Last week, my friend and colleague Matt Cabral wrote up an excellent preview of Hitman: Absolution for Kotaku. I was given the same demonstration by IO Interactive and Square Enix this week at CES and couldnāt agree with him more ā the game is going to be bloody fantastic.
Toward the end of our guided demo of Absolution, Agent 47 walks into a room full of goons, activates his āinstinct mode,ā slows down time, paints all the targets in the room with little red xās, then proceeds to blow them all away with a micro uzi.
Matt said he felt that this was similar to the āMark and Executeā mechanic used by Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell Conviction but when I saw this happen, I just couldnāt help myself. I screamed out, āHaha, heās got deadeye!ā
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-Uue8AQIsQ
IO wasnāt amused. āWell, not exactly ā you see we based this off a real world technique used by Special Forces operatives. You can look it up on Wikipedia!ā
Ok, first off, donāt ever tell me to go look anything up on Wikipedia. Second of all, I donāt have to goto Wikipedia to know that there is no Special Forces technique that allows you to slow down time, then paint and gun down 14 targets in a 180 degree radius. Unless of course our Special Forces are now made up of clones of John Marston and Sam Fisher! At least admit that āmaybeā Agent 47ās āinstinct modeā was inspired by these extremely similar gameplay mechanics? Speaking of which, did you know that Red Dead Redemption and Splinter Cell Conviction came out within a month of each other? The plot thickens!
Anyhow, Iām not trying to get down on the guys from IO, they make awesome games and gave me an awesome demo. Not to mention Iāve been a fan of theirs for years now. Hell, Iām the guy that liked Kane & Lynch 2! What Iām saying is, the deadeye mechanic in Red Dead Redemption was awesome. The fact that it has (damn well sure to some extent) inspired game mechanics in Hitman: Absolution is even more awesome. So much so that I just said awesome four times in the same paragraph.
Iām not quite sure that I understand some of Agent 47ās other new abilities, like his Jensen-esque ability to see through walls, but Iāll suspend my disbelief because Hitman: Absolution, much like its new āinstinct mode,ā looks absolutely brilliant.
Headline image by Chad Lakkis
