Strays way too much from the series roots for a Hitman fan to enjoy it like the other games. A good game, not a good Hitman game. (Hitman Blood Money was released in 2006, we waited 6 years for this?) From a subtle, stylish presentation to an overbearing grindhouse style presentation. Changing Agent 47 into a "hero". A dumb story (What happened in Hitman 2: Silent Assassin and Blood Money is nearly completely forgotten. 47 is a different character completely.) Story over gameplay (The game revolves around the story. This means lots of linear A to B levels. You are more of an infiltrator who kills people in his way, rather than a hitman.) Arcade style scoring (The series has always been a sandbox game, which means you play it your way. Absolution uses an arcade style scoring system, that reminds you you aren't playing the game right with minus scores.) No Jesper Kyd (The Hitman games have always had a great soundtrack, because of Jesper Kyd. This gave the series memorable music, a great atmosphere and got you in the mood. Absolution lacks this, the music is more generic spy thriller genre you would find in a Mission Impossible movie, Bourne movie or Bond movie.) Lackluster level design (Forgettable levels. There are none like A New Life, St Petersburg Stakeout or Traditions of the Trade.) No Vivienne McKee (Diana's ex-voice actress) Revealing Diana's face straight away (This has always been a thing in the series. This gave her character more mystery, the game removes all of this.) If this game had no association to the Hitman series I would give it an 8. But it does. One of the most disappointing sequels of all time.
The best of the series, it's great. The coolness of MGS1, the greatness of MGS3 and a story that isn't stupid like MGS4's. It's also one of the longest games I have ever played. I have played for 60 hours and only just got to another area besides Afghanistan. Although I have been doing stealth, getting S Ranks, doing all of the Side Ops, have a massive amount of resources and replayed missions I have done, that's still a massive amount of time. I guess that this game will easily take me over 100 hours to get 100%. There is just so much to do. Fultoning soldiers, developing Mother Base, developing new equipment, managing your staff, messing around in free roam, etc. The graphics are excellent. The game uses the incredible Fox Engine that has some of the best lighting I have seen in a game. At times, it can look photo-realistic, while running at 60fps and extremely rarely dropping frames. The textures are much improved compared to Ground Zeroes, you can hardly tell this game is cross-gen. Animations are very professional. Not only are they realistic looking, (like Snake climbing realistically), they don't sacrifice control for realism. (The Witcher 3 feels so bad to control compared to this game.) The controls are fantastic. The only complaint I have would be the cover system, sometimes Snake will go where you don't want him to. It can be difficult as well. Not so much combat-wise, but if you want to stealth and get S Ranks you have to take a lot of things into account. For example, enemies will wise up and wear helmets eventually, which make getting tranquilizer head shots harder. Patrols on missions can make moving around less easy. Snipers will make you have to crawl. The game gradually gets more difficult. It starts off slow and you keep getting more and more abilities to use - this is one of the game's best points. You aren't thrust into a world of craziness straight away. In a way, it fits Snake's 9 year coma perfectly. You get more and more used to the war that is going on, back to your best. I probably haven't had as much fun with a stealth game since Hitman: Blood Money. As a stealth sandbox game, it is nearly perfect. There are many ways to complete missions with different loadouts. The sound design is impressive. The dynamic original score, the sound effects, the voice acting, all are great. If you are a big fan of stealth games, and if you liked GTA: Vice City's soundtrack, this is the game for you. Hall and Oates, Spandau Ballet, Billy Idol, the soundtrack on cassette tapes you get matches the 1984 setting perfectly. This is still a Metal Gear Solid game, however. There are plenty of humorous things you can do. minor gameplay spoilers: (using horse poop to spin a guard's vehicle out of control, the cardboard box, luring guards with girl posters on the cardboard box, etc.) Hideo Kojima and Kojima Productions have gone out with a bang. This game is meticulously crafted, with subtlety, minor details you wouldn't expect to find in an AAA game, attention to detail, freedom of gameplay, cinematic storytelling (the directing in the cutscenes is great.), incredible engine, making 60fps a priority. There are a massive amount of things to praise. However, there is one big problem with the game. The narrative, and the pacing. You no longer have 30 minute cutscenes like the previous games, and codec calls. You have cutscenes that aren't nearly as long, and cassette tapes you can listen to which fill in a lot of details. There are a lot of cassette tapes, which are longer than the cutscenes themselves. You can go for hours and hours without the story being moved forward. and when it is moved forward, it isn't by much. This isn't a massive issue though, because the gameplay is so great. One of the best games of all time.
There really are no excuses for this 30FPS port. Presented as the 'Definitive Edition' of the game, the only thing 'Definitive' is the fact it includes all of the DLC. Note, this review reflects this version of the game. It barely runs better than the last generation versions on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, and doesn't even match the original version on PC at max settings. As well as not looking as good as it should, it runs at 30fps and drops below that at times. There are audio issues prevalent when viewing cut-scenes and other minor technical issues. With this in mind, my PC that would be good in 2010 (but below average by today's standards) can run this game at maxed settings at 1080p and 60fps. (GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz.) This hardware is much weaker than the PS4's hardware - so why does it succeed where the PS4 doesn't? It is simply because of a lazy port, there is no other reason. Do not support this new trend of remastering last generation games that don't run as well as they should. The game itself is great. Get it on PC because your PC could probably run it better than your PS4.
