When I first tried the brand new HITMAN I was both excited and apprehensive. Nowhere, when talking about the game, was it made clear just what the new Hitman game would be. How would it be episodic? How would the online content be handled? None of it was clearly elucidated and I was worried. When I first played the game when it’s opening and first sand box were dropped in March I was incredibly disappointed with just how much of Square Enix’s confused online-only approach to games just ruined the experience. I held off writing my thoughts because I was deflated.
But we’ve now had a very positive title update, another sand box and another one on the horizon (literally, Agent 47 will be travelling to Marrakech as soon as next week) I am extremely happy to say that 2016’s HITMAN is one of the best distillations of the Hitman experience since the series kind of went off the beaten path with Absolution. It’s great, it’s accessible, and it’s just an all-around superbly designed experience more aligned with IO Interactive’s near immaculate pedigree.
Others might have you tamper with dodgy light fittings to make them drop at the right moment. You can even discover that a clown has been hired as an entertainer for a family, assume the identity of the clown, and then work your way into the house to get closer to the heavily guarded target. These are all situations that have taken place in previous games in the Hitman series and they run the gamut from deadly serious to incredibly goofy. Hitman is a serious experience, don’t get me wrong, but it’s got a kind of macabre sense of humour in the way you can approach some of your contracts.
From the get go it’s obvious that the team really took into account the criticisms levelled at Absolution when designing the new Hitman. The most welcome change is that the scoring system that was displayed on screen permanently throughout Absolution is now gone completely. No longer nagging you incessantly to hide bodies or not pacify certain enemies, you’re now truly free to do whatever you want. The bizarrely incongruous Point Shooting mechanic borrowed from the likes of Splinter Cell Conviction is thankfully absent in the new Hitman too.
Every level is also now littered with opportunities, intel and challenges to complete. Opportunities are juts that – they’re optional paths to take through levels that could lead to one of your objectives. They’re, once again, admittedly a bid to make the Hitman games more accessible to newcomers, but they can safely be ignored if you wish to pursue a different type of kill. Intel is just that – bits of information that are cryptic enough to encourage exploration. Challenges are mini objectives that are optional, but completing them yields mastery of that sand box. It’s especially fun to try to and use your intel and opportunities to try to unlock as many challenges as you can with a single kill and it’s the flexibility of Hitman’s game world that makes it such a joy to do so.
What I love about the new Hitman is how these levels, or sand boxes, are not necessarily the largest open worlds in gaming but how dense they are with activity. Just walking into Paris you’ll see guests lining up. You’ll see news reporters out the front reporting on the event that’s about to play out (and walking in front of the camera during this broadcast has humourous results). You’ll see security and tech staff setting up for fireworks.
If it’s not clear what I’m getting at here – it’s that there’s a hell of a lot going on in the levels of the new Hitman and none of it feels like gamey artifice. As you explore the manor you’ll hear all kinds of conversations that help build the character of the people you’re about to kill and paint a picture of your targets – whether it’s just a news reporter discussing the background of your targets to their audience or a disgruntled assistant confiding to a friend about her boss’s poor habits – they’ll highlight new opportunities for you to pursue in your bid to assassinate your hits. Some of the conversations in Paris even tie back to Blood Money, which is a nice touch for fans of the series who have been following up to this point.
The freedom with how you carry out your hits is totally yours and that’s what makes the new Hitman game so great. It’s a truly open sand box of opportunities to kill, as dark as that sounds. It’s estimated that you’ll be able to find 20 or so ways to kill a single target, perhaps even double that if you don’t mind being discovered and being more overt with your approach. That’s a lot, and such an amazing accomplishment in such a dense compilation of opportunities.
Similarly, the fact that Hitman is distributed in such an unorthodox manner just encourages repeat plays. There were so many times that I jumped straight back into Paris to see how I could do things differently and things would most often play out entirely.
We’ve put the same amount of effort, if not more into the second episode of Sapienza which is a coastal town in Italy. Boasting a larger amount of variety than Paris, it’s something that truly advances the concept of this open world sand box Hitman.
Look out in the coming days for our coverage of the sunny Sapienza sand box, followed by up to date coverage of the new sand box set in Marrakech early next week!