8 Stealth Video Games Where Stealth SUCKS

Six years after the brilliant Hitman: Blood Money, the premiere stealth franchise finally returned with Hitman: Absolution, which invoked the ire of the fanbase by ditching the series' open-ended nature for more linear, confined levels. Between this and the game's thoroughly restrictive disguise system, players used to having countless options for dispatching targets were severely more limited in their decision-making.

The complexity and creativity of the prior Hitman games were carved out for something more casual-friendly and action-orientated, enough to suggest that new publisher Square-Enix wanted to make the game appealing to a wider gamut of gamers.

Absolution took the well-honed formula of Blood Money and tossed it out for presumably cynical reasons. In its bones this felt less like a Hitman game than someone else producing a glossy, superficial knock-off. 

The mechanical finesse just wasn't there, ensuring the prior thrill of skulking around as Agent 47 had all but evaporated.