What am I Playing? - Hitman (2016)

Hitman is the follow up to 2012's Hitman Absolution, and like its predecessors follows the exploits of Agent 47, a genetically engineered assassin working for the International Contract Agency, an organization that provides assassination services to governments and the rich all over the world. Players are given a huge amount of agency in how they can choose to eliminate their targets, stealthy and undetected hits being encouraged but not required to complete missions. Unlike previous games in the series which received full box releases Hitman is comprised of six episodes released over several months.

If you haven’t heard about the recent roller coaster that Hitman developer IO Interactive has been on lately, here's the short version: Former owner and publisher Square Enix made the surprise announcement in May that they were in the process of shopping IO around to potential buyers. Few details were given out beyond that, but the general assumption was that this was bad news for the studio and the Hitman franchise. However, and just as surprisingly IO then announced in June that they had secured a management buyout from Square Enix to become an independent studio. Crucially, IO retains the rights to the Hitman franchise, their most popular IP by far.

Hitman first found its way onto my radar via frequent Let's Play videos from Outside Xbox, one of my favourite YouTube gaming channels, but despite receiving generally positive reviews from most outlets it never seemed to generate much buzz until news about IO Interactive's troubles hit the web. Once those troubles were resolved, IO's first act as an independent studio was to make the games prologue episode free to download and play. I'd had my eye on this game for awhile, but until then I had been hesitant to pull the trigger. The only other Hitman game I've played was Absolution, which I never finished. That game received mixed reviews and was criticized for being too linear and more of an action shooter than a Hitman game should be, but that wasn’t what I didn’t like about it. In fact, if I had intentionally played it more like an action shooter I would probably have had a much better time.

It's been a long time since I played Absolution and I traded it away years ago so I can't fire it up to remind myself, but I think my problem was that I wasn’t really prepared for how I was supposed to play this game. I had an inkling of what prior Hitman's had been, and I knew how the game wanted me to play it, but to be honest I was bad at it. I didn’t have a lot of experience with stealth games at the time. I got frustrated whenever I was spotted and I got impatient when the route to success wasn’t obvious. My experience with most levels was repeated failure at the stealth objectives followed by a mad dash and ending in a gunfight. I wanted to play the game right, and I knew I was doing it wrong. After a few weeks I stopped going back to it, and eventually I sold my disc over Kijiji.

That was a long time ago, but I'm pretty conservative about which games I'm willing to drop full price for at the best of times and the experience still left a bad taste in my mouth. But thanks to the entertaining Let's Play's I'd seen Hitman had my attention, and there's no harm in trying something free. That didn't last long though. The prologue episode contains two “training missions”, much shorter and smaller in scope than the settings included in later episodes, but I had barely completed the first one before I decided the game was a buy for me.

Each episode introduces an interesting new setting, from a high profile fashion show in Paris to a locked down militia compound in Colorado. The scope of these locations appears daunting at first, but as you play through each one, discovering useful secrets and unlocking valuable assets through discovery you truly feel like you're mastering each level. There is a fair bit of hand holding available for those who loathe encountering fail states (like me), but they are highly customizeable and most can be toggled on and off at your discretion should you be looking for a greater challenge. The options you have for eliminating your targets are staggering, as nearly every item you find can be used as a weapon in one way or another. Feel daring? Maybe you can bulls-eye a pair of scissors into your targets head before his guards realize what's happening. Found some rat poison in the basement? It won't be enough to kill him, but why not slip it into his drink and follow him into the bathroom when he starts to feel sick? He's practically begging you to drown him in the toilet. Or (if you want to do it the boring way) take your shot with a sniper rifle from a tower across the street.

For me the best part of Hitman is that it doesn’t punish you for failure so much as it encourages you to do better. Your score at the end of each mission is dependant on a number of factors. Did you hide the body well enough that it wont be found until you're long gone? Did anyone catch you in a place you weren’t supposed to be, or walk in while you were eliminating a target? None of those scenarios mean game over. It's entirely possible to walk straight up to your target at the beginning of the level and put two rounds in his chest, in plain view of everyone, and as long as you escape alive it counts as a success. But don't expect many style points if you go that route.

The game does have a somewhat interesting narrative mode you can follow, but the story exists primarily in the background, being told through cinematics which play after each mission. I recommend you follow through the “campaign” at least once, since it's a good way to learn about each level, but most of Hitman's re-playability comes from its Contract and Escalation modes. Contracts are created by the community and task you with eliminating the creators chosen targets, which can be nearly any NPC in the game, often with special conditions for a better score. Escalation starts you off with completing a simple hit on a character somewhere in the world, but with each success you must repeat the assassination with increasingly difficult modifiers to complicate things.

In the few weeks I've been playing Hitman I've been continually impressed by its scope and attention to detail. The locations are beautiful, the visuals impressive and sharp. After finishing the story mode I've spent most of my time on my favourite map (Episode 2's “Sapienza”) trying to reach 100% completion on all of the optional challenges and discoveries, and it's a little overwhelming when I think of how much more there is to this game that I've barely touched. Hitman is a ton of fun, and I know I'll be jumping back into it for a long time to come. I'm excited to see where IO Interactive takes the franchise next.

Thanks for reading “What am I playing?” I've got a bit of a backlog in my games library so I'm hoping to be able to do these pretty regularly for the foreseeable future. If you've got some time on your hands you should check out Outside Xbox's Hitman Playlist, and If you like what you see there you can download Hitman's prologue episode for free on Xbox One, PS4 and PC.