When playing to its strengths, Hitman: Absolution is a genuinely great game. Overall, though, it feels slightly disappointing, simply because it doesn’t spend enough time playing to those strengths. Too much time is spent trawling through levels which feel like filler.

Hitman: Absolution was a bit of a mystery to me. I had no idea what the word Absolution meant in the title, but it refers to being absolved or completely forgiven for your sins.

Hitman: Absolution follows Agent 47, a cold-blooded assassin, who takes on his most dangerous contract to date. Betrayed by those he once trusted - and now hunted by the police - he suddenly finds himself at the center of a dark conspiracy and must embark on a personal journey through a corrupt and...

Killing someone is easy. You can shoot him in the head, stab him with a knife, or push him off a ledge. But if writers didn't think out of the box and wow audiences with creative displays of bloodshed, movies wouldn't be so exciting.

Has there ever been a year with more assassination games in it I'm not sure there has. Certainly never so many high-profile games. Hitman has been around for a long time, but with Dishonored and Assassin's Creed III both recently released, the stealth action genre has more competition than ever.

Stealth games as a genre have been in decline this generation. We've seen video game publishers move away from games like Hitman: Absolution in recent

The long-awaited fifth entry to the Hitman franchise succeeds in some respects. It looks beautiful, the stealth is well-developed and Contracts mode...

Beautiful graphics; Instinct Mode is well implemented; Contracts has a lot of potential

Small levels; Linear sections; Weak story and characterisation

IO Interactive gives Hitman another shot and what a good shot it is; this might be the effort that will save the Hitman series. Agent 47 is back and is now hunted by the agency he once trusted and worked for.

Between speed runs, marathon sessions, completionist efforts, and miscellaneous extracurricular activity, "time" is a powerfully associative element to our gaming habit. If an adventure is too short or too long we feel cheated or exploited, regardless of the content therein.

Hitman: Absolution is the sequel to Blood Money that fans have been itching for. In terms of game mechanics it's the best Hitman that IO Interactive has ever created, although the lack of inherently unique settings is a disappointment.