You can learn a lot about someone based on the way they play Hitman: Absolution. If they make a death look like an accident, they're clever and deceitful. If they do it in less than a minute, they're efficient. Also scary. Opening fire in a Chinatown market means they're impatient. Throwing an explosive gas can at their victim and shooting it to blow up a gazebo means they have impulse issues.
I wouldn't know anything about that last one.
Watching different people play through the same hit also makes you realize things about yourself -- you're not quite as careful as her, you're more thoughtful than him, you never would have thought of that. Learning about Absolution's open-ended possibilities makes you change about and add to your play style. You adapt. This makes you want to go back. You want to kill again. You want to do it better, broadcast your brutal efficiency to the world, and get the recognition you deserve.
I wouldn't know anything about that, either.
Absolution's scoring system shares your status with your friends, which turns calculated murder into a competition. You'll chase leaderboard scores by completing challenges in addition to laying low. Like past Hitman games, of course, the Silent Assassin rank is the elite top spot. Absolution is just as complex and challenging as past entries, so don't expect to become the best without a little trial and error and a lot of work.
Where Absolution deviates from the franchise's path is with the Instinct system. This feature was my first victim -- I killed it the second I sat down to play the game. Watching developer IO Interactive demo the game, seeing past trailers, and observing others playing, this X-ray vision diminished everything I love about this series. Tracking a glowing red target from the other side of the map makes Absolution embarrassingly easy.
Instinct eliminates the need to think carefully about your actions, especially in crowded spaces like the bustling market I played. Activating 47's instinct gives you the answers by taking away the mystery. Not knowing how targets behave means figuring it out.
The AI adapts to the world you're constantly changing. Police, for instance, can sniff you out when you're wearing a cop disguise -- and why wouldn't they? AI characters communicate threats and trouble with each other. Of course they'll more readily recognize someone who isn't one of their own.
It's touches like this that reinforce the identity of Hitman. IO has not, as I suspected when watching Instinct in action, forgotten what makes this a tremendous franchise. The developer is simply experimenting by lowering the barrier of entry. Crank up the difficulty and deactivate the help, though, and Absolution is everything you want from a Hitman sequel.
In deactivating the Instinct feature, 47 only has one thing to rely on: you, and the kind of killer you become when everyone else is watching.
Mitch Dyer is an Associate Editor for IGN's Xbox 360 team. He’s also quite Canadian. Read his ramblings on Twitter and follow him on IGN.
Source : http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/06/01/e3-2012-go-with-your-gut-in-hitman-absolution
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