T w e n t y S i d e d

So then the animation glitches out and shoves the guard into 47. Then the AI glitches and goes stupidly hostile. Then the collision glitches out and won’t let the player escape the elevator. Then the game logic glitches and lets the player leave when foes are hostile.

Then the nuns. My goodness are those nuns infantile and infuriating. I know I keep saying this, but I’m not against games having same T&A in them. But this? This “fanservice as written by an adolescent” approach to putting tits in the game in unendurable. This is completely ridiculous, yet done without any humor, lampshading, self-awareness, or sense of fun.

Once you get to the lab, the level designers decide to take away your disguise and the keycards you’ve acquired. Then it shoves us into a simple linear “open this one door” situation. From there you enter an open area with a grand total of two disguises, so no matter what you do you need to be sneaking around like Splinter Cell instead of walking around like Hitman. Then it gives you an assassination target of someone you’ve never heard of, know nothing about, and have no reason to killI’m sure the briefing gives you a half-assed excuse, but it’s not like the story has set this up. It spent the last cutscene on the nuns., and in fact going after him should logically make it harder to achieve your real goal of rescuing the girl.

The environment design reminds me a great deal of Arkham Origins: The level designers just make “videogame levels” with no thought as to how these areas are used, how people would get around, or how they should connect to each other. It’s just random corridors.

This game is to Blood Money as Thi4f is to Thief. I know it’s supposedly the same studio, but it feels like a project given to a new team that had no interest or respect for the original work. This game is baffling.

But then Josh pushed the guy off a ledge so all is forgiven.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Here it is. The greatest episode of Spoiler Warning we’ve ever done, provided you’re normal like me and are obsessed with throwing people down holes, out windows, and over ledges.

Yes, this game has some problems. The plot is gibberish, story is atrocious, the themes are either dissonant or nonexistent, the levels are tiny, the mechanics are shallow, the environments are boring, the characters are schlock, the dialog is verbose and clunky, the cutscenes are torture, the save system is a crime, the ladies are all pandering fanservice, the fanservice is creepy sophomoric milquetoast, the puzzles are insultingly shallow, the voice acting is wooden, the character designs are ugly and cliche, the missions don’t fit with the franchise, and the gameplay is a mess. On the other hand, if we rate Absolution on the completely objective scale of “number of people you can push to their deaths”, then it ranks as one of the greatest videogames ever made.

Unrelated: There’s a balcony on my apartment that has a two-story drop to a concrete walkway. And nobody ever comes to visit.

Also, Rutskarn requested that I link to The Hole.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.