Actually, it's pretty easy to understand, for the following reasons:

• The story is absolute crap. Both the ridiculous overarching narrative (Knights Templar, or Aliens or whatever, you'll still buy it) and the generally unengaging protagonists' personal stories are very poorly written and conceived.
• The gameplay, while it has improved over the years, started out being pretty awful, in many respects. Hyper-repetitive mission design, at times broken combat, and some really poorly designed levels all marred the first game. Like I said, this has gotten better with time, but it's still not great.
• They've been using what looks to be basically the same graphics engine for years, leading to graphical stagnation (this really shows in the in-engine cutscenes).

The strong points of the series are the sense of atmosphere and immersion. When you aren't being forced to listen to a cutscene about the stupid plot, and you are free to roam the cities, the scale and amount of activity really does make these historical settings come alive. So that's largely what I play the games for, but for the above reasons, it's actually quite easy to find an explanation for all the "hate."

Anything on Kotaku is best taken with a hefty lump of salt. They frequently have no idea what they are talking about.

The phrase "quality control" evokes a more closed platform, like some sort of app store or Microsoft store. I don't think that's the way to go. If developers put a shitty product on steam, the market will respond accordingly. I do think one thing steam could do would be to standardize the application of metascores (including user averages) for every game on steam. Some games that didn't do as well with critics clearly make requests to steam to delay the posting of their score. I get waiting for all the scores to come in before adding it, but all games should have a metascore up at the same time.

Steam user reviews now being available also help with this.

I decided to pass on the game for now. My backlog is just too big. Thanks for the input guys.

Now that I work for a living, one thing I find to be true is that I have moderately more disposable income to spend on games, and far less free time in which to play them.

With that , and the fact that I'm a huge fan of Hitman: Blood Money in mind, is Hitman: Absolution worth my time? What do the people who have played it think?

I think you meant that 4k gaming is about to become cheaper.

Under no circumstances could you call $700 or $800 for a monitor "cheap". Plus, you still have to a have a significantly beefier setup than most PC gamers currently have or need to get decent frame-rates at 4k resolutions while using the same graphical settings you're used to.

That being said, I'm excited about the possibility of one day gaming at such a resolution, when the prices drop to more reasonable levels. Personally, I haven't even upgraded to 1440p or 1600p, so it's going to be a while before I make the jump to 4k.

I used to think so, but then I realized I'm not the target audience. I'm already a PC gamer and PC builder, so I have no need for one. But that doesn't negate that fact that many people might want one, and I'm beginning to realize that their target demographic is actually pretty significant in size.

Perhaps some of the elements from Mount & Blade's combat system, and the dynamic politics. However somehow I think roving around the countryside with a band of 100+ warriors behind you might just clash with what the Elder Scrolls games are about...

That being said, they had better improve the scale of battles in future Elder Scrolls games. Oblivion and Skyrim were both incredibly anticlimactic in that way.

On weekends, I often get 9+ hours of sleep, but during the work week its usually less. Maybe 6-7 hours a night. Sometimes I'm just working too hard, but usually its just because I stay up too late on the internet. Most of the time I'm not even doing anything, but you can easily lose an hour to Wikipedia if you aren't careful. It's something I've got to work on.

I thought the atmosphere was great, but the story was really lacking. I found little reason to care about any of the characters. The Outsider, especially, was annoying as all hell.

The gameplay was pretty solid.