Feels like 'proper' Hitman, mixed with new ideas of varying quality. Crucially, it's great fun, and you'll want to play Absolution through more than once

Brilliant ideas; densely packed; Brutal kills married to IO's trademark humour; One of this generation's finest stealth games; The premise of Contracts mode..

..; is slightly better than the execution, Smaller, more linear sandboxes, Save system

I know that's probably a sin within the hardcore hitman community, but I absolutely love this game. It so much fun. I wouldn't say it's on par with my favorite hitman game, blood money, but it changes the formula up enough to make this game unique and amusing.

Hitman: Absolution is an intense mix of serenity and obscenity, its foul-mouthed criminals and grubby henchmen adding a layer of thick grime to otherwise quaint small-town streets and warm desert sands.

The best missions are open-ended and allow you to be stealthy or shooty; Stealth gameplay is tense and challenging; Excellent production values instill a strong sense of place

AI inconsistencies diminish the action; Multiple linear; anticlimactic sequences

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.

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.

Hitman's past has been as cold and calculated as its murderous anti-hero, each game cloned from the last to create a technically better...

Varied missions with seemingly limitless options; Sleek; sexy style; Bountiful improvements to the basic gameplay

A sometimes muddled story; That there aren't enough traditional levels; Seriously; whats up with the bloom lighting

IO Interactive tapped into something unique in 2000 when Hitman: Codename 47 was released. There's always been this vision in popular entertainment of the well-dressed, urbane contract killer, and 47 emobodied that vision perfectly.

Elaborate environments overflow with murderous possibilities; Huge amount of content; One of the best-looking games of this generation; Contracts forces you to approach the same locales from different perspectives

Too-limited field of view when hiding inside of containers; Contracts would be stronger with more specific kill requirement possibilities

Hitman: Blood Money was released more than six years ago, but I feel that it aged better than many games of its time, and this only made fans of this assassination series by IO Interactive more antsy as the developers spent years away from the franchise that made them famous.

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.

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