Okay, y'know what? This page looks fucking fantastic. I'm the writer, so I can brag about how fucking nice the art and colors are in this page. Leslie? Federico? You're both fucking amazing. I love you guys. Clearly one more than the other. Not sure if you'd want equal love.
I've gotten a bunch of BN and RC pages written ahead of time, so in my time between flat-coloring those pages, I've been playing Hitman: Absolution. It was free on PSN+ and it's something I've been meaning to play despite dreading everything I've heard about it because hey, it's a Hitman game. I love the Hitman games. They're smart, well-designed, and it's fun as hell being dropped into this big world to figure out how to kill a guy as efficiently and quietly as possible while keeping an escape plan in mind. Hitman: Absolution possesses none of these traits. It's loud, dumb, obnoxious, and has so many questionable design mechanics that are only frustrating and not fun. Disguises no longer serve any purpose since any other person wearing the same cowboy hat as you has photographic knowledge of every man wearing a cowboy hat in the world and will immediately blow your cover. The only way to prevent this is by using "instinct", which means tipping your hat to appear "natural". However, instinct has a limited use, so you can only tip your hat for so long before Agent 47's fingers simply stop functioning, blowing your disguise as an unnatural cowboy hat wearer. Beyond this, the writing is the most childish fucking garbage I've seen in a game yet. It forces so many fucking awful cutscenes on you whereas previous Hitman's would've just plopped you in an area with a simple briefing and told you to figure things out on your own. There's no traditional level design here, almost every area is a linear path with an objective pointing you in the right direction, and the game holds your hand towards it the entire way through.
There's so much I can complain about. As a stealth game, it functions just like every other fucking stealth game on the market. There's barely enough in its mechanics to differentiate it between the other Assassin's Creeds/Last of Us/Evil Within/Watchdogs/Batman third person cinematic experiences. But it's an awful fucking Hitman and its writing and hand-holding completely sucks any enjoyment you might have.
One of these days I'm going to play a game that I like enough to blog about. Until then, see you on SUNDAY. YES SUNDAY, WE'RE BACK TO THREE UPDATES A WEEK BABY