Hitman is like a hit and run assassination simulation. You figure out who your target is, you get to him, you eliminate the target in any way possible and you leave the premises. This strategy isn’t bad as long as the game doesn’t feel linear and gives you a lot of freedom. Luckily for us, Agent 47 has a lot more tricks up his sleeves than previous Hitman.

Fantasizing about assassinations

The latest Hitman gives you a lot of freedom when it comes to assassinating your targets. There’s the old “bullet to the head or the strangle him/ her until death” kind of way or you can really be innovative and poison drinks, disguising yourself into a former criminal partner to make it more personal or even make it look like an accident. It’s really up to you and here’s a pro tip: Don’t use harsh violence, it never works in a Hitman game.

In comparison to Hitman Absolution, your assassination is a lot more “open” than “closed”. Hitman Absolution had some “standard” moves like using the radio to distract the guards, if you saw a radio, you probably had to use it to do something. In this Hitman, if you’ve got the right tools, it’s yours to use them but that’s the difficulty. You need to find them first. There are a lot of options, but you need the right equipment to deliver a deathly blow. For example, you can sabotage a water tap and flood it to distract guards but you need a wrench or you can let the underfloor heating malfunction if you have a screwdriver. There’s always a special way to assassinate your target, but it’s never that obvious.

Every target has its own “route”. It’s better for you to follow your target for a certain amount of time, to see different “opportunities” in the making. If you’re noticing your target is an alcoholic (since he visits the bar a bit too often), there’s the opportunity to poison his drink. If his route includes a puddle that’s close by an electricity grid, there’s the opportunity to electrify your target. These opportunities are only being created if you spend enough time to discover them. Rushing an assassination never ends well.

You’re being prepped for the real deal!

This Hitman really gives you a good view of how a simulation of an assassination can turn out. The first mission is in Paris, where you’re attending a fashion show to eliminate 2 of the producers. This assassination takes place during the show but there’s so much more going on. While models are showing off their dresses, other models are being prepared by make-up artists. Meanwhile, all guests are being entertained by the bartender or the primary chefs who are cooking a big meal for all those visitors and this is only a section of the building you’re at. All these “individuals” have a mission of their own and it really boosts the immersion within the game. Even when the show ends, all of these characters go from point A to point B, doing what they’re expected to do.

There’s always a special way to assassinate your target, but it’s never that obvious.

Of course great songs don’t last long, in the end, you’ll start to see some repetition. A lot of the characters will do the same route over and over again, but then again it’s good to see that the developers tried to make a realistic simulation of an assassination. If all of these episodes are of the same caliber, the hitman within ourselves is in for a treat.

Get a good costume

Hitman games rely on stealth, even when the game offers you a pistol and remote control bombs at the beginning of each mission. It’s pretty cool equipment but “loud and not-so-subtle”- weapons should be used when everything else fails. The key to success is paying attention to your environment and suiting up with a disguise. Before you actually start to approach your target, scout the area and look for passages, patrols, items, … that can be used to your advantage. Sometimes, you’ll have to disguise yourself as a member of the “wrong” team to gain access to a certain area, since all of these “special” areas are closed to the public.

Disguises can be found in special areas but most of the time you’ll probably steal them from people by subduing them. Once a victim is “taken care off” (lethal or non-lethal), you can strip them of their clothes and hide the body into the nearest closet/ fridge or you can just drag the body into a dark subtle room where nobody will look. You can be the good hitman and the bad hitman in this game. The good hitman will subdue its victim which takes care of the victim perfectly without doing any harm and the bad hitman will snap the neck of the victim to make sure he’s dead. Either way is your choice but be warned of the following, once a character is subdued, you won’t know when the victim will gain his/ her conscience again. If the victim wakes up and find itself stripped of its clothes, he will sound the alarm and you better won’t be around when that moment comes as it toughens the situation but if you escape or fulfill your mission without being noticed, you can rest assured of your ticket to heaven.

Then again, killing the victim gives you a certainty that your mission won’t have any unusual hiccups. At first this “choice” seems easy to take, at the end of your mission, you’ll receive a list of all the things you’ve done during this mission and as you probably figured out, unnecessary victims give you a bad score. An easy and yet difficult choice to make, that can influence the progress of your assassination.

The disguise system has also been improved from the previous Hitman. The disguises don’t disappear over time and the disguise covers your whole appearance. Here’s what I mean, in Hitman Absolution people will get suspicious when you came too close, even if you were disguised but in this Hitman, distance isn’t really a problem, it’s some of the key characters within the game that you should worry about. Some of the basic staff members will recognize you as a team member and carry on with their job but it’s the head of the staff that will make things harder. The head of staff knows his crew and they WILL recognize you if you walk too close. These “key characters” can be recognized by the white dot above their head. Different costumes also give you the opportunity to “blend in”. For example: once you’re dressed up as a member of the cruise ship team, you can run up to a colleague bartender and take over his job. This will allow you to get even more close to your target and overhear different important talks.

The Glacier Engine impresses

Hitman absolution looked great in 2012 and Io Interactive had plans to create an even better Hitman game, so they had to push their own graphical engine (from DirectX 11 to Direct X 12) to its limits to compete with these next gen games and they really did a great job. The game really shines when it’s being pushed to fit a lot of people into one simulation game and this “digital crowd” is actually important to make the game feel truly immersive. Not only does it shine in consistency but it’s really all in the details. I mean the sense of detail that’s been put into this game by the developers, is pretty amazing. The first episode is played in a Baroque set in Paris with colorful drapes, the chandeliers, the ornaments in the room, a full banquet with fruit and meat, … it all looks amazing.

However, this kind of detail pushes the engine and the machine to their own limits, so expect some textures popping in. This mission is also being played during night time which makes the contrast within the game a bit too much. There are a lot of dark places that ruin a bit of the experience. Hopefully, it will be better in the future episodes.

An easy and yet difficult choice to make, that can influence the progress of your assassination.

The game also allows you to save your progress during missions. Hitman Absolution only had a few save points that couldn’t be altered but this Hitman allows you to save any time any place alongside the “save points”. It’s a very good feature to save your progress before making a critical decision altering the situation. Especially in these kinds of simulation games.

All this gossip spreads like a virus.

There’s also a new mechanic that alarms guards that you’re in the premises. Once a guard discovers the fact that you’re in the environment, knowing that you’re wearing a certain uniform, it will give a description of your appearance to other guards. Once this gossip has spread, you only have a few minutes to react. You can try killing your target faster or you can try to go back to the shadows by using another disguise that you still have to gain from another victim.

These disguises make the game a real challenge, since your appearance is quickly noticed by the persons around you. Guards will react very fast, if you’re trespassing an area with the wrong uniform. This kind of situation shouldn’t take long to get you arrested. A real Hitman figures out the pieces of this puzzle of “detection” before he approaches the target. Be the guy in the right costume at the right moment or it’s game over.

Technical difficulties and the episode system

The developers created a believable simulation with a lot of population. Hitman gamers could only dream of this kind of simulation in the old days. The game also looks beautiful but there’s also a downside, the game tends to suffer from “clipping”. A lot of characters lose their conviction when their pants suddenly disappear and reappears in a fraction of a second out of their jacket. It’s too bad since the developers put a lot of hard work into creating this variety of characters.

Buttons also tend to disappear as you’re willing to perform a certain action. If you’re not on the right spot, different buttons won’t show up and sometimes these key moments shouldn’t be ruined by technical difficulties. A mission can be ruined very quickly when agent 47 couldn’t drag away a body due to a ghostly virtual button. It doesn’t always happen, but it does and I hope they will fix this bug soon, as it can destroy a gameplay experience.

I also have to mention that I’m not a big fan of the episode system. I agree that it can give the developers a lot more time to develop a certain episode and fix critical issues from previous episodes and they can even steer the story in a whole other way… but I find it stupid to wait a couple of weeks/ months before another mission will be released. It takes you out of the zone completely. When I buy a game, I want to experience the full game and not just a fraction of it. This mission does feel like an old demo or a preview of some sort, even though IO Interactive made the game in a way that a mission can be played over again since it has different assassination options but no matter how many assassinations this mission has, it will become boring due to the lack of content.

Of course, there’s also the opportunity to create your own contracts during these missions or play these missions that have been set up by the gamer’s community. A player can reassign the target and they can also determine your assassination outfit. These random challenges or contracts can be fun but if you’re the kind of guy that plays a game for its story, you’ll have to wait at least a couple of weeks before you see anything new added to the game.  Square Enix promised 5 episodes later this year, so hopefully they’ll be any good. It would suck if those episodes don’t live up the developers promises.

Conclusion:

This new Hitman offers you a lot of “unfortunate accidents” or other opportunities to assassinate your target. The first episode shows a promising start for the franchise thanks to the large detailed environments and the variety of these colorful “individuals”. This variety gives the gamer a good sense of immersion during his/ her play through but don’t forget the randomly “clipping” part.   Thanks to the new and updated Glacier Engine, the game runs smoothly and the graphics in this game are very good looking. A minor patch will easily clear out the bugs and glitches. If you’re looking for a good action game with a lot of assassination opportunities created by your own mind, this game is must buy, but don’t expect the full game yet!

8/10