5/4/2019 at 06:37
Those doors are hilarious.
Starker on 5/4/2019 at 06:47
Well, murdering is part of what a Hitman does. Plus the first game was just a start, before they really started figuring things out and smoothing out the kinks. Absolution, on the other hand, was a huge disappointing step down from what the series had been building up to. Its gameplay was shallow, the levels were linear and tiny, the instinct system was basically like a cheat, the disguise system was made more nonsensical. I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that to me it felt more like a cover-based shooter with some stealth mechanics than a proper Hitman game. And this is all without going into the farce that was the story and characters and blatant fanservice and horrible voice acting.
froghawk on 5/4/2019 at 07:00
Sure, all of that is undeniably true (though I think it is more of a splinter-cell style stealth game than cover shooter). I have a love-hate relationship with that game that definitely leans more towards hate, but it has its merits. There were still some classic-style Hitman levels in there that were good, albeit small (king of chinatown, shaving lenny, blackwater park, etc.). The visual aesthetic was also quite nice and moody. A lot of the new mechanics I actually like in the new games had their origin in Absolution, like choking subduals and body closets. I know one of the testers on that game, and he tells me that a lot of the issues with it were due to last-minute changes requested by Square, including the simplified levels and broken disguise system, so I can't be too mad at IO about it.
Sulphur on 5/4/2019 at 07:37
Eh, Absolution was essentially trying to be some sort of Hitman: The Movie: The Game, so the focus on enforced linearity and its (frankly, completely appalling) storyline makes sense in that context. The problem is Hitman works best when it's not tightly scripted, and Absolution ran mostly counter to that bit of common sense. There were good bits in it, definitely, but the big-budget explosive AAA design approach that led them to focus on everything that Hitman isn't good at (scripted linear sequences, combat, interesting storytelling, moral dilemmas, actual characters) did the game absolutely zero favours.