I put the year of release together with film titles here because quite a few films share the same title and some have been remade so many times that it would be confusing to know which version I am referring to without specifying the year. I’m now wondering if I should do the same for video games as franchise owners have been rebooting and renumbering them. This post of course refers to the 2016 reboot of Hitman but then it’s not really a reboot since it takes place after Hitman: Absolution. Whatever, it’s all just for marketing purposes anyway.

I was a latecomer to the series, having never played the earliest ones, and was slow to understand its way of doing things. But this installment made me totally love its conceit. For one thing, the levels here are huge, complex and filled to the brim with NPCs and interactable elements. There is just so much to explore and observe in each of the levels. Then there’s how the focus is purely on assassinations. There’s an overarching shadowy plot going on in the background, but it’s not too important and you can safely tune it out. You have a map, you have your targets, go crazy in it. Finally, unlimited and very powerful instinct plus the new scripted opportunities system make this very accessible even to newcomers. You’re never left wondering what you should do next.

Purists would argue that the opportunities make the game too easy. Indeed by using them it’s rather simple to achieve perfect silent assassin ratings in each scenario even on the first attempt, especially now that you can save and reload anywhere on normal difficulty. At my age this is just fine. I find that I rather enjoy winning a scenario on the first try and then replaying it over and over again to explore the many different ways of completing the objectives. Every time you play the scenario, you fill in your mental map of how the NPCs act and behave, where objects are and how areas are connected. So you get better and better at finding new and faster ways of getting things done. The scenario challenges also serve to give hints of what is possible and to add self-imposed constraints. I could bump up the difficulty level but I find that I can’t live without save anywhere and I’m perfectly happy to explore every nook and cranny of each map with that as a cosy security blanket.

Since this is a 2016 game, the graphics aren’t the best from a technical perspective. Now that I know more about 3D graphics from my experience with Blender, it’s easy to see where they cut corners with low resolution meshes and very simple, flat lighting schemes. But I don’t care because the maps are so full of life and detail. There’s always something to see and the little snippets of dialogue provide so much context and story. Sapienza in particular looks so beautiful and so much like a real place that it impressed even my wife. It’s astonishing how much complexity there is in the behavior of the NPCs in the Paris level. You can watch in the dressing room where the models get ready and then strut out onto the stage. There’s just so much activity going on. Then there are the huge crowds in Marrakesh that just blew me away. The combination of glamor, exoticism and skullduggery is just fantastic, making this by far the best James Bond type experience put in a video game.

One criticism is that the maps seem to peak early. It must have been especially evident when they were first released in episodic format. Paris, Sapienza and Marrakesh do seem like the maps with the most wow factor. I liked the idea of a Bangkok map but it’s only just a big hotel and while the city itself is just a distant backdrop. It’s also laughable how much jungle there is in the map compared to what Bangkok really looks like today. Colorado is just a boring flat landscape even if it’s crawling with heavily armed soldiers. I rather liked Hokkaido and how sci-fi it feels but it’s once again a large building with a Japanese theme with the mountains as background. The later maps also seem markedly smaller than the first ones. For example you can see that just about every part of the Hokkaido map is used in the scenario for something but many parts of Sapienza aren’t used for anything but can serve as room for future content.

Another problem is that each new map doesn’t seem to add new types of interactions and mechanics. They seem to have perfected the systems and behaviors in the Paris map and then used those tools for the later maps. But by the end, it all starts to feel a little repetitive. I was disappointed for example that there isn’t a blending into the crowd mechanic for Marrakesh like there was in Hitman: Absolution. I also feel like many of the equippable tools like the proximity and remote explosives are rather pointless because NPCs spot them too easily. Instead objects like the lowly wrench and screwdriver are frequently the most useful as they allow you to undetectably sabotage all sorts of things. Guns, with the exception of sniper rifles, are pointless too as if you have to engage in a fight you have failed. I wish the designers had added more challenges that require you to bring special equipment into the mission to complete. As it is, I basically only ever smuggle in sniper rifles. Anything else I can just bring with me or get elsewhere on the map.

I played so much of this recently and completed so many of the challenges, pretty much all of them except for the comedic ones that require putting on special costumes, that I was starting to get burned out. That’s why I’m laying off of the bonus missions and the Patient Zero campaign for later. Nonetheless I loved playing this. There are so many little stories and great moments in it. Just learning how the maps are laid out is so much fun. For example, Hokkaido feels like such a high security map at first with all the secure doors that are activated by specific disguises. But then you run into the hilariously under-guarded mortuary area with its many exits and the one special item that you can get there and suddenly the whole map seems wide open.

I very likely will play Hitman 2 sometime later as this has impressed me so much. But I do have a final complaint that they are complacent about making the places sound realistic. Basically everyone in Morocco sounds like an American for example. It’s so jarring and un-immersive. Most of the NPCs in Bangkok don’t sound Thai either. By contrast, they try to have French and Italian accents for characters in Paris and Sapienza respectively. Come on, do a better job at creating a consistent and realistic soundscape.