After 3 trophy-fuelled re-releases of the previous Hitman games in the series, in the form of a HD collection, which produced a moderate to low-end hard string of lists, Hitman Absolution most definitely comes in as the easiest Platinum trophy of them all, and never quite manages to throw up any sort of real challenge within the whole list.
The lists contained within the 3 previous HD collection games were very similar to one another, and Absolution takes a very different approach to it's trophy list than what was seen before.
The most obvious difference is the size of the list, and Absolution packs a significantly larger amount of trophies than the other Hitman games. The most notable thing about the list is that fact is packs a ton of progression based trophies that revolve around completing the games 20 levels and, in a few instances, making the right choices, or finishing levels using different methods. There are 21 trophies that can be earned through simply playing the game from start to finish, which is just shy of half the entire list.
The "Absolution" trophy, awarded for completing Hitman : Absolution on any professional difficulty, will mean you do have to play through the game in it's entirety in any mode that falls under professional, and anything on a lesser difficulty is not rewarding in the trophy list, which doesn't exactly give you much of a choice if you're trophy hunting.
Difficulty modes have also been drastically changed from the previous Hitman games, which is actually a big part of the reasoning behind why this game is the easiest in the series. Where beating the game on Professional difficulty meant actually beating the game on it's toughest mode previously, Absolution splits 5 difficulty levels under 2 headings. "Enhanced" mode will cover easy and normal difficulty, and "Professional" mode will cover hard, expert and purist difficulties.
This means you can play through the game on the average difficulty (which is hard mode), and since it still falls under the "Professional" category, you'll still earn the "Absolution" trophy. Hard mode isn't terribly difficult at all, and the majority of the difficulty contained within the game itself is all mental and figuring out the best ways to complete a level without blowing your cover and getting killed. You might need to be prepared to be patient, and use a fair amount of trial and error as you constantly make poor errors of judgement during levels, but it will never get to the point where it becomes frustrating, nor too difficult to understand what you actually need to do.
If you're playing the game as intended, and want to take on a stealthy, low risk approach, it can be a long game, clocking in at around 20-25 hours from start to finish, plus anything else you might need after in terms of clean up on the trophy list, so it's a pretty modest time estimation.
The "Grand Master" trophy, awarded for completing 100 challenges, is the only other Gold trophy in the list, and the only other trophy of real significant note too. Challenges are just level specific objectives, and each of the game's 20 levels contains a handful of these challenges to complete along the way, with the whole story containing 278 challenges, so the margin for error is actually quite high.
With that being said, you most likely won't unlock 100 challenges just through just natural progression, and it does pay to read up on the list of challenges prior to beginning each level. Not only will they give you significant clues to eliminating targets and finishing levels, it will also minimise further replays later on when you're polishing up the list, and could drastically cut down on the estimated Platinum completion time.
Most of the challenges are quite straight forward, and some of them overlap into other trophies included in this list, and although some will offer a harder challenge, it's not really necessary to push for the harder challenges when you don't even need to complete the vast majority of them for the trophies you need, so it's always better just to stick to the simple ones and spare the extra effort.
The "Jack of All Trades" trophy, awarded for Collecting all Play Styles, requires you to fulfil a number of criteria to unlock all 20 different styles of play in the game. Most of these tasks are easy enough, but you'll need to look up the requirements, which are locked until you fulfil them, and you'll also need to find out the best levels to achieve them within, given the fact that certain play style challenges will only be achievable in conditions that exist in a couple of levels throughout the game. It's a little bit fiddly, but nothing more than that.
The "Information is Power" trophy, awarded for Collecting all evidence, requires you to pick up every piece of evidence strewn throughout the game's story levels. Most evidence is easy enough to find if you're thorough in your search, though a small handful of them are actually well hidden and will require some out of the box thinking to find and pick up.
It's also important to note that collecting all evidence for each level will fulfil a challenge towards the "Grand Master" trophy, and you can always go back to level select and collect any missing evidence later. The game will also tell you which sections of a specific level you're missing the evidence from too, which makes it slightly easier to track down afterwards if you've missed a fair chunk of them and there are always various visual guides you can call upon if you're still somehow struggling.
Despite the list being very heavily emphasised on the Single Player main story, the Multiplayer contracts mode also gets some very slight attention too, though you won't be required to play through the mode in any great excess to collect all the trophies attached to it.
The "Set for Life" trophy, awarded for earning 1 million contract dollars, might require you to play through a handful of competitive contracts and there are a ton of easy contracts that have big pay-offs available, which makes that total more readily achievable, but everything else barely scratches the surface of the mode, and simply liking other players contracts and completing a few tutorials are the sorts of criteria you need to fulfil to unlock everything the Multiplayer mode has to offer.
Overall, this isn't just the easiest Hitman game with a Platinum trophy, it's one of the easiest games with a Platinum trophy too. The Single Player portion of the game will test your thinking capabilities, and you will need to be clever to complete levels in the correct manner to unlock challenges and fulfil objectives in the correct ways, but it never really pushes you to any limits. The fact that you technically don't need to complete the game on the hardest difficulty available, unlike previous Hitman games, is also a crucial and decisive factor, and the sheer amount of progression based trophies is hugely overloaded in this list.
The Multiplayer side of the list is even easier still, which tops off what is a very straight forward Platinum trophy that seldom presents a genuine gaming challenge. It might take a generous chunk of your time to beat the game and go through the process of trophy clean up, but you can easily bag this Platinum within 30 hours.
Notable Trophies -
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| Absolution - Complete Hitman Absolution on any professional difficulty Grand Master - Complete 100 challenges Jack of All Trades - Collect all play styles Information is Power - collect all evidence |
Grand Master
Complete 100 challenges
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