Hitman: Absolution VS Dishonored

Back in October 2012, I reviewed Dishonored and gave it an almost perfect score of 9.5/10, praising the title for its hauntingly beautiful setting, great main plot and a sense of freedom few titles have. In joint position with Telltale’s The Walking Dead, Dishonored was my game of the year. However, in the midst of the Christmas rush, another similar, yet vastly different, title was released: IO Interactive’s Hitman Absolution. Having played through both of them, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t greatly enjoy them but due to their similarities, I found it hard to pick my favourite. Because of this, I decided to judge both of them on four simple categories in the attempt to decide which one is the winner out of the two. A quick warning, however: there may be minor spoilers.

Story:

Dishonored: Like Hitman Absolution, Arkane Studios’ Dishonored features an assassin in search of a missing girl, yet as the daughter of the Empress, Emily Kaldwin seems like a much more vital human being. Players are Corvo Attano, bodyguard to the Empress, who is wrongfully accused of her murder and must set out to clear your name and rescue Emily from the evil clutches she has found herself in. Along the way, Corvo finds himself wrapped up in a revolution against Dunwall’s tyrannical government and must face against corruption and the collapse and battle of social classes. All in all, it sounds like the perfect concoction for the basis of an nineteenth century novel (would probably make a good musical too) but Dishonored’s story is helped greatly by its brilliant setting, although there will be more on that later. And whilst it’s easy to get invested in the characters and interested in the outcome, it’s hard to say that the plot of Dishonored is unpredictable: there were too many times when I had already worked out what was going to happen simply because it’s been done countless time before. And, in all honesty, that’s a real shame as Dunwall is a fascinating place to have a fantastic story set around it.  

Hitman Absolution: IO Interactive’s title doesn’t pretend that the world is a nice place and it isn’t afraid to make you feel uncomfortable or, at some points, even sickened by the characters and situations on screen. Seeing a grown man urinate himself in the middle of a desert as he digs his own grave is far from pleasant to witness and watching a woman parade around the room with a whip in her hand, dressed as a nun, whilst her male friend is chained up against the wall isn’t particularly wonderful. However, as strange as this may sound, these situations never feel out of place: there are very few characters, if any at all, in Hitman Absolution that are morally grey: they’re either pure evil or an angel in disguise. And even then it’s hard to call the protagonist a “good guy” as he incinerates and garrotes targets throughout his journey. As a huge fan of crime and gangster films, I quickly found myself wrapped up in the twisty-turny plot of Hitman Absolution and greatly enjoyed it for the whole of the twenty hours it took me to complete the title. Combine that with the fact that some of Dishonored’s plot twists aren’t exactly unpredictable, and Agent 47 comes out on top in this category.

WINNER: Hitman Absolution

Graphics:

Dishonored: Out of the two games at battle here, it’s obvious the Dishonored has the most distinct art style. Whereas Hitman goes for stark realism, Arkane Studios instead went for a more steam-punk griminess that over-exaggerates the bleakness of the setting. Rats patrol the maps, usually in packs of hundreds, whilst the plague-ridden homeless stumble about like ghosts. There are times when Dishonored’s world seems a bit empty, a tad simple, but the sheer imagination that flows from every inch of takes centre stage. Throughout the entire game, it never once stops being clear that Dunwall is a place that has fallen and, maybe, will never see the light again. Alongside the dirt and squalor that inhabits every inch of Dunwall, it’s also a place of brutality: every kill, every knife to the throat or every crossbow bolt to the forehead ends with an explosion of gore. Arkane Studios never once glorify the deaths Attano must cause: they make the player feel every one of them, as the eyes of the target stare up to you as your hands squeeze around their throat. Some will say that Dishonored’s art style is almost cartoonish but this could not be further from the truth: it’s one that exaggerates the grime of the setting and one that makes Dishonored have a unique identity of its own.

Hitman Absolution: Like its story and its characters, Hitman Absolution’s world is filled with all black and no white: never once do you feel safe, as prostitutes wander past looking for their next client and homeless men sit on street corners crying out for money. Agent 47 seems to be the only innocent in the whole title, and that’s saying something for a man who spends twenty hours killing countless targets in increasingly gruesome ways. To fit with its tale of corruption and crime, Hitman Absolution is a dull game; there seems to be a blurry haze across everything, as if the smog of the story and the characters are even spreading into the game world. Yet there comes a sense of simplicity with this: whilst the open world sections are undeniably detailed and it never once stops being beautiful, the fact that the whole thing is so dark and almost constantly in confined spaces including corridors and air ducts, it’s never the beautiful painting to the eyes that Dishonored is. In fact, after extended playing sessions, I just want to stare at a sunset or something happy just to prove that the world isn’t just filled with grit and grime. Whilst a bright colourful setting would have seemed very out of place with the story and the darkness of the whole title works brilliantly, it all seems too dull and too morally black to ever be beautiful.

WINNER: Dishonored

Gameplay:

Dishonored: According to the back of the box, Dishonored is a title where “the choices you make will shape your fate and that of the empire around you” and this could not be any truer. As a supernatural assassin, Corvo Attano has a plethora of awesome abilities at his disposal but it’s entirely up to the player as to how they use them and for what reasons. Using one power could clear a room full of enemies, carving a path of bloodshed before you, whereas using that same power in a different situation and it could be a distraction, allowing you to sneak past undetected. The maps of Dishonored allow for this diversity, meaning you never once feel that you are forced into playing one way or another. There are moments, yes, when one option is easier than the other but there are always opportunities, chances to play how you want to play: going through the door into a room of enemies may seem like the most obvious method but spending a few minutes searching around and an air duct becomes visible, allowing you to completely bypass the room altogether. In a world where players are forced to complete the games in one predetermined fashion, the thought of a title giving you everything you could ever want then allowing you to use it how you deem fit is a refreshing change, and a very welcome one at that.

Hitman Absolution: On the other hand, however, Hitman Absolution is a more straightforward stealth game, but that is by no means a bad thing, as there is fun to be had in this title. Nothing is quite as terrifying as hiding behind a piece of cover when a guard is literally centimetres away and one quick, stupid, movement and your disguise is blown. IO Interactive’s title works with a scoring system: completing objectives, undetected or not, hiding bodies, finding evidence, gaining disguises and more all contribute to the ever-increasing number in the top left hand corner, meaning you always feel as if you’re doing something right, even if you’re improvising as you go along. Hitman Absolution is, apparently, a game that allows you to tackle objectives how you want, although it’s a much more linear storyline. This raises a question, however. It seems that whenever Agent 47 is detected or he is forced to kill a target that the score goes down, suggesting that you’ve done something wrong, even  if this is what you intended to do. It’s this that makes it feel as if IO Interactive is punishing players for improvising, even though this is what they want you to do, leading to a sense of restraint as you can’t do what you wish to simply because the developers aren’t letting you.

WINNER: Dishonored

Overall Enjoyment:

Dishonored: At times it can be undeniably frustrating as something doesn’t quite go to plan but whereas other games would deem this a failure, Dishonored instead gives you the tools to not try again but instead carry on, using your powers to make it all end okay. It’s precisely this that means that Dishonored never once stops being fun: you never feel that you’ve done something wrong, just that there was a quite stumble but that it doesn’t matter. As long as the target dies (or in some cases, they might not) it doesn’t matter at all whether you killed everyone in your path or no one died except the targets. There’s also a profound sense of experimentation in Dishonored, a burning desire to use different powers in ways that they maybe weren’t designed to but still can be. What would happen if you combined a bolt with rats and then freezing time? No idea but it sounds awesome! And sometimes, when things do go a bit wrong, it can lead to some genuinely entertaining moments: I promise, I was going to come back and move the body and I didn’t mean for it to fall fifty feet and crush my target, killing him.

Hitman Absolution: As previously mentioned, IO Interactive desperately want you to experiment and improvise but then punish you when you do. To some, sneaking silently round environments, dodging guards and distracting others, is a tad boring but to others, me included, it’s tense and exciting. Whilst it does bother me that I feel restricted to what I can and cannot do, I never once found the game to be boring. It was always incredibly exciting to carry out an entire mission, or even just one objective, smoothly and without being detected. Throughout the game, you always feel as if you’re just one step away from being detected, as if you could be exposed at any point and that it could, all in one split second, go wrong. However, it’s in the moments when it does go wrong that Hitman Absolution fails and it starts to become frustrating: whereas Dishonored allows you to experiment, I always found myself starting at a checkpoint to make sure that I did do it correctly and not get found out. I don’t want to be doing that: I want to improvise and experiment.

WINNER: Dishonored

Conclusion:

Dishonored: 3/4
Hitman Absolution: 1/4

I won’t lie: I did give Hitman Absolution a chance, but there was always right from the start, a strong inkling in me that Dishonored would win. It’s just truly brilliant, with a fantastic sense of freedom and emergent gameplay that very few games give players any more. The setting is eerie and original and the whole of the title is one of the most enjoyable experiences of the last few gaming years. On the other hand, Hitman Absolution does have moments of sheer brilliance but they are few and far between and the incredible sense of restriction is blindingly obvious for the whole title. There are some out there who will enjoy Hitman Absolution for what it is and I can clearly see why but for someone who doesn’t like being told what to do and how to do it, Dishonored is the one for me.