i had never lost faith but ive had it since launch and im just now getting to it in my back catalog
Absolution isn't a bad game but it's also not Hitman. It's square enix attempting to make the series more "mass market" but it fails at doing so because Hitman can't be forced or pigeon holed in the way this game was. If this was a standalone title that had no history behind it then I'd give it a 4 but instead it gets a 2 even though I think it's a game that everyone should give a try. I started playing the series with Hitman 2 Silent Assassin and I absolutely fell in love with it. I completed it 100% in it's hardest difficulty and finished every mission with a perfect rating in every way it could be finished. You see I bought the game and literally the next day I was dead on my feet (no puns intended) due to a severe case of pneumonia and bronchitis at the same time which is a combo I don't recommend lol. So I had plenty of time to sink my teeth into the game and while I expected to like it... I never thought it was turn into an essentially life long love of io interactive and the series itself. I always loved stealth games but this series took what I thought of the genre to a new level. Hiding in plain sight was never part of the stealth genre. It was be seen or die. So back to Absolution... I think Blood money didn't make as much money as square wanted (no western style title ever does) so they took advantage of the team developing a new engine for the series as the previous engine was showing it's age as it was about 14 years old. They also looked at call of duty blazing of store shelves and assumed incorrectly that more action was what everyone wanted. They assumed incorrectly as hitman fans generally look at this as the odd one out and it is. It's better than the 1st game but only because it's not clunky, it's modern. Still, give it a chance, just don't judge the series as a whole based on it or the developers. The latest from Io is nothing short of stunning but it's best to see how they got there and this is a step on that journey.
I'll keep it short and sweet... This game is fun and different enough that it's well worth playing if you can get it cheap. The combat isn't anything amazing but it's good enough and does require some actual thought on harder difficulty levels. The investigation part of the game is where the most effort went in and that's also enjoyable. Sound quality is good both in terms of music and effects, especially if you can play in surround sound. Now the games biggest issue... Performance. It doesn't seem to matter what settings you use the game will studder for no reason. At first I thought maybe it was a drm issue so I bought it again on gog... Not a drm issue. Then I thought maybe my i7 5820k (6 cores @ 4.8ghz) was the problem even though I didn't have issues in any other games but nope not that either because when I switched to a ryzen 5800x I had the same issue and this is on a 2080ti ftw3 ultra. My full specs... Ryzen 5800x 2080 ti ftw3 ultra +170 core +1000 mem 32 gigs DDR4 3200 mhz dual channel Game ran from a gen 4 Samsung Evo SSD ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Formula motherboard Custom loop liquid cooling setup. Cooling motherboard VRM's & Chipset on 120mm rad and CPU on 240mm rad. All fans are noctua, positive pressure.
