The latest instalment in the Hitman series of games is a little different and mostly in a good way. While Agent 47 may be at the height of his powers and the game at the height of its quality, the episodic nature of Hitman 2016 is not winning many fans.
In the good old days, you would buy a game on disc, load it onto your machine of choice and spend the next several days playing it to completion. Not so with Hitman 2016. Levels are being released at the rate of one a month, with the full game not being made available until February 2017.
For now, we have only one level with which to assess Hitman. But what a level. I may have spent only 20 minutes completing the level and winning this episode, but those 20 minutes were the result of almost six hours of preparation, exploration, experimentation and finally coming up with something that worked.
If you haven’t played a Hitman game before, it goes like this. You are a contract killer given a target and a location. How you do it is completely up to you.
To make such a system work, the world within which you play has to be sympathetic. The non-player characters have to play along and there have to be enough options to allow the creativity players demand in order to bring their nefarious plans to fruition. Hitman delivers all of that and more. The systems are great, the options are many and the sheer satisfaction of doing the deed make the hours of preparation all worthwhile.
The Paris level is a great start. Your target is attending a fashion party in a palace. Do you take out a guard to get close to the target? Do you use the environment to cause an intended accident? This is the beauty of Hitman games. The more stylish the takedown, the higher the level of personal satisfaction. It’s what makes this game work so well.
Hitman 2016 is currently available with the prologue and Paris level, then another six episodes based in Italy, Marrakesh, Thailand, America, Japan and then a secret finale somewhere. You pay separately for each, or a larger fee for all. It’s a strange set-up that doesn’t resonate very well. Fortunately, this and the mandatory internet connection, are the only downsides to Hitman so far.
Jesmond Darmanin is a technology enthusiast who has his own blog at www.itnewsblog.com.