There may not be a ton of deals around this weekend, but the handful that are available seem pretty solid. Steam offers a Hitman bundle for $15 that includes Absolution as well as a GTA franchise pack for $12.49, Amazon already has 33% off SimCity ($39.99) along with...

It's increasingly evident that Christmas is less than two weeks away, as several digital distributors have discounted dozens of titles for the holidays. Steam's year-end event hasn't kicked off yet, though it has bargains on Crysis titles and a handful of Tripwire games. Elsewhere...

Six years later and it seems the developer is ready to revive the infamous Agent 47 in Hitman's fifth game, which crept onto shelves last Tuesday, November 20 -- or the 47th week of the year. Among its other advancements, Hitman: Absolution is the first game to be developed using the new Glacier 2 engine.

The updated engine was specifically built for Hitman, with a strong emphasis on enabling very dense crowds and allowing players to not only interact with characters but also to influence their behavior. The engine is said to be able to handle up to crowds of 1200 characters, which makes Absolution unlike any other game.

Hitman: Absolution is a wickedly smart, darkly enjoyable video game, one that's as generous to players as its protagonist is merciless to his victims. You'll stab, strangle and shoot your way through level after level, sometimes grimacing, sometimes scowling, sometimes laughing.

Absolution picks up the Hitman story where the last game in the series, 2006's Blood Money, left off. That's a long time between sequels, even in the relatively slow-moving video game world. But that extended time in development likely accounts for a lot of what makes Hitman such a sprawling, interesting game.