Head Shots and Such

Hello.

I'm here to talk about a gift I acquired recently.

Hitman Absolution.

Now the last Hitman game to be released was Hitman: Blood Money. It was in the prehistoric time of 2006 and I had a wail of a time playing it. I loved its bald merciless killer and how he stalked his targets relentlessly until a well time piano or bullet would part them of their lives.
There's something exciting being this bringer of Death, I'll admit it is partly due to the blood thirsty violence but not entirely, that would keep me stuck with the controller in my hand for hours.
It was the challenge mainly.
The challenge to erase the poor sod swiftly and discreetly.
Now to be fair you could, I suppose, run in guns a blazing and finish the mission. But I just think that's cheating the game's creators out of all that time spent designing the bloody thing. Literally.
Now I much preferred to do that after I had completed the game like a paid Hitman would.
(Which would be as sneaky as possible to get future work and avoid the death penalty).

Ratings and Rankings would be presented to you after a completed "Hit" and you would earn a title and more cash to upgrade your arsenal.

Now its six years later and we have our lovely bald best buddy Agent 47 back again.
I've enjoyed the game. All of it.
We have new features and a new style of playing the game.
Now this time over Agent 47's talents have been awakened with a kind of eerie foresight into what's going to happen next in whatever bizarre situation he'll be in.

He can now, with a use of the "Instinct Mode", see where NPCs are going to move to. A trail of fire on the floor indicates what route and end of the movement.
We can now also see through walls, again watching and waiting for the ideal time to strike or move to the next wardrobe or well placed crate.

We can now also blend in with crowds and sneak past enemies whilst disguised as one of them. Just to mention here not everyone can tell your phoney but if we were to say you happened to of "come across" a cop disguise, other cops will notice that for one; they've never met you two; you happen to be bald and three; that you're crouched behind a bucket.

Hmm.
Well maybe not three but you get the picture. You'd notice an employee or close bodyguard losing their hair or tan in the past 5 minutes, right? So you get as close as possible without triggering a reaction and use "Instinct Mode" to walk past. You'll hear some of them welcome you to the police force or more suspicious officers wonder who you are, and are quite sure they recognize you.
But hey ho there we go. Into the lift and that’s the end of that.
By the way, using your Instinct doing this particular sneaky activity will make your instinct meter deplete. You gain Instinct throughout the level doing particular things like killing a target etc., looking through walls, on normal mode this be, and seeing the floor on fire does not deplete it.

Another little feature that can be used to devastating effect is shooting multiple targets in a slow down time effect thingy. You slow time down, stand and start placing targets on the enemy/enemies you want to take down. Pretty similar to one of the levels of dead eye John Marston had in Red Dead Redemption.
Head shots and such.

The missions are well structured and 47 hasn't lost any skills taking down anybody, anywhere, anyhow.
Use a robot toy and kill a man.
Meat clever? Well get cleaving!
It' up to you really. There's a variety of firepower ranging from his famous SilverBaller Pistols to remote explosives. Silenced sniper rifles are there but unfortunately the little briefcase you pull out and start twisting together in Blood Money has gone I'm afraid. It just made the feel right last time... Oh well you still get to slap targets in the face with a slug from an apartment that's overlooking a suburban street with the soft puff as your silencer does its job.

The story is another great one. Seeing you travel around the U.S. and U.K (for two at the end) and watch him struggle out of very tight squeezes.

Now there is an online feature with this game. You and a pal can't exactly roam the map and slice and dice your way around it in some ugly deathmatch, no.
That'd be silly.
But you can create a mission so to speak. You use the maps you've played through on the main game and select up to three "Hits". It could be any NPC on the map from postman to Chinese takeaway cook. It’s up to you.
But you don't want to create a mission that’s easy, do you?
You want to create a challenge for someone and have one to complete yourself.
I, today, played a creation from a gamer who's name I can't remember, set in a Court room. It comes with a court room, with trial, and surrounding areas. So, anyway, the target was an evidence room employee. Simple enough. Well not quite. You see there are multiple ways to complete a level so you won't go every which way on your first walk through. So I had to gain access to an off limits area I didn't even know about.

So I sneak around the benches and have to wait for another cop to walk on whilst I sneak in there and kill this dude.
Here's another small problem, if you want the full cash from the mission the player's created you must try and complete the mission how they did. So if you were to not use a disguise and kill the target with a specific weapon then hide his body whilst not getting spotted those accomplishments would be in that mission.
So this guy was good.
He snook in with the initial standard black suit 47 always wears, killed the target with a weapon called a glass Shiv then escape after hiding the deceased
And then another problem flicks you on your nose causing your eyes to water. I had no idea where or what this glass shiv thing was. These items don't just show up because that was the weapon used by the creator, you have to find them by yourself
So I sneak in, eventually after repeated fails, into the evidence room and confront my target. Because of my lovely new "Instinct" I already know there's another guy in the room and must take him out without killing him.
As the creator did.
So I did that eventually and started to think how I would get the other guy. My target.
And with a thing called a "glass shiv"?
So I look whilst trying to to remain undetected for this piece of crap then low and behold I see it.It’s the shiv!
But, again, there's a little problem. This thing is in my targets field of vision.
He doesn't move. He just stares at it none stop.
So you can see this guy had created quite a good, challenging mission.
I won't tell you how I solved that little dilemma. But I did.
I also was inspired by it to create my own little mission set in the same location where you get the glass shiv without harming a soul then sneakily cut the throat of the judge overseeing the trial.
MuahAHAHA!

All with out a single person knowing it’s happened.

As evil as this may be it sure feels good.
So I'm waiting to see who can best me on that one.
It's called "Case Dismissed" I think, and I play on PS3 so it'll be PSN exclusive I'm afraid.

So all in all a good game.
I do think I'll be writing about it again but we'll wait and see.

Thanks for reading.