The perfect Dark
Banned
The sniper challenge isn't a chapter of the main game, is it?
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First Hitman: Absolution reviews hit
- Thread starter Messi
- Start date
SonicVolcano
Member
Nope. A standalone pre-order game.
Not part of the main game, but it is a mission set before the entirety of Absolution. Consider it a downloadable pre-order prologue mission about sniping.
No but I have seen 47 walking around that level in trailers.
Either it's a similar complex or 47 revisits it for another target. The first two games did that, too, though you obviously walked in the repeated locations on all occasions.
Mister0079
Member
That sounds like the first real review.
Broder Salsa
Banned
Damn. Are PC Gamer usually pretty harsh with their reviews? With most sites 60/100 might as well be 1/10.
Clay Davis
Member
it sounds like the first review from someone who played and appreciated past hitman games. I am still hopeful it's good, but pc gamer scoring it a meagre 62 is incredibly worrying.
MMaRsu
Banned
Oh snap i knew it...
I just pre-ordered it at well, ah well at least it was just $30.
Clay Davis
Member
now I'm really worried, they gave both dishonoured and mark of the ninja 90 or above. I consider both to be amazing stealth titles so them calling absolution a passable stealth game means it's time to reconsider my decision to buy it blind or on the faith that the trailers weren't representative of the game last past hitman trailers.
Pros
- Nice looking locations
- Contracts mode is good, although not an adequate replacement of a proper Hitman game
- "One very good mission" near the end, but still not as good or as free as Blood Money
Cons
- No saving, checkpoint system is awful - even an AI glitch can lead to you having to restart the level, also doesn't save data such as disguises or items you've left, and guards killed will respawn
- Focus on (embarrassingly bad) story over gameplay
- PC performance was awful, they tried out on 3 different PCs - two can run Skyrim smoothly yet get 15fps in Hitman on minimal settings, with occasional freezes of over a second, and load times of over a minute
- A lot of gameplay involves you getting to a door to trigger a cutscene
- The amount of kills you have control over how they're executed is about 25%, even then it's not as expansive as Blood Money
- Equipment system - can't choose weapons in main missions, or carry weapons over between missions
- Guard AI is strange, they will sometimes detect you walking where commando rolling wouldn't get you detected
- "Sneak by covering your face" idea is laughable
- DRM on Contracts mode - can't play any contracts, even your own, offline
"I desperately hope the reaction is strong enough to convince the developers to change direction, because I couldn't stand to watch the series die like this"
Net_Wrecker
Member
Another 2012 game to underwhelm? Maybe, maybe not, but that review has definitely put me on "wait and see" status.
Guerrillas in the Mist
Member
It's weird, none of those concerns have popped up in the other reviews we've seen so far, aside from the glitched checkpoints. The PC performance stuff is worrying, though.
I know the checkpoints were the major weak element of the game that's nearly been stated in every review, and I'm sure fans aren't going to cling to it, but this is the first I've heard about questionable PC performance. Haven't IO demoed the game on PC at a few conventions already and it's not had major hiccups?
CheesecakeRecipe
Stormy Grey
PC Performance was spotty in the Sniper Challenge, hopefully it isn't as bad in the full game. Very concerning review, but I don't think we can let derrick's pessimism be vindicated just yet.
Two weeks to the truth.
Two weeks to the truth.
Guerrillas in the Mist
Member
Not to mention the fact that Sniper Challenge, on the same engine, runs totally fine, although it's nowhere near as graphically intensive as what we've seen from the actual game.
Edit: Could it be a driver issue? Didn't know about issues with Sniper Challenge on other people's rigs.
How would I go about doing that? I've already activated my Sniper Challenge.
Email support with your order number. I don't think the sniper demo will prevent them from canceling your order.
Apparently it does. I'll wait for some more reviews, but I'll probably just trade my Steam key for a better game in some forum thread.
Yeah, all the more reason I'm perplexed here. I've had no performance issues whatsoever with Sniper Challenge, as it maintains a constant 60fps for me. I figure those that have issues with that are going to have struggles with Absolution, but I don't see where those issues arise to begin with..
I don't quite understand this one. Does this mean 75% of the time you kill your targets in cutscenes/scripted sequences?
DerZuhälter
Member
- Don't care. Hardest mode in all Hitman games was without saves, doing a complete mission in one gothrough.
- Can be patched
- More linearity? Well that does sucks
- See above
- Don't care. Never equipped anything but fibre-wire and in some levels a single silenced gun.
- AI always seems funky in stealth games, be it their strange line of sight which is less than 30 meters or their narrow FOV. Nothing new to me.
- So is Instinct. So what? I sometimes hit another button when I pass some guards. Nothing really that breaks my game experience.
- Don't care about contracts mode.
Verdict: Prepared to be disappointed yet not really scared that I'm going to hate it.
Guerrillas in the Mist
Member
Yeah, I'm not sure about that one. Other impressions we've seen have talked about there being a fair number of ways to take out most targets, although in a few cases your methods are restricted.
SJRB
Gold Member
SonicVolcano
Member
So, Derrick was right, the game SUCKS.
On a more serious note: the German PCGames site gave it a gold award and editor's choice award and they had no problems running this game. Like what the...?
On a more serious note: the German PCGames site gave it a gold award and editor's choice award and they had no problems running this game. Like what the...?
Apologies, it was levels, not number of targets. The quote:
"Three-quarters of these levels are purely about traversal, getting from A to B to move the story forwards, and if you're given anyone to kill, it happens in a cutscene or scripted slow-mo event. The other quarter do give you a target to kill, and a choice of how, but that segmentation (of the levels) means you're operating in a space that isn't as rich or complex as a typical Blood Money mission".
I would not go that far saying one review is right and the other is wrong, because hey, reviews. Game can still be a lot of fun.
SonicVolcano
Member
Oh wow, didn't expect this from you.
anonymous_abc
Member
I am SO fucking angry right now.
that sounds pretty bad :-/
SonicVolcano
Member
Has this ever happened before with reviews? Such huge differences? I mean going from 9s and high 8s to a low 6 is quite something.
Quite often, especially for non-mainstream games.
Yeah that sucks. I was upset the sniper demo wasn't available for the US region... Not anymore.
Sorry but calling out a well known member, saying he's lying gets on my nerves.
At least they could just accept it and move on.
At least there's one more week of reviews to come. I mean I have the game pre-ordered for less than $29 but I'm still not sure whether to keep that order in. I don't necessarily want 1:1 clone of old Hitman games. I'm fine with some linear sections for story telling as long as such sections are done well and the story is interesting but the PC Gamer review is very worrying.
Also I hate checkpoints. In most games and cases, it's one of the worst features.
Also I hate checkpoints. In most games and cases, it's one of the worst features.
These two alone would ruin the entire the game. I read that check point system is bad in other reviews but none of them explained it like this. why checkpoints to begin with, and no manual save either. I think I'd go with that mode that doesn't have any checkpoint if checkpoints really works like that, it would be easier I think
Poor PC performance is unfortunate too. sigh.