First of all, the plot is utter nonsense, this wouldn't be a problem in previous games where the story usually took a backset, but Absolution makes the mistake of putting the story front and center. The story it wants to tell also isn't about assassination, forcing itself to constantly find excuses why Hitman needs to kill someone, by the end of the game it simply gives up, with some targets being blatant diversions that make no sense whatsoever. The maps design is terrible, almost gone are the mansions, compounds and other various open-ended maps that rewarded exploration and deliberate stealth, substituted by artificial corridors so constricted they wouldn't be out of place on a PS1 action shooter. This forces you to take one approach towards completing a stage that its developer pre-planned for you and simply try until you pull it off, its repetitive, grading and worst of all, boring. One would think these changes point towards the game being more of a third-person shooter than a stealth game, problem is, the shooting aspect of the game is poor as well. The AI's reaction time is glacial, it routinely makes absurd decisions, such as taking a light jog to the farthest piece of cover using a route that puts itself straight into your line of fire, the camera was designed with stealth in mind, with a narrow FOV that makes it hard to aim from target to target. The most frustrating aspect of it all is that all these problems could have been avoided, Absolution feels like a game that was made bad on purpose.
Non-existent enemy variety, unsatisfying gunplay, horrible car handling, very repetitive gameplay, generic characters, an empty and bland open world with not much to do, uninspired story, a horrible color pallet that colors everything in a shade of their yellow or brown, etc. Farcry 2 is in a nutshell, a chore to play. Get Farcry 3 instead.
