Whenever a game is given the title of black sheep by its fan base it is usually with a negative connotation, Hitman: Absolution being no exception. While personally I think the term doesn’t deserve or inherently equate to that notion, I struggle to make an argument for it in the case of this game. As my previous reviews of the four Hitman games up until this point have documented, the series has had such a strong uphill momentum with its advancement and expiration of its ideas and mechanics, culminating with Blood Money being an absolute masterclass in that field of design. But with this peak in design came the immortal dilemma of every long running series; do the developers stick with their guns and what they know, risking being labeled as monotonous and safe? Or do they stake out in a new, bold direction, potentially alienating fans by delivering a product that is different from what those fans have come to expect? I don’t believe there is a definitive answer to this, because there is hard evidence to the pros and cons to both paths. In the case of Absolution, however, it is very clear that Io Interactive went with the latter, and in the process, have become the textbook example of the subsequent negative outcome. That being said, there are some new additions that I feel would be great features in a game that more resembled the older games, rather than this more linear direction.

As mentioned, Io’s answer to their dilemma was to try something new, something more palatable. In interviews leading up to the games release, and in interviews since, they made it clear that their intention was to move away from the old Hitman formula that they felt was to abstract and could leave players confused, and instead implemented a design philosophy that more resembled popular games from that time like Gears of War or Call of Duty, that being linear experience that focused heavily on cinematics and set pieces. As well, while I can’t confirm this, I would assume the remaining developers who did work on Blood Money prior probably had some feeling like they had done all they could with the old style, contributing to the desire to move forward with the new. The result is a game that feels like it is eating itself from the inside out. Every design choice directly contradicts another and either makes it irrelevant, or breaks the gameplay flow in some way. One of the games newest features that it relies on heavily is the instinct system, this system is a consumable resource that the player can activate by pressing the bumper on the controller. The instinct ability lets the player utilize the disguises in each of the missions; this time around, if the player is wearing a disguise that other NPCs are wearing they will immediately become suspicious, the player must then use instinct to be able to walk past them without triggering alarms. This new change completely destroys any interest the player has in the disguise mechanic. The disguises in the older games worked because the player would put them on and then become near invisible to all NPCs, so long as they weren’t actually doing anything obviously suspicious; here though, the player must use instinct or else the disguise will flat out not work. On top of that, the only way to gain back instinct once it is used is to either complete objectives or challenges, or by just killing people. Challenges far to cryptic to be able to be done on a first playthrough, objectives complete themselves most of the time but are too far between each other, and killing random people goes entirely against the core idea behind this series; this leaves the entire instinct mechanic as a unnecessary hindrance on the overall experience, and the disguise practically forgotten about because the player quickly realizes they are more trouble than they are worth. The levels that suffer the most from this are definitely the three or so that take place in the Dead Factory. These missions are sprawling with guards, and almost nothing but guards, meaning the player just has to pray to god that they have enough instinct to get past all the security checkpoints. As well, the game's whole level structure is entirely upside down and makes zero sense half the time.

The best way I can describe this Aboslution’s levels is that they resemble shitty Splinter Cell levels. Again, they are extremely linear and are split up into checkpointed sections, which is not bad by any means, many games use this structure very well, Splinter Cell being one of them. The problem is that this is not a format the Hitman formula can fit in. Hitman thrives off having its levels be independent ecosystems that function without any player input, that way the player can study and exploit their patterns. Absolution has maybe one or two levels that I can think of that even somewhat resemble this idea, that being the opening sections of both Shaving Lenny and Skurky’s Law, outside of these two small parts the game is entirely reactive to the player. The example of this that pissed me off the most was that some enemies just straight up didn’t have patrol patterns and were completely static, only moving if the player did something to move them. While this was sometimes present in the older games, there was always a way to get around them by interacting with the level in some way, or they were at least isolated enough that the player could distract them with a coin or silenced gunshot to draw them away. In Absolution that is just not an option, these guards are often in highly populated areas and are directly in front of some important thing like a checkpoint exit or mission vital interable thing, meaning there is no clever way of getting around them without using instinct, which the player will probably not have much of because of how fast it drains. Additionally, there are plethora of new combat mechanics and skills 47 can do, such as a mark and execute mechanic straight out of Splinter Cell or Max Payne 3, but combat is still practically a death sentence, just like in the old games, once again highly discouraging the use of the new mechanics. Not to mention that the before mentioned mark and execute bullet time thing eats up a lot of instinct, further discouraging the use of it. These are only two examples of the many ways this game shoots itself in the foot, but despite that are a few things I enjoyed about, and that I think could be great implementations in future entries.

Firstly, the Glacier 2 engine looks fantastic, while I am not a fan of the weird grainy filter they put over the game, when it’s not noticeable, the game looks great. The guns also actually feel good to use for once, to the point that I almost wish the game took a more Max Payne direction with its design, leaning more into action rather than stealth. While the story wasn’t great and was full of so many plot holes and questionable decisions, the performances from the cast and the overall presentation was very enjoyable. The game's villain, Dexter, was a particular delight every time he was on screen, despite being dumb as all hell. Finally, the ability to lean against walls and ledges was a fantastic choice and really made stealth feel a lot smoother and slightly more cinematic somehow. I hope this feature returns in 2016. With that, Absolution ends the original Hitman run with a whimper, it is a game I can only really recommend out of pure morbid curiosity; I can’t even recommend the online mode as the servers were shut down years ago. It is a game only worth playing for the sheer fact that you can say you did.

I want to be entirely straightforward about the nature of this review; this is not a review of Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, this is a review of The Second Encounters HD remake and subsequent Xbox 360 port. I will not be going over the design of The Second Encounter, instead I want to discuss my gripes with the HD remake, and then the weird oddities of its console port. With that being said, this is by far the worst way to play what is probably my least favorite Serious Sam experience. I am already not the biggest fan of The Second Encounter, and the issues that stem both from its remake and port job only serve to make it a worse experience.

I will not regale you with the copious amounts of versions, re-releases, and ports that make up the Serious Sam franchise. The only important bits to know for the sake of this review is that the original Serious Sam games, The First and Second Encounters, were released in 2001 and 2002 respectively, and then were both remade come 2009 and 2010. These remakes, appropriately, remade the first two entries in the then new and fancy Serious Engine 3, and with that process came a complete new look. Weapons and enemies had brand new models, textures were upscaled to match the standards for the time, and add some nice new gibs and animations for some of the enemies. Of course, I am probably not touching everything these remakes set out to do, but that is the gist. The problem I have with these remasters is that, in the process of making everything, quite literally, shiny, Croteam severely messed up any sense of art style and cohesion that these games had. The First Encounter gets off slightly easier because the Egypt aesthetic is consistent throughout, so while it is still very shiny and plastic look to it, like every model and texture looks like they have a cheap RTX filter on them at all times, it at least isn't a complete aesthetic shift every couple of levels. The Second Encounter has both the aforementioned Botox injection, and the drastic aesthetic shift; the latter isn’t that big of a deal in the original versions of the game, but here, with the horrible upscaled textures and really shiny everything, it is much more jarring. On top of that, The Second Encounter features levels that take place in massive outdoor areas, but because every surface looks like it was freshly polished near minutes before Sam got there, all of the plants and grass that look normal in the original, look drastically unnatural. As well, a lot of the weapon models were taken directly from the original Xbox port and then upscaled, which does not look good. These models were made for lower resolution textures, and so they also look slightly out of place. But that is all aesthetic criticism, there are some technical critiques I have.

This port does carry over a lot of the bugs that are present in the original PC release, such as enemies getting stuck on walls and terrain, but the port does have some of its own dedicated bugs. Firstly, and the one that was most baffling, is that the AI pathfinding is absurdly broken. It's not that noticeable at first, but as soon as the player reaches the alleyway fight in City of the Gods, it makes itself apparent. In the larger, more open combat arenas, such as the before mentioned encounter, almost all of Ziggurat, and especially in The Grand Cathedral, enemies just start bolting off the complete opposite direction of the player, or worse, the strafe around them. I can not tell you how much ammo was wasted due to these bugs, it is almost impossible to hit enemies that fall victim to these bugs, and it completely destroys the combat structure the game is so dependent on. I am unaware if this bug is present in the PC version, but I never hear it brought up when this game is in discussion, so I can only assume it is a problem in this port. As well, being a PC to console port during the 7th generation of consoles, there are some slight performance issues, and some sluggish controls. There is some slight texture pop in with some of the bigger maps, and some frame drops when a big amount of enemies are on screen, and the load times are just painstakingly long. They make dying so much more of a pain because you are just sitting there on the loading screen scorned by whatever got a cheap shot at you from around a corner. The controls aren't that bad, I have definitely played worse, but they fail in comparison to the smoothness of the original Xbox port. They are very choppy and feel like it's trying to emulate mouse movement. Additionally, the two methods of swapping weapons are not the best; the player can either use the shoulder bumpers to linearly cycle throw weapons, or use the D-pad to open up a weapon wheel to specifically select one. These aren't bad options, but they really should be swapped, like how they are in the 2017 Fusion release of the game, because the Xbox 360 D-pad is probably the worst D-pad out there, and using the bumpers takes way too long during high octane combat encounters.

And that's really it. I would not recommend playing either the original 2010 release of The Second Encounter HD, or its Xbox 360 port. If you are interested in this series in any way, I would highly suggest you either check out the classic release of the game, the original Xbox port, or the modern 2017 Fusion build that is available on PC and all modern consoles, there is no reason to go back and play this version, if only to say that you have like me.

After a couple months of messing around with Dead Space's spin offs and extended universe, I have finally reached the actual sequel for the game I played all the way back in January, and I must say, the wait was well worth it. The team over at EA Redwood Shores, now Visceral Games, identified the few shortcomings of the first Dead Space game, and rectified them, creating one of the most true survival horror experiences that I have played in a while. Honestly, it felt more akin to the roots of the genre than I think even the Resident Evil remakes did when I played through those. A lot like the series signature plasma cutter, Dead Space 2 is a tight, clean, efficient experience; it wastes none of the player's time and is extremely tense throughout its entire run time. Though, I do think some of the parts that make it such a tense experience are where a lot of its downsides come from.

In my review for the first Dead Space, I mentioned how I felt the game struggled with creating a terrifying atmosphere, as well as being somewhat bland with its environments and overall aesthetic. These complaints stemmed from the fact the game refused to leave the player alone, always having someone talking directly to Isaac, or by not leaving any ambiguity and leading the player directly to where they need to be; this not being helped by the very bland looking environments that looked like scraped concept art for Doom 3. So, I am very glad to say that they improved on both of these aspects quite a lot. Firstly, Isaac talks now. I never would have thought that simply having the player character talk could be so integral to creating tension, but it is. By giving Isaac a voice, the developers dissolved the need for the other characters to be constantly hounding the player with objectives, and trying to force agency where there is none .Now there is clear and effective agency because Isaac is his own person who can express personal wants and create his own objectives; no longer does he feel like an errand boy to the other characters, instead he actually feels like the main protagonist. As well, by having Isaac be more independent, there is much more room for the fear to build, and for anticipation to fester. There are now long stretches of time where the player goes without any sort of meaningful interactions with NPCs, meaning that they are going to be alone with their thoughts way more often, which is the key to creating good horror. To add to the fear factor, the game's environments are so much more varied and creative than that of the Ishimura. The game’s setting is a giant city colony orbiting Jupiter called The Sprawl, think the giant ship from Wall-E, but way bigger. Throughout his journey, Isaac stumbles through every possible corner of The Sprawl; from the medical wing that he wakes up in, a (formerly) bustling entertainment complex, an absolutely terrifying elementary school sector, a decadent Unitologist church, a sprawling mine and cave system, to, what is most definitely my favorite area, the quarantined remains of the Ishimura. All of these environments are so much different from the last, each offering new aesthetics paired with challenges that are appropriate to the area. A few of my favorites would be how the new velociraptor necromorphs use the church’s daunting collection of pillars to play mind games with the player and flank them; the necromorph babies and children that wander the halls of the school, and how the Ishimura is just this imposing scar throughout its entire chapters run time, filling the player with memories of dread with every familiar area they come across. As well, the general pacing of each chapter feels so much smother; gone are the individual levels of the first game that start and stop with a tram ride, in their place is now a much more Resident Evil 4 style structure that flows into itself very well, letting the world feel interconnected and not like individual parts. The RE4 comparison doesn’t stop there, however, as I think the developers finally got what made RE4’s combat so great.

Again, to reference my review of the first Dead Space, I described that game's combat as an imitation of Resident Evil 4’s, but without the understanding and nuance that made it so great. I think I can confidently say now, though, that they not only understand it, but made it their own thing. The first Dead Space took the surface level ideas of focusing on location based damage and a wide arsenal of weapons, and kind of did only that. The stasis concept was neat, but definitely not fully explored, and while the focus on cutting off enemy limbs is really cool, it is functionally not different than a headshot. Dead Space 2, however, fully expands on both of those ideas, while also fully embracing the RE4 style sense of momentum that made that game such a classic. RE4 does a lot of things right, but what it does obscenely well is creating a sense of forward momentum; it is hard to describe what I mean by forward momentum, but I think the best way I could is that the make the player constantly push forward, and that is the same feeling Dead Space 2 invokes. The player is constantly pushing through hoards of necromorphs,and through set piece after set piece at lightning speed, constantly keeping the player engaged and on their toes. I got physically exhausted my first time playing RE4, and I get the same feeling here; my heart rate is through the roof every waking minute. Stasis has now been revamped so that it can also launch, as well as freeze and carry them. Because of this, there is a much bigger focus on using the necromorphs severed limbs as projectiles in order to save ammunition. This creates a whole new layer of thinking for the player, on top of prioritizing targets based on who they perceive as more deadly, the player must also think about which enemies have the easiest limbs to cut off so that they don’t have to use up ammo, completely flipping the dynamic of the game on its head, and leading to really intense combat encounters. As well, ammo pickups have been made more scarce in order to encourage this playstyle. This is a great addition that really makes the game stand apart from both its inspirations, and even newer games. But like with every game, there are still some less than favorable aspects that accompany it.

While the combat is way more dynamic and way more exhilarating, some of the enemy placements and spawns are just baffling. There are a sizable number of encounters that have the necromorphs just appear behind the player out of thin air, and while I am sure that they had some animation that showed them coming out of a vent, in the heat of combat when I am facing an entirely different direction, with my back to the end of a hallway that I new was clear a second ago, it feels really cheap. I think this could have been made slightly better if maybe each of the necromorphs had more distinct sounds, or at least some sort of doppler like effect that would let the player know if one was coming. Alas, no, the player just has to suffer. But really that is my only complaint, because other than that it is a fantastic game that is well worth anybody’s time. The atmosphere is great, the combat is phenomenal, the story is very intriguing, though I don’t want to discuss it for spoilers and what not. As well, the voice work in this game is very well done and really helps to make deeper connections with the characters; I am also very glad to see they kept with the very diverse dialects and accents from Extraction, that was something that I thought made the universe of Dead Space feel a bit more real. Again, highly recommend.