Hitman, the new reboot by Io-Interactive, is unquestionably a success. The first episode is a visual feast, the gameplay is extremely enjoyable and satisfying, and the project offers a variety of depth that adds hours of replayability. Of course, there are some issues here including a major lack of story and an episodic release schedule that does Hitman no favors. But it’s difficult to deny the fact that Hitman gives players a polished, wholly addictive experience that will no doubt continue as the more episodes are released.
I’m Logan and I’ll be your handler for this mission. Let’s begin.
Hitman has a long and varied history. Agent 47, our stoic and mostly silent protagonist, has hopped across most consoles released over the past 16 years to generally favorable critical praise, but mixed commercial success. While gameplay and mechanics have changed over the years, many staples of the series have stayed the same throughout, and that is no different here. But it’s clear that this new reboot of Hitman has been designed to not only be more accessible to players new to the series but sleeker and more effective as a whole.
This new iteration of Hitman is being released episodically, which is an important place to start. As of this moment, the game is only the tutorial and the first mission, entitled “Paris”. It’s difficult to thoroughly review the story of this episode, as it’s not so much an episode as it is a vertical slice of the full game. It feels as though Io-Interactive was told to take their completed game and chop it up for financial gain. As such, we get an extremely little cohesive story here. All we know is that Agent 47 has lost his memory (maybe?) and that he goes through training (the tutorial), and then onto his first mission (Paris). That’s it. It’s not the strongest aspect of the game by any stretch.
But my concerns for the story went away as I dove into the tutorial. While I may not really know why I was doing what I was doing, it was so much fun that it was hard to care. The tutorial takes place on what almost feels like a movie set: a fake, poorly built yacht in a large facility full of actors helping Agent 47 prepare for his final test. You’ll go through this level multiple times, asked to attempt the assassination in various ways. This ties directly into the challenges and feats associated with each map. The more of these you complete (such as assassinating the target with poison or discovering an important item), the more items you’ll unlock in the planning phase of each mission (such as various outfits or the ability to begin in a different location on the map).
Back to the tutorial: The truest strength of the game lies in the large number of ways in which you can complete your mission. Perhaps the best way to tell you about the gameplay is to tell you about my own adventures. My first time through the tutorial, I took out a mechanic, hid him in the bathroom, and donned his clothes. Changing disguises becomes a central part of the gameplay, and while it requires a certain suspension of disbelief, it’s much more satisfying to walk into a guarded area through the front door than climbing over walls, although both can work. I moved through the crowded yacht, switching to a bartender outfit and tucking him in a deep freezer, and making my way towards the target.
Despite the crowds (and the levels are crowded with people, which only raises the stakes), it is always easy to keep track of your target and those who might be suspicious of you. An instinct mode allows you to see outlines of people through walls, see more clearly the dots above individuals that denotes those who might catch you, and grab a location of your target, lit up in red. I could tell my target was a few levels above me, so I moved upwards, blending in behind the bar to avoid the detection of his watchful bodyguard. As he went into his office for a private meeting, I climbed in through a window and choked him with my fiber wire, followed by an escape via helicopter on top of the yacht.
As I mentioned previously, Hitman offers a large amount of replayability, even in the tutorial. In the numerous times I undertook this mission again, I dressed as a cop and crushed my target with a lifeboat, blew him up with a well placed bomb, poisoned him and drowned him in the toilet as he threw up, and even dressed as the person he was meeting privately and shot him in the head. Every single tactic has stuck with me in a memorable way, as each one takes planning, patience, and continual environmental analysis to pull off successfully. But man, is this an aggressively violent game!
Paris, the first real mission of the game, takes the same fundamentals of the tutorial and applies them to a map that is gargantuan by comparison. At the time of this review, I’ve played on that map over a dozen times, and each time I find a new area I’ve never visited before. This may be the only true level available at launch, but there is a lot available here, which only expands exponentially the ways in which you can approach your kill. Paris takes place in a massive mansion during a fashion show, which means lots of people, lots of guards, and lots of opportunities for those who keep their eyes open.
Outside of the main story mode is the contracts mode, and this is a fun way to keep the game fresh a while longer between episode releases. Here, players can “create a contract” by playing through the Paris mission and tagging a target, which can be just about any NPC on the map. They must then kill them and escape. Their kill is then recorded, including which item they used and what they were wearing, and uploaded to the servers online. Other players can then play the contract, attempting to complete the hit in the same way as other players. It adds wide variety and strategy to a level that could’ve been easily forgotten after a few story mission playthroughs.
Finally, Escalation mode offers a third, small map of a military hanger. Escalation mode begins at level one, with a target to kill. You’ll then unlock level two, where you must take out the target but also break into a safe. New things are added each time and difficulty increases until you complete level 5. It’s a fun break from the main maps, and it does offer some engaging challenge, but it’s nothing really to write home about. If it hadn’t made it into the final game, it wouldn’t really be missed. While fun, it ends up being an after thought.
And that’s Hitman. It’s a ridiculously fun and addicting game in what it has to offer, and it does it well. The story ends up losing any real importance in the episodic format, and having only one true level and a tutorial does cut down the amount of engagement considerably. However, Io-Interactive has compensated for those elements by injecting a ton of depth and replayability into each map. Hitman is artistically gorgeous and a must-have for gamers looking for a satisfying, powerful experience with a lot of payoff. And a lot of violence.
I’ll write another review for each episode as it is released, and I’ll author a definitive review once all episodes are out. Until then, stick with me and we’ll explore the world of Hitman together!
Have thoughts or questions? Tweet at me: @LoganASchultz
A PS4 code for Hitman was provided by Square Enix for the purpose of this review.