Decisions, decisions. What’s the best way to kill a well-guarded man in a crowded public square? Should we sprinkle his sushi with fugu poison? Quickly push him down a convenient open shaft when no one’s looking? Taint the drugs in his apartment? Or just take the direct approach and shoot him in the head? In Hitman: Absolution, the thrilling fifth game in the venerable stealth-action series, you have many ways to dispatch a mark, even one who’s surrounded by armed guards in the center of a bustling Chinatown market (as depicted in one of the game’s early missions). But taking someone out cleanly in this situation, without raising suspicion or inflicting collateral damage on civilians — all to earn the coveted rank of Silent Assassin — requires an abundance of patience and skill.

Told with stylish precision and grandiose flair, Absolution takes Lex Luthor look-alike and assassin-for-hire Agent 47 on a cinematic tour of America, from wealthy estates and small-town bars to a nunnery and the aforementioned Chinese marketplace, dropping him into tense situations where you have to choose whether to employ the finesse of a scalpel or the blunt force of a bludgeon. This particular journey is more personal for 47: it kicks off with him being ordered to assassinate Diana Burnwood, his handler at The Agency. Her final task for 47 forces him to go rogue, putting him at odds with both his former employers and new villain Blake Dexter (silkily voiced by the terrific Keith Carradine).

In this installment, 47 has a new bad-ass(assin) ability, Instinct, that lets you “see” the location of enemies and objectives, even through walls, and predict the movements of patrols. It’s a similar mechanic to Arkham City’s Detective Mode or Ezio’s Eagle Sense in Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, and it helps you plan out a long-range strategy in getting to your target. While disguised, holding down the Instinct button also lets you momentarily saunter past people who might otherwise guess your identity and alert authorities. Another useful Instinct ability, Point-Shooting, allows you to stop time and target a roomful of enemies in advance before blasting them all away. In a way it makes sense that 47 is so awesomely skilled that he just knows where everyone is at all times, but his Instinct vision is also so blatantly inspired by other games that we wish Absolution added touches to make it more unique to our follicly challenged anti-hero.

“Oops, did I do that?” Some assassinations can be messy for bystanders.

Wearing disguises and blending into crowds are good ways to avoid suspicion.

While Absolution is immensely fun to play, there’s one control issue that we hope Square Enix is able to patch. The Y button is pressed to interact with objects (picking up weapons, donning disguises), but you tap that same button to open chests (in which to hide bodies or yourself) and enter air vents. So if, say, a revolver is lying next to a laundry hamper, the interface may autoselect the revolver as the default object with which you can interact, which slows down — or makes impossible — your ability to hide and increases the chance you’ll get caught if a guard is breathing down your neck. Having the option to assign one of these tasks to a different button would've been immensely helpful.

Absolution has the pacing and exotic set-piece locations of a James Bond film, which seems appropriate given that 47 is essentially Bond stripped of his smirk, gadgets, and vices. The cutscene interludes between each gameplay level are lush and well-acted by the cast, artfully introducing each new scenario — typically tasking 47 with new assassination orders, but sometimes escaping or just infiltrating an area unnoticed. The new Glacier 2 game engine sparkles here, too, ably rendering large crowds and sprawling spaces with gritty realism. But it’ll take the most powerful engine of all to navigate this sandbox of murder and mayhem: your imagination.

Buy a new copy of Hitman: Absolution, and you'll gain access to the game’s Contracts mode (not shown). It allows you to create and share new scenarios online, and to compete with your friends to see who can score the best hit based on time, style, and witnesses.

PUBLISHER: Square Enix  •  DEVELOPER: IO Interactive  •  ESRB: Mature  •  MULTIPLAYER: None  •  ACHIEVEMENTS: Killer  •  COST: $60  •  RELEASE DATE: November 20, 2012

On Xbox 360

+ Exotically executed sandbox scenarios give you plenty of tools to make a killing.

+ A lengthy single-player story with a surprising emotional center.

– Control issues may make quick escapes difficult.

? How can Agent 47 see through walls without fancy gadgets or X-ray vision?

8.5