Play H2SA and then go play absolution (assuming you’re done with Contracts).
The best part of absolution is the diary. It’s got way more 47 voice lines in a couple levels than the rest of the series combined. If you’re not into the linear style of the game I’d still say play it on easy difficulty just to know the story once and at each level you go to one of the pause screens and Bateson has a diary of sorts that is really entertaining.
This is probably the best review of the game I have ever seen. “This game is at its most fun when left on the pause screen” would also be my review of the game. Also no human should play Absolution for the story.
I didn’t say it’s most fun on pause lol, but i take your meaning.
It’s not my fav game either but I do enjoy the 2 or 3 proper sandboxes (including the one without a target), and as a die hard fan of the series I think anyone else on HMF should burn through it once (just play on easy and shoot everything that moves).
I know but all it would have taken is a few minor edits and another word or two.
I will say out of all of the levels I like Death Factory, they really commit to the weapons factory setting.
If you did have to play it that would be the way.
While I disagree, to be fair, it is basically just Taken with hillbillies and strippers, so if you can picture that, you already know the story, get to the playing.
Corrected it for you.
corrected it for you 
I’ll never understand these fans who hate Blood Money, Absolution, or any game in the series. And do spare me the spiel about how a real fan holds the thing they’re a fan of to a certain quality and can dislike something it produces that doesn’t meet that quality and blah blah blah. I didn’t buy that cheap ass argument for Metallica or Godzilla, and I won’t buy it here. Folks are just picky and weird.
So says the guy who still won’t stop bitching about the electrocution phone, of course.
I think I found the problem!
I absolutely despise Absolution’s writing, and the game wants to be story driven. Even without that it’s so grotesquely disgusting to me so I just cannot look past it.
So I despise Absolution. Simple as that.
(also the “all enforcers to your disguise, no social stealth, linear” gameplay is plain bad, no matter how much they learned for the WoA for the room size gameplay loops)
Not really. I’ve heard that part and don’t buy it. Give me something new, otherwise it’ll just continue to be a mystery.
Well, I guess in that case it really will remain something I never get. I love the story of Absolution, and its linear gameplay is no more restrictive than the first three games, so I guess his one will remain dark forever to me.
Still doesn’t explain the hate Blood Money gets.
it’s pretty simple: people like what they like and don’t like what they don’t like.
i think it’d be weird if people liked things purely out of, what, brand loyalty…?
oh, and i think metallica are just the worst. yey-yah!
You can’t convince me an album that begins with the lyric “My lifestyle determines my deathstyle” followed by the sound of someone banging on an oil drum to be anything other than the worst album since Metal Machine Music.
i uh i love that album. genuinely. 
No, not brand loyalty, but I have never come across anything that had multiple installments, with one of them so profoundly different than the others that I disliked it. No matter what the form of entertainment, if I like a thing, every part of that thing is similar enough to the others that I like all of them, in different ways, but they are all under the same umbrella of enjoyment. I don’t understand people who do not do the same, or somehow believe that an installment of something they like is different enough to warrant dislike.
You’re wrong, but, at least that implies you don’t like them in any part. To continue my point, I don’t understand the concepts of fans of “old Metallica” and “new Metallica.” I’m “all Metallica.”
Don’t worry AllMusic and Pitchfork do as well. You like the noisier stuff and if there is one perfect adjective to describe that album it is noisy.
Good thing there’s no such album. The one you seem to be referring to begins with the lyric “If I could have my wasted days back, would I use them to get back on track?”
growing up, my bedroom was next to a room with a broken washing machine. i think that may be the ground zero of my musical taste.
okay, but that’s you. that doesn’t necessarily apply to anyone else.
for example: i love hitman, yet find absolution veers far enough from the strengths i appreciate about the series (biggest one being the level design closely followed by story focus) that i don’t like it.
believe it or not, i really wanted to like it.
a lot of folk don’t like splinter cell: conviction, far cry 2, skyward sword, mass effect andromeda, dead space 3, ff xiii, dark souls 2, mgs 4, etc.
anecdotally, i’m not sure this applies for music. isn’t it fairly common for people to like a few songs from an artist but not the rest…?
Well, humanity does have a lot of evolving to do yet.
Hence why such instances are a case of the person liking the songs, not the artist. I’m not a fan of Taylor Swift, for example, but I’m fond of precisely four of her songs. A totally separate situation to my being a fan of Metallica, in which I am a fan of the band itself, and their repertoire falling in full under that banner as a matter of course.
I haven’t gotten far into dark souls 2 (mostly due to elden ring releasing), but what i played of it seemed pretty fun.
and mgs4 is unironically ironically one of my favorite mgs games, I probably enjoy absolution for the same reasons
which shows that even in the obvious outliers theres outliers