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Video Games » Review - Hitman - Absolution - Xbox 360

written by owen, published 2025-Feb-08, comment

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I was playing Assassin's Creed 2 but my Xbox350E started acting up again - shutting down everytime it tried to read the disc drive. So I popped in a new disc and gave the power supply a few quick taps and it stayed on. I think something is wrong with the power supply - I need to buy a new one at some point.

HitmanA is good. The graphical style is nice and the UI has more buttons that I remember from the PS2 versions. I haven't played them in years so my memory of them might be a bit foggy. I loved HM:BloodMoney and this feels pretty close except with quicktime CQC events. I am playing the game on easy as I mentioned in my overall xbox360 game play strategy. Easy mode makes you a tank but you miss out on the ingame challenges so I will replay each stage on normal after I beat them on easy.

What can I say about Hitman:AB? It is the bomb. The large crowds, cinematic set pieces, shadow filled rooms, the lights, the sound, the chaos when things go sideways, everything really gets turned up compared to the limitations of HM:BM on the PS2. Currently on level 3 but I am fully enjoying this game. So much so that I switched the difficulty to Normal so that I can take advantage of the optional in game challenges in each level. The controls are initially a bit confusing but all the elements are there for a great time. I have replayed the stages a few times and I love that when things go south you can still shoot, salvage or soft reset the level.

I had heard complaints about the more controlled "movie like" nature of this game in comparison to the previous entries but I do not mind it at all. The segmented sections allow for setups that were not possible in the older games. Setups which are like mini-puzzles in a bigger level.

One thing that is annoying is how the xbox achievement pops up at key moments during the game play taking you out of the game. Sometimes the popup even overlaps and you do not get to read the description text before another one appears. Maybe this is just an xbox thing. I eventually turned off xbox notifications of in the system settings - I do not miss them at all.

Conclusion

This is a 9/10 game. Nice and neat. Loads quickly, restarts are quick. Play hitman for the doors and corners. Normal mode is fine. If you love slow paced stealth games this should definitely be in your collection.

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Office Space » 4 phones

written by owen, published 2025-Feb-06, comment

July 2023

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Video Games » Review - Borderlands 1 - Xbox 360

written by owen, published 2025-Feb-04, comment

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After finishing Rage I felt like continuing my dystopian-mad-max lifestyle so I decided to play Borderlands 1. After hearing about this game for years I was surprised at how "janky" it felt. The game feels "old" right off the bat. You have jank enemies and rabid dogs which are both bullet sponges. Enemies dont react when shot in the face or legs. Considering that the game was released in 2009 versus Rage which is 2011 alot could have improved so I may have played the games in the wrong order.

I started out aiming to play the most recent version of every game series but this game was packaged in a multi-pack with BioShock + Xcom: EU so it was hard to resist combo deal. I probably should have started with BL2(2012) instead but it is too late now. Unless I sell the multi-pack?

The game play

The game is full of stats and random bloat everywhere and NPCs talking over each other if you move around while they are talking. I imagine that this was how it was in the old days before modern games started to lock you into one place whenever you interact with a NPC. The UI for the game is like an old DOS GUI from 1990 - too many lists and sub categories for things that could be icons. There is no obvious way to put the game on easy so I guess I will have to play through this as it is. It starts out with the basic fetch quests in an uninteresting cell shaded wasteland with lots of little collectible chests with $10 or 5$ inside. Total busy work even worse than the bottles in Rage. At least in the case of Rage they were sprinkled lightly around the level instead of in every corner or pile of shit.

I realized early on that there were limits on everything; limits on grenades, weapons you could carry, bullets. Everything is tied to your level progression. I was getting mobile game vibes. Combined with the lack of stopping power from the guns, random drops of slightly better guns, enemies that get harder as you level up. I was getting bad vibes from this game. Returning to the same person after every quest just to get another pointless collect-a-thon in the same place is likely to get boring really fast plus I had to deal with the annoying dogs. Then the dogs started jumping, spitting goo, and creating radial explosions.

I also notice that there is something off about the in game map or how it corresponds to the level layout - its weird and doesn't flow well.

So I played for a couple hours and have come to conclusion that this game is looter shooter-grind fest. The quests are boring and everything is tied to the leveling system. The enemies are always a level or 2 higher than you are and I end up looking for tactics to cheese them instead of approaching them head on. I used the soldier class and even then I found that I had to be very careful when approaching encampments, sniping the first couple enemies then throwing grenades (which are also limited to your level), then camping as the dogs bomb rush me. There is no way to surprise enemies, they magically detect you as soon as you are close.

No way to avoid enemies as the map layout forces you down a narrow path. Frequent stops are further hampered by the clunky interface for collecting loot - because its clunky its very hard to collect the fetch quest items while enemies are in the area. You can accept multiple quests but the questing system is set up in such as way that some items do not appear if you are not on that assigned quest - so you end up visiting an area multiple times, switching from quest screen to map screen, back and forth. I may have mentioned that the map screen is kinda weird. The map is like a representation of the game world but not exactly so causing confusion.

The real kicker for me was when I got a gun that I could not use because its level was higher than my current level. At that point I was done. Not only were you limited in how much you can carry but also which perks you could use and at which point in time. The game is a carefully crafted "waste of time" progression system where you collect random trinkets for NPCs that never move from their assigned location. It is a ancient game loop, this game might have been the original sin. who knows.

Conclusion

I am going to put this game on the back burner. 5/10. Ain't got not time to waste grinding levels for minute rewards and boring enemy Ai. Skip this game, try Borderlands 2 instead.

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