I haven’t really been a big fan of the series, I have played bits of the series here and there, but haven’t been massively into the franchise. I will admit that i’m not the best when it comes to stealth games as i'm more of a bull in a china shop kind of player, so it was going to be interesting how I took to this.
If i’m honest I thought the game was excellent and didn’t feel uncomfortable to play which was my first reservation about playing it. I felt that the controls were excellent and mapped really well, they also made it easier to make those last minute decisions when going from hiding to taking someone down or moving to another area to avoid being spotted.
The stealth options within the game are spot on as well, they give you so many different options within missions that there is a plethora of choices to make when deciding the fate of your target. Some examples of this would be putting poison in a drink and making your target run to the toilet where you can hide and either drown them in the toilet or strangle them… Quick and silent… You can then jump out the window or stroll away and no one will know you did it. It should then be a simple escape.
To have such a variety of options when it comes to picking the way you take your target out is also down to the level design. The levels are vast and had many options which you can choose from as well as routes to take. If you want to try going through the front door, you can probably try but whether you’ll be successful is a different matter, there are better options to take such as side windows, going round the back of the building/facility or knocking out a guard and taking their disguise and trying to blend in. A problem that I came across was that a disguise will only get you so far before people start to suspect you. The best thing to do here is to change to a different disguise and blend in with what’s around you. I did find that this was a very good way to get round and to get items around the base to help with your end game.
Some of the missions do require a lot of thought as timing can be everything when making your next move. If someone see’s you it can and most likely will be game over and you will have to start again from a checkpoint or the start of the level. If you have done a lot of the mission and it takes you back to the start that can be the most annoying thing going.
I will say as well that the reply value on the missions is exceptional, with the options that you have available to you, you’re able to go back and re do a missions countless times, there’s just so many different ways which you can go about things, if you were to do a mission 2 or 3 times you could do it completely different each time, which for me provides real value for money!
When completing missions, it’s not all about getting to the target and killing them, it’s also about perfecting your approach to them, such as not being detected or investigated for looking shifty. The mission will end when the target is dead, but honing in your skills and using them in ways suggested above will gain you much more credit.
The trespass system within the game does a lot to help you through the beautifully crafted levels by letting you know if you have the right disguise on as well as options available to you.
I did find that some of the reactions of the NPCs were a bit off, in one of the first tutorial missions you play there’s an opportunity to get a ship crews disguise by sneaking into the gallery and taking him down from behind.
Now, when I did this, I was so subtle about it, I barged into the gallery room and the door looks like it swings pretty hard. The guy I was going to take down was only 5 or so feet away, and as I barged in, there was no reaction from him, I was just able to duck down and sneak behind him and take him down. I’m sure most people would have noticed or heard the door fly open, so I was a little disappointed I wasn’t penalised for this. The first time I did this as well (you have to do this mission twice in the tutorial) I went into the door which was in front of him, stood there in plain sight, but nothing, no reaction, no indication that I had been spotted, I simply crouched again, walked along the side of where he was, went behind him and choked him out… I would have thought that he would have seen me.
I have to admit though that this was the only real disappointment in the game. The visuals are stunning, the music and sounds are sublime and the abundance of choices that you can make during missions is excellent.
The structure of the game is different to previous games with the game being split up in monthly episodic adventures. This will see you visiting Paris, Marrakech, America, Japan, Italy, Thailand and a secret finale. There are a lot of pros and cons to this type of style, the pros being that it creates a little bit of longevity to the game, which in the case of developers is good as people will play the game for longer, however a con for gamers would be that they have to wait until the next month until there next episode is out, which in the meantime another time game could release which could take their attention away from Hitman. Whereas if the game was fully released then gamers may decide to finish off Hitman before going onto the next game, but then again that would mean that the game would be finished in one go and would that create the longevity that Square Enix are going for?
The game overall is a very enjoyable experience and a nice adventure for those who haven’t played any of the other games in the series. The levels are beautifully crafted and the stealth mechanics are fantastic.
Overall, I am going to give Hitman a 8
Game was reviewed on Xbox One
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