Absolution is a fun, third-person action-adventure game; it just isn't worthy of the Hitman name.
The prologue mission is, sadly, a tease, and it's a cruel one at that. Though not exactly fresh off of Blood Money, the previous entry in the series, I came into Absolution expecting at least the option, if not the suggestion, of being stealthy. The prologue mission allows you to get through it without much of a problem, and it's reminiscent of the "Death of a Showman" tutorial from Blood Money; linear, sure, but also evocative of everything the game has to offer. Once you get into the later missions, however, you'll realize something is dreadfully wrong. You'll get into corridors that have one exit, you'll evade helicopters shooting at you, and sadly enough, you'll encounter a target whom you are forced to kill in a boxing match in order to get the silent assassin rating (paradoxically). Some missions do offer a veneer of choice: for example, in one mission, I could push my target off the roof, poison her food with blowfish serum, or use a silenced sniper rifle to take her out silently.
Sadly, however, the near-open-world choices that Blood Money gave you are not here, due mostly in part to the terribly-designed uniform system. Unlike in Blood Money, where the top disguise could get you in anywhere, without suspicion, in Absolution, you have to burn "instinct," a sort-of focus meter that allows you to see enemies, avoid notice, and initiate a "point-shooting" feature. Any Hitman fan could tell you that these features might be cool in games like Splinter Cell: Conviction (another disappointing sequel), but they don't belong in a Hitman game. This makes it so that a disguise is, essentially, useless. Once you're out of instinct, you can't move freely anymore, so you have to resort to stealth once more. Though I'm a fan of stealth, I'm not a fan of doing it when it's forced upon me because of bad game mechanics. Sure, in reality, a guard you've never seen before doing something suspicious might be, well, suspicious, in a game it's a point of realism that doesn't really belong. In a game where the protagonist is a genetically-engineered clone designed to kill people, making disguises suspicious is a mark of overbearing design.
Stealth is further made harder by the frustrating and idiotic exclusion of the quicksave system. It makes trial-and-error gameplay, a hallmark of the Hitman series, that much harder. Instead, we have a checkpoint system that simply does not occur frequently enough. In previous games, if you got into a firefight as a result of a blown cover, it was a simple and easy matter to simply reload your save. In Absolution, you'll consistently feel the dread of having to replay a whole section because your disguise was blown by too much notice. The fact that your cover can be blown whilst standing still is dumb - that you can't correct for your mistakes in easy fashion is much, much worse.
Clearly, the concept of stealth in Absolution has been forgotten, or at least shoved aside in favor of action and violence. The game isn't all bad, however, if you examine it from that lens. It's a beautiful game, with great lighting and fantastic environments. You'll go from decrepit Chicago hotels to graveyards, from factories to Chinatown. The voice-acting is superb, and enemies look and sound more realistic than ever. They carry on proper conversations, and give lines that are contextual to their location and rank. It's really great to see guards react to your previous accomplishments, and hear the fear in their voices as they realize they're next on your list. The weapon variety is fantastic, with bricks, knives, batons, morning stars and the trademark fibre-wire (among others) giving the melee range a bit of needed supplementation. The kidnapping-story may be a bit cheesy (along the lines of Man of Fire), and certainly out of place in the context of the Hitman games, but it's still well-executed. It's also a bit refreshing to see the traditional mission system done away with, instead with missions linked to one another (though this limits the potential variety in the game).
It's disappointing that these features couldn't have existed in a Blood Money-esque game. I would have forgiven the developers for not matching the bar that Blood Money set; after all, the game is arguably the best in the series, with replayability even seven years later. Yet when they decide to deviate almost entirely from the tried-and-true formula, and instead opt for a very un-Hitman-like game, I can't forgive them. It's a failed entry in the series. It's worth a single playthrough; Hitman games, however, should demand, if not force, multiple playthroughs.