There was the Chinatown mission of course, which is also segued rather haphazardly into the story, but that's all so far. Plenty of stealth gameplay, but nothing like setting up traps or anything like that. What this then means, as of now where I'm at, is that there's been a noticeably distinct lack of any actual Hitman'ing.

As you may have already gathered, this is a much more cinematic game than prior Hitman titles and there are a lot more cutscenes and an actual driving narrative behind it all.

Having a scoring meter up top, and not to mention all of the challenges and item/costume checklists and what have you, make for some incentives to perhaps play through levels multiple times even if there hasn't been a whole lot of variety as of yet.

Much more versatility when it comes to how you want to sleuth, not the least of which of course is the cover system and the ability to move around whilst crouched.

Weird, wacky and at times downright terrifying rag-doll physics in full effect!.

Plus the game has done a good job in hinting at what you will clearly grab the attention of the guards.

Streamlined controls and interface, so you won't be accidentally pulling out your gun in the middle of a crowd or something.

Solid amount of incidental dialogue to listen to throughout the environments.

Sure, playing this as a shooter is now more accessible than ever, but at the same time the stealth stuff has been expanded about as much.

A lot of customisation at your fingertips you can play as strict as you wish by essentially turning off everything and relying on your own instincts and patience.

Agent 47 is one impressive character model overall almost disturbingly bright blue eyes, though.

Game looks great, especially the facial animations, and it has some effectively moody atmosphere.

I'll do up a list of pros and cons as of now, after playing through what are essentially the first 4-5 chapters: Now I'm not very far, but I've played enough to establish some thoughts and overall, I'm kinda mixed. I just so happened to be one of the lucky ones, and while I haven't completed it yet, I've gotten up to the part in the library with all of the cops from that debut gameplay demo way back when.

So I noticed some people have managed to snag the game early, and of course the entire thing can be found on youtube.

Demo hitman absolution ps3