Pleb Tier: Hitman Absolution Review (2020)

after a short break with a stealth game let's get back into the groove with another third-person shooter this time we have hitman absolution wait really this was another stealth game no that can't be right if it was you'd think I would have had a negative score after slaughtering and triggering alarms in like three-quarters of the levels I've always heard negative things about absolution but I wanted to go in with an open mind which is absolutely the worst thing you could do with a game like this because it will try and trick you first level it's linear but it's also a tutorial sequence second level hey this is pretty good it's kind of a simple job but we're warming up to some great missions third level dollie Christmas I genuinely thought this was a game over screen even now writing this a day after having beaten the game I'm not entirely convinced it was it and in editing I'm still not it doesn't help that the game does actually have game over screens where the targets will taunt you I am genuinely confused and the best way to explain it is this to sneak her another Channel you should check out sometime tends to denote when there is a disconnect between the level of competence you can show in the game and the level of competence displayed in cutscenes an agent 47 seems to have forgotten all that experience that made him such a legendary assassin he's a lot closer in intelligence to how I would be in this situation which is not good because I'm stupid for instance later in the game 47 is once again incapacitated when he walks into a trap stop this exposes a huge issue with the writing of this game generally 47 is meant to be a superb infiltrator and I tried to play him to that end but I have a rule for stealth which is if I get caught I keep going so a fair few times levels would end with large amounts of death that would not be acknowledged and that's fine I understand that I'm supposed to be playing agent 47 the consummate professional but then sheriff jerky here somehow 1ups agent 47 who should canonically not have been detected yet I mean sure I did spend the previous section shooting my way through all those deputies but I thought that didn't count if the canonical version of 47 is the one that has the patience to keep restarting checkpoints the sheriff shouldn't know I'm here to set the trap in the first place they're here I've got a new Victoria fast where's the safest place in the building 20 minutes later why invest in the stock market best friend I like to use the term Black Mesa to refer to a trope where the villains would go in and kill all the witnesses to apply I don't think I need to explain where the term comes from that said this is the first game I've seen multiple separate black mesas in one game good old boys guys come in and wipe out an orphanage and kill all the nuns and doctors which you think would garner some modicum of attention or even be ever addressed again later 47 is attacked at a hotel and the BDSM nuns Black Mesa all the guests and then the agency shows up and wipes out an entire town and just what if any one of these let alone all three happened in the space of like a week people globally would lose their [ __ ] the problem with the trope is that it's an attempt to characterize the villains as evil and the story is dramatic without putting in the lake work it's easy to point at someone responsible for a massacre and say see they're evil the problem is that this is not the sort of story you tell with a hitman I don't mean a genetically modified super assassin either I mean hitman as in a contract killer who tries to raise as little attention as possible and the thing is right when half life did it it was because there was literals ambe's and aliens coming out of black mesa and it was safer to go in guns blazing in order to get the situation under control I also may have done my own black mesa and wiped out an entire research facility guards and staff I still ended the level with a positive score though so it doesn't matter but at least no helicopters get shot down just kidding I was genuinely amazed no helicopters got shot down in this game which well that's how seventh generation it was so how is it as a game it's actually surprisingly alright so much so that I've started to wonder if you package this gameplay with better levels absolution may have been considered more favor maybe that's what the contracts would have been who knows they've been unplayable for two years now in fact my first impression of the game was getting asked to sign up for a service that no longer works so that means I'm left with the single-player campaign to judge the game by they'll say what you will about conviction but at least the deniable ops work without an internet connection just something the modern hitman fans should probably think about the core of the game is about infiltration most objectives are going to be either to kill someone or to get through an area actually you can pretty much reduce every video game down to those basics it helps no one to be reductive this is also one of the few games where suppressed weapons don't feel super cheesy compared to unsuppressed weapons I think it's because they're limited to one set with somewhat limited ammo that as well as the score are motivators to avoid the usual routine of gradually murdering and then hiding bodies across the level the garrote is also a great tool trading speed and efficiency for lethality in the score it also gets you straight into moving bodies which is you know important in a real stealth game that said since it's a mechanic that means there has to be a bunch of trash cans and closets to stuff bodies in - I'd have liked if at least once the resort garbage clothes or tools in one of these you know so the world doesn't feel like the real villain are the storage solution salesman there are weapons you can find in an environment you can carry two guns but only one throwing weapon okay why you also can't throw a blunt weapons at people which means that screwdrivers are now more valuable as weapons than wrenches or bricks do you know how awful it would be to try to kill someone with a screwdriver the disguise system allows you to blend into areas it works well as long as you aren't around people who are going to be familiar with your uniform like wearing a chef's costume might fool guards but not other chefs a problem for the system however is that if a level only has one uniform then everyone is going to start seeing through it and of course many levels arose where uniform hopping was not a viable tactic because there was only one type of costume I could find there is an instinct system that allows you to avoid making eye contact that somehow tricks people into ignoring you that I realized way too late into the game was absolutely broken but like I said my general strategy was to new stealth until I couldn't then use combat until the game stopped me and well it didn't stop me you can consider this my fault as I did play on the normal difficulty which was like two out of five I didn't want to get stuck playing a difficulty setting where I'd have to keep replaying sections I at least expected the game to push back against me and I never really felt any resistance what would a higher difficulty have accomplished sure I would have died a lot sooner after making a mistake but I genuinely think I would have just adapted into a slower play style that ground through the area's enemies because I don't like safes coming and I don't have the patience to play the [ __ ] story right I will say this absolution makes a great Terminator game check out this assassination it's way too dangerous three kills then crouching out this game has very positive reviews on Steam I don't think I can say enough about these levels so let me give an example we go break into good old boys Factory we start with like an abandoned mill down a sketchy cliff face into a high tech research facility and out the other side into a grimy Fight Club what and the entire time we're basically just going from entrance to exit which sure you could pretty much reduce any game down to but in this case it's very accurate and each level has an obvious direct route in a side passage that bypasses all the guards that's the entire game after a chat 47 bumps his head from getting Slams through a door hope he didn't like that chinatown level because you're never gonna see one like it again oh you will see it again because it gets reused but it's not the same speaking of I'm sure we're all dying to learn more about the exploding pigs lot now I know there's always been a sense of humor surrounding this series I mean I ran around as a samurai in one of the last levels but this is there's even a giant pig corpse pile in the back just imagine the spelt seriously why this isn't an antagonist he's not even featured in any cutscenes there's just a random guy that gets his kicks blowing up pigs for no reason is it to establish that the guy who runs this place is evil yeah no [ __ ] he's evil he stole a little girl after killing a bunch of nuns in framing 47 for murdering a maid speaking of good old boy a quick question how much money does he have he acts like getting paid a couple million in exchange for the little girls a big payout for him yet he owns a defense research company and a high-rise apartment full of antiques with a private army that is unquestioning inner loyalty so he probably actually makes a lot more per year than he's getting paid for the little girl from an actually legitimate business venture now on the flip side we have greasy he's in charge of the agency now that we didn't ice our old handler she betrayed the agency because greasy was trying to make a better 47 with the little girl you know the conviction parallels are uncanny wait why does he have a robot hand no no seriously what's the deal with the robot you know I am glad we wasted so much time on the Linnaean wait subplot he really gets a character arc in the story and doesn't just weighed the plot down with his inclusion and I definitely considered sparing him when the choice came up for about I don't know zero seconds before I pulled the trigger if this seems like a fever dream to you that's how I feel so we killed the one Lady Diana but not really but we're still gonna have flashbacks at forty seven regretting it because we want to have the drama of forty seven killing his friend and a twist at the end that she's still alive you get one or the other but you don't get both you greedy [ __ ] and we kidnap her little girl well okay not her little girl this is Travis's kidnapped little girl she kidnapped and we take her to an orphanage and she gets sick without her USB necklace or whatever because that's how superior she is the agent 47 you know he's relies on I don't know a floppy disc to stay alive she ends up getting taken by Linney in a display of competence on agent 47s part I guess he forgot his floppy disk that day and for some reason they tracked down an identical schoolgirl outfit for her to wear like that's not what she was wearing when you kidnapped her dude that's what she was wearing when we kidnapped her oh no no no see that's not how this works partner you got the three I let me talk to my super 8 to my friend Oh turns out there was a third schoolgirl outfit that good-old-boy made the dominatrix wear to fake out the agency into thinking they would shoot the little girl wait is she's still wearing the latex skin suit under the schoolgirl outfit yeah there's a dominatrix in the story and no she is not related to the sexy nun assassins she's related to the sheriff well not related related I mean well maybe IO Interactive doesn't seem to have a high opinion of people living in the Midwest [Music] my friend actually scratch that I don't think IO Interactive has a high opinion of anyone both good-old-boy and Griese have sexy assistant ladies well the sexy is subjective but I'm sure that's what their character sheets said they were and for some reason both of them are featured right before their male counterpart in exactly the same way so the question is why are there two villains greasy is the first villain but good old boy has a little more character I'll tell you I don't ordinarily yeehaw but this is a funny funny Christmas I said it was a little more I didn't say it was good anyways the game is a little bloated trying to fit both villains in here because 47 has zero personal relation to good ol boy outside of just wanting to protect the little girl and I couldn't help but laugh at the scene where the two villains face off and wonder why the writers felt this added to the game and then there's birdie he's the one that has this take out the guy in Chinatown he's a vague source of information that keys us in the good-old-boy I'm not sure what the [ __ ] his relation to the story is supposed to be other than leaving cryptic letters for both us and the villains to find and explaining information we already know and the characters should have intuited birdie tells good-old-boy that 47 is looking for the little girl but he obviously already knows that birdie informs Griese that 47 is protecting the little girl but they already knew that birdie tells 47 that good ol boy is a problem when 47 is already in South Dakota having had two run-ins with him already birdie tells the Chicago PD he has information on 47 but all he would really know is his physical description in his relation to the little girl birdie could have died after his bus got attacked in Chicago and it would not have changed the story in the slightest yeah he's left in the cliffhanger as a potential future storyline for no reason other than it's trendy to do that I guess so we kill good ol boy rescued a little girl then kill greasy and revealed a Diana was alive the whole time so I guess in the first level instead of killing Diana we just took a good long look at her ass then moved on oh hey wait a second we get a full frosted ass shot of Diana but later when 47 is showering we only get from the thighs down I'm not normally one to cry sexism but I play stealth games for the man ass goddamn it not sexy nuns and prostitutes across the street from an orphanage also are the shower scenes supposed to play into the themes of the title absolution as in washing away our sins because the least you could do if you're gonna go diving in the film dumpster is leave their [ __ ] cliches for the raccoons this scenes [ __ ] hilarious jerky runs into a church running away from 40 seven and as we walk in the church goers are shocked that we have a gun never mind that Sheriff whose bloodied and also has a gun and proceeds to take the I'm gonna assume pastor he takes him hostage and I accidentally shoot the pastor in the shoulder as well as the person whose funeral this is but that's [ __ ] fine then forty-seven walks off like he's cool before it cuts to him driving a hearse which means that off-screen 47 realized he wouldn't be able to walk to Chicago and had to double back to steal the keys for the hearse how do you [ __ ] that up and I don't mean agent 47 I mean IO Interactive every time I think I'm done and try to set up a conclusion I remember something else for some reason 47 stops in his tracks of rescuing the little girl to pick up a new suit from his blind tailor I sure hope it doesn't come down to the wire in five minutes could make all the difference in saving the little girl because then forty seven would just look like an [ __ ] oh you've got to be [ __ ] kidding me so why didn't good old boy just leave as soon as he realized that 47 was in the building I mean I understand it's because 47 canonically snuck through the section and didn't you know Don some samurai armor and run around with a katana but even then they still knew 47 had come up the elevators so also they have this scene where they gunned down the sushi guy which is funny in a way I just can't explain the writers are so misanthropic I wouldn't be surprised that they genuinely believed aliens would be benevolent I'm sorry if this is off topic but I'm tired of hearing the idea that aliens would be turned off of humanity by stuff like war and pollution they would not be above those concepts stuff like this is inevitable for pretty much every species to achieve spacefaring status and even then there's no guarantee they would stop there so stop peddling the idea that you're so much more enlightened than your fellow man when you clearly don't understand how reality works I'm disappointed because I like the idea of a game about the hitman seeking absolution but this just isn't it if anything this game is pretty much nailing down what the hit man should be atoning for in the first place it would be interesting to see a hitman who has started to feel remorse or guilt and doesn't understand how to cope with these new feelings who can only find an outlet and a child like him who has yet to be burdened with the guilt he seeks forgiveness for him handing his weapons over to birdie would be symbolic of him giving up his former lifestyle to seek a more pacifistic way he might realize that the people he has had to kill have had lives and relationships he's ruined and ultimately he may return to his lifestyle but with a better understanding of just what tragedies he's been inflicting on others and what the consequences of being so casual that the value of human life really means but you know stories where characters better themselves are stupid and for nerds it's obvious now that this game started in production with one word on a white board absolution and the entire game had to be sculpted around it to try and give it word an inkling of meaning in relation to this story you could just as easily have called it I don't know hitman 4 or something and made it a disconnected pack of levels purely for gameplay and that would have been fine even great but if you run to tell a story try and make it a good okay well did you try to try to restart yeah the one that says DSM yeah well I don't know I don't know I've kind of in the middle of something here but give me a few minutes and I'll get there as soon as I can

Channel: PatricianTV

Views: 48,177

Keywords: Patrician, Hitman Absolution Review, Pleb Tier Hitman, Patrician Pleb Tier, Pleb Tier Hitman Absolution, Pleb Tier Review, Hitman Absolution 2020, Pleb Tier Hitman Absolution 2020, Hitman: Absolution (2012), Hitman Absolution Review 2020, Hitman Absolution Analysis

Id: ZOraaWbZ0_k

Length: 19min 30sec (1170 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 24 2020