Hitman: Absolution (Gameplay #8) - Baby, Light My Fire [Purist Difficulty]
1For better and worse, the goals I've set myself in Hitman: Absolution have changed quite a bit from when I started playing the game. Initially the idea was to play one medium difficulty with a relatively strict stealth approach but leave the Silent Assassin challenges ((which involve being undetected and killing your targets in ways which are virtually indistinguishable from accidents) for the genre veterans who have far more patience and creativity than I do. However, a few levels in I switched to the highest difficulty and a while later I also started to become seriously interested in those silent assassinations - partly due to having read up on the somewhat Byzantine score system - which resulted in some satisfying achievements but also a considerable amount of time-consuming trial-and-error as well as noticeably increased frustration.
By now I'm pretty far into Hitman: Absolution, and at this point in the game it's not at all easy for me to figure out what the most silent takedown is (which often boils down to a pure adventure game-style puzzle exercise) and/or how to execute a good plan without messing things up badly. Since I'm not smart enough to come up with better solutions, there's been a lot of "throw object X there to get enemy Y's attention" in my Neanderthal-like attempts at brute-forcing (so to speak) a satisfyingly silent level clear. All things considered, as mentioned in a previous video description I do feel that most of my problems with Hitman: Absolution come from a misguided completionist approach, which is ultimately my own fault and can't reasonably be blamed on the developers.
Either way, my recent experience with the game has only confirmed an earlier observation about the sheer complexity of these seemingly tiny levels are. Trying to break them down into individual components and analyze the dizzying interconnected web of enemy patrol routes and scripted scenes which make up the environments makes you realize just what a rigorously crafted stealth adventure this is.