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Violent Night: Hitman Absolution

I doubt and pout a great deal whenever Hitman: Absolution is mentioned. Until I play it I'll hold out hope that I can be a silent assassin, or at least a low-pitched liquidator, rather than the boisterous chap blasting his way through the majority of the footage I've seen. Let me play dress-up and put bodies in cupboards. Let me scope out an area and plan my path to the target rather than being constantly on the run or up against furious armies of gangsters, cops or soldiers. The new video made me smile when 47 placed a man in a closet but I frowned mightily every time an explosion occurred.

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Choice! It's the word that keeps coming up. Kill painlessly or sadistically, from afar or up close and personal. Find your target by blowing up entire communities or by infiltrating, becoming as one of them by wearing an appropriate hat and trousers.

The doubt won't evaporate until I play the game for myself, but it can be assuaged. The fact that the only full mission I've seen a playthrough of doesn't even have an assassination target doesn't help, so maybe I'll be a great deal happier the first time I see the name of a victim and the reason for a kill. Maybe I'll need to hear about two people playing a level and having their own experiences, making their own mistakes.

Less of this:

More of this:

And I'm not wholly adverse to a little bit of this:

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Adam Smith: Adam wrote for Rock Paper Shotgun between 2011-2018, rising through the ranks to become its Deputy Editor. He now works at Larian Studios on Baldur's Gate 3.
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Hitman: Absolution

PS3, Xbox 360, PC

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