Story
This game takes place after Hitman: Blood Money's events. Agent 47 is back, and is on a mission to assassinate his former handler, Diana Burnwood. Heeding her death request, 47 took a young girl by the name Victoria, and kept her safe in an orphanage. Upon finding more information about Victoria, she was kidnapped, and Agent 47 will do everything it takes to get her back.
The story was simplistic, and pretty good as well as being intriguing at the same time. I am not exactly familiar with Hitman games, with the exception of Hitman: Blood Money, but I find that this game's story is pretty solid. However, I felt that the game look good plot twists, which are the things that will make a game's storyline much more interesting.
Gameplay
This game have lots of playable main chapters, with several missions included for each chapter. Some of the main chapters may have one mission only, whereas others can have more than 2 or 3 missions to be completed. This game's genre is both stealth and action-adventure, where you need to use stealth to kill targets, infiltrate forbidden areas, and etc.
As for movement controls, you can walk or run to move. You may also crouch to sneak past enemies quietly. You may also climb ledges to infiltrate areas, escape your pursuers, and etc. You may also hide inside big containers such as dumpsters or lockers to hide. You may also use them to hide dead bodies. You may also take covers to sneak past enemies silently, or use it to protect yourself during combat.
Many of the chapters' objectives are based on two similar formula: killing a target (or multiple targets) and reaching a destination. Although the game's main objectives for each chapter is similar, many of the chapters has a lot of different approaches to complete it. For example, you need to disguise yourself as a police to sneak past polices in a police station, or killing a target when he is alone. Most of the time, you will not get bored easily in this game, especially if you are truly enjoying this game since the tutorial level.
Many of the levels in the game have large areas, which can be considered a super mini version of an open world game like Grand Theft Auto series. Some of it however, are linear levels where you need to approach the objective point one-way. The flexibility of either assassination or infiltration approaches in the game is high. For example, you can either kill all targets before proceed to your next objective, or just sneak past them using a disguise. However, Agent 47 is a professional hitman, thus stealth is his most preferred way of completing his objectives like many other professional hitman. There are no major repercussions of killing civilians or non-targets, other than score penalty on your Ranking, which I will explain later on. You may also find optional checkpoints in some playable levels in the chapters, which is useful to reload your checkpoint whenever you want to. The disguise system also returns in the game, which you can use to sneak past enemies in certain areas. Ne aware that disguises will not work on NPCs that have the same disguise as you, causing you in risk of being discovered prematurely by enemies.
What makes this game unique than other stealth games are the advanced and highly detailed NPC A.I. in this game for every level. Many NPCs in this game have their own unique actions, such as smoking while going out of room, patrolling in an area with one or more members, etc. In this game, learning and memorising enemy A.I. patterns is crucial for players to complete the game stealthily, which is important to get high score in your Ranking. Not only the minor NPCs such as the police have their own unique A.I. behaviour, the major NPCs such as targets have their own unique A.I., before or after you fulfilling the necessary condition(s) to alter their normal A.I. behaviour, such as spiking an important person's drink with sleeping pills in order to steal his keycard. Controlling the enemy A.I. behaviours is also important for you to sneak past enemies in area stealthily.
As for weapons, you may have access to a number of weapons such as fiber wire, silenced handguns, assault rifles, and so on. However, you can only start with your fiber wire and silenced handguns on certain playable chapters in the game, as you may be unarmed in some chapters by following the storyline flow. While playing in the game's levels, you may also able to use a variety of objects such as knives, busts, books, fire extinguishers, or etc to distract your enemies or to kill them. You can distract your enemies by throwing an object to a desired throwing range location. This is a great way to distract the enemies for you to sneak in, use the chance to kill a target silently, or even use the enemy as human shield. There are many approaches for you to kill a target, such as by using a sniper rifle, fiber wire, or even setting up an accidental kill on targets. To perform accidental kills, you need to fulfill certain conditions such as finding a poison, activate a mine to kill a target anonymously, using the environment, and many more.
While in combat, you may opt to run from enemies or fighting them. Use your firearms to dispatch enemies during gunfights, or hide in dumpsters to avoid direct confrontations. There are several Alert Phases in the game, such as Clear, Caution, and Hunted. In Hunted phase, enemies will be seeking you actively and will try to kill you on the spot. In Caution phase, they will give up seeking you actively, but will patrol in areas regularly. In Clear Phase, the enemies and other NPCs will resume their usual A.I. patterns.
There are several new features introduced in this game, which are Point Shooting and Instinct. Point Shooting is a feature that allows you to kill multiple enemies while your Instinct gauge is drained while the Point Shooting mode is active. The more Instinct you have, the more enemies you can target within more provided time. It is useful to get you out of tough situations, such as being heavily outnumbered by enemies. Instinct is a feature that allows you to both detect enemies walking path in the game as well as allows you to blend in through enemies or other NPCs by using specific disguises. For example, while you are using a police disguise, you can take the shortcut by blending in while in Instinct mode. You can gain Instinct by killing enemies, hide bodies in dumpsters, or completing an objective in a level.
At the end of a chapter, you will be ranked accordingly on how well you done in that particular chapter. If the game has more than one playable levels, the total Ranking scores will be totaled up for your current Rank in that chapter. The Ranking system in this game is a bit unique. Every time you start a new level in a chapter, you will start from zero points. Depending on what you do, you will obtain points, or get deducted. The few ways of you getting your own Ranking score to be deducted are killing innocent civilians or getting spotted by enemies or other suspicious NPCs. For example, your current Ranking score is -1250 because you have been spotted by an enemy. Conversely, you can get high score by only killing the target, and escape without being seen. Also, you may attempt to knock out both enemies or civilians out cold by subduing them barehanded. This will not give you the best score, but it will minimise your score penalty, particularly when you want to sneak past without any civilians around.
This game also features online play mode, which is called Contracts mode. This mode allows you to create your own assassination missions from the chapters you have completed previously. You may mark special NPCs as targets, or even innocent civilians as targets. You may also impose certain conditions on the game to be fulfilled in order to obtain the maximum money reward, such as killing the target and hide his/her body in a container. After creating it, you may save it and upload it online for other players to play. You may also participate in other online available Contracts for the game as well. Depending on how many you fulfilled the conditions, you will get more money reward than normal. The money reward can be used to upgrade your weapons, or obtain stuffs that you have not gotten yet from the single-player mode such as missing disguises or missing weapons. You may also send invitation to your online friends to play the contract that you have created, and challenged them into a competition.
Personally, I like the game's gameplay, despite many of Hitman fans complaints on how simplified the game is compared to previous Hitman games. The game controls are responsive, easy to learn, and precise. However, there are two things in the game that I have complaints. Firstly, the disguise system. The disguise system is not exactly perfect, since disguises do not allow you to sneak past people that have same clothes as you too easily. It is a bit unrealistic, since it totally defeats the purpose of you wearing the disguise in a level. Also, a professional hitman should use a balaclava to hide his face for the perfect disguise. However, in this game, Agent 47 did not do that. It is a bit dumb and unrealistic from a professional hitman. Secondly, the overall gameplay itself. As much as I like the gameplay itself, I felt that the game implemented several similar features from other games, namely Splinter Cell: Conviction or the recent Batman games. The Instinct mode is similar to the Detective Vision feature from the Batman games, and the Point Shooting is similar to Splinter Cell: Conviction's Mark and Shoot feature. I expected that this game will have more original gameplay features when it is launched. However, this did not happen since I have seen and played the similar features many times over in other games. Those two features certainly are new to the Hitman series, but might not be totally original compared to other games. Despite on how well I like the game's gameplay, I can't help but feel that the game does not feel original entirely. Other than those two major complaints, I am satisfied with the game's overall gameplay.
Graphics
The game's graphics is good, where it able to simulate a large number of NPCs on a screen without having any actual downgrade in game performance. To me, that achievement is simply admirable and awesome. The environments also look great, with distinct visuals for different areas. However, the game's character models does not look exactly great while playing it, particularly their faces. They don't look particularly great, but not too bad either. Since this year has many great looking games in the market today, I expected that this game's graphics to be top-notch and can rank up to other great looking games like Assassin's Creed III, Max Payne 3, Mass Effect 3, and many more.
This game also has certain bugs and glitches, where few of it involves freezing of the game, crashes, and etc. I sincerely hopes that IO Interactive to release a patch quickly to fix these problems, since these bugs and glitches are gamebreaking ones. I also advise any other interested players to beware of the game's bugs and glitches when playing it, or avoid buying the game before the patch is released.
Sound
The game's voice acting is pretty good, with good voice acting by the voice cast. I am pleased to know that David Bateson reprised his role as Agent 47 in the game, since I like his voice talent since Hitman: Blood Money.
The game's soundtrack is pretty good, full of orchestral and some ambient pieces. The music is only played in crucial cutscenes or crucial phases while playing the game, such as when you are in Hunted mode.
Replay Value
The game has good replay value, where you can play the game in different difficulties or invest your playing time in Contracts mode. There are several advanced difficulties for you to play, such as Hard, Professional, and Purist. As the difficulty increases, the game's levels are much more difficult to complete, such as increased number of guards and getting detected by enemies faster while wearing a disguise. The most notable and hardest difficulty in this game is Purist mode, where you need to complete each level without any HUD active while playing. In other words, this mode is for actual hardcore players, and for those who wants to play more realistic difficulty games. However, the harder the difficulty mode is, the score multiplier is increased as well. Playing harder difficulty modes will net you more points, allowing you to get the top rank as Silent Assassin easily.
Conclusion
I like this Hitman game. The game may not certainly up to par with the previous game, but the game is good on it's own. It has interesting storyline, good gameplay, nice sound design, good music, good voice acting, good graphics, and etc. The only things I have major reservations with the game are the outdated character models, unrealistic and broken disguise system, and the presence of gamebreaking bugs and glitches. This game may not be my Game of the Year, it is still certainly a good game to play for those who likes stealth games.
Score
Story: 9/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Graphics: 8/10
Sound: 9/10
Final Score: 34/40 or 8.5/10
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Interesting storyline.
- Good characters.
- Lots of ways to complete your objectives in the game.
- Stealth gameplay is well-implemented.
- Well implemented game controls.
- Good sound design.
- Good graphics.
- Great orchestral soundtrack.
- Memorable voice acting.
- Variety of ways to assassinate your targets.
- Good replay value.
- Harder difficulty modes provide increasingly harder challenges to players.
- Contracts mode is fun to play.
Cons
- Many outdated character models, albeit slightly.
- Bad and broken disguise system.
- Gameplay is not entirely unique.
- Hitman fans may not like this game.
- Game controls may feel too simplified for some players.
- Sexist elements may be present in the game.
- Gamebreaking bugs and glitches are present.
Agent 47 is back.
This game takes place after Hitman: Blood Money's events. Agent 47 is back, and is on a mission to assassinate his former handler, Diana Burnwood. Heeding her death request, 47 took a young girl by the name Victoria, and kept her safe in an orphanage. Upon finding more information about Victoria, she was kidnapped, and Agent 47 will do everything it takes to get her back.
The story was simplistic, and pretty good as well as being intriguing at the same time. I am not exactly familiar with Hitman games, with the exception of Hitman: Blood Money, but I find that this game's story is pretty solid. However, I felt that the game look good plot twists, which are the things that will make a game's storyline much more interesting.
Gameplay
Play a variety of levels of stealth infiltration and assassination.
From what I played, this game has more easier-to-play game controls compared to Hitman: Blood Money. For better or worse, I prefer this new easier-to-learn game controls.This game have lots of playable main chapters, with several missions included for each chapter. Some of the main chapters may have one mission only, whereas others can have more than 2 or 3 missions to be completed. This game's genre is both stealth and action-adventure, where you need to use stealth to kill targets, infiltrate forbidden areas, and etc.
As for movement controls, you can walk or run to move. You may also crouch to sneak past enemies quietly. You may also climb ledges to infiltrate areas, escape your pursuers, and etc. You may also hide inside big containers such as dumpsters or lockers to hide. You may also use them to hide dead bodies. You may also take covers to sneak past enemies silently, or use it to protect yourself during combat.
Many of the chapters' objectives are based on two similar formula: killing a target (or multiple targets) and reaching a destination. Although the game's main objectives for each chapter is similar, many of the chapters has a lot of different approaches to complete it. For example, you need to disguise yourself as a police to sneak past polices in a police station, or killing a target when he is alone. Most of the time, you will not get bored easily in this game, especially if you are truly enjoying this game since the tutorial level.
Use disguises to sneak past enemies.
Many of the levels in the game have large areas, which can be considered a super mini version of an open world game like Grand Theft Auto series. Some of it however, are linear levels where you need to approach the objective point one-way. The flexibility of either assassination or infiltration approaches in the game is high. For example, you can either kill all targets before proceed to your next objective, or just sneak past them using a disguise. However, Agent 47 is a professional hitman, thus stealth is his most preferred way of completing his objectives like many other professional hitman. There are no major repercussions of killing civilians or non-targets, other than score penalty on your Ranking, which I will explain later on. You may also find optional checkpoints in some playable levels in the chapters, which is useful to reload your checkpoint whenever you want to. The disguise system also returns in the game, which you can use to sneak past enemies in certain areas. Ne aware that disguises will not work on NPCs that have the same disguise as you, causing you in risk of being discovered prematurely by enemies.
What makes this game unique than other stealth games are the advanced and highly detailed NPC A.I. in this game for every level. Many NPCs in this game have their own unique actions, such as smoking while going out of room, patrolling in an area with one or more members, etc. In this game, learning and memorising enemy A.I. patterns is crucial for players to complete the game stealthily, which is important to get high score in your Ranking. Not only the minor NPCs such as the police have their own unique A.I. behaviour, the major NPCs such as targets have their own unique A.I., before or after you fulfilling the necessary condition(s) to alter their normal A.I. behaviour, such as spiking an important person's drink with sleeping pills in order to steal his keycard. Controlling the enemy A.I. behaviours is also important for you to sneak past enemies in area stealthily.
Assassinate your targets with a variety of ways.
As for weapons, you may have access to a number of weapons such as fiber wire, silenced handguns, assault rifles, and so on. However, you can only start with your fiber wire and silenced handguns on certain playable chapters in the game, as you may be unarmed in some chapters by following the storyline flow. While playing in the game's levels, you may also able to use a variety of objects such as knives, busts, books, fire extinguishers, or etc to distract your enemies or to kill them. You can distract your enemies by throwing an object to a desired throwing range location. This is a great way to distract the enemies for you to sneak in, use the chance to kill a target silently, or even use the enemy as human shield. There are many approaches for you to kill a target, such as by using a sniper rifle, fiber wire, or even setting up an accidental kill on targets. To perform accidental kills, you need to fulfill certain conditions such as finding a poison, activate a mine to kill a target anonymously, using the environment, and many more.
While in combat, you may opt to run from enemies or fighting them. Use your firearms to dispatch enemies during gunfights, or hide in dumpsters to avoid direct confrontations. There are several Alert Phases in the game, such as Clear, Caution, and Hunted. In Hunted phase, enemies will be seeking you actively and will try to kill you on the spot. In Caution phase, they will give up seeking you actively, but will patrol in areas regularly. In Clear Phase, the enemies and other NPCs will resume their usual A.I. patterns.
Accident kills can happen in this game... If you happen to have a hand on it.
There are several new features introduced in this game, which are Point Shooting and Instinct. Point Shooting is a feature that allows you to kill multiple enemies while your Instinct gauge is drained while the Point Shooting mode is active. The more Instinct you have, the more enemies you can target within more provided time. It is useful to get you out of tough situations, such as being heavily outnumbered by enemies. Instinct is a feature that allows you to both detect enemies walking path in the game as well as allows you to blend in through enemies or other NPCs by using specific disguises. For example, while you are using a police disguise, you can take the shortcut by blending in while in Instinct mode. You can gain Instinct by killing enemies, hide bodies in dumpsters, or completing an objective in a level.
At the end of a chapter, you will be ranked accordingly on how well you done in that particular chapter. If the game has more than one playable levels, the total Ranking scores will be totaled up for your current Rank in that chapter. The Ranking system in this game is a bit unique. Every time you start a new level in a chapter, you will start from zero points. Depending on what you do, you will obtain points, or get deducted. The few ways of you getting your own Ranking score to be deducted are killing innocent civilians or getting spotted by enemies or other suspicious NPCs. For example, your current Ranking score is -1250 because you have been spotted by an enemy. Conversely, you can get high score by only killing the target, and escape without being seen. Also, you may attempt to knock out both enemies or civilians out cold by subduing them barehanded. This will not give you the best score, but it will minimise your score penalty, particularly when you want to sneak past without any civilians around.
Create your own assassination contracts in Contract mode.
This game also features online play mode, which is called Contracts mode. This mode allows you to create your own assassination missions from the chapters you have completed previously. You may mark special NPCs as targets, or even innocent civilians as targets. You may also impose certain conditions on the game to be fulfilled in order to obtain the maximum money reward, such as killing the target and hide his/her body in a container. After creating it, you may save it and upload it online for other players to play. You may also participate in other online available Contracts for the game as well. Depending on how many you fulfilled the conditions, you will get more money reward than normal. The money reward can be used to upgrade your weapons, or obtain stuffs that you have not gotten yet from the single-player mode such as missing disguises or missing weapons. You may also send invitation to your online friends to play the contract that you have created, and challenged them into a competition.
Personally, I like the game's gameplay, despite many of Hitman fans complaints on how simplified the game is compared to previous Hitman games. The game controls are responsive, easy to learn, and precise. However, there are two things in the game that I have complaints. Firstly, the disguise system. The disguise system is not exactly perfect, since disguises do not allow you to sneak past people that have same clothes as you too easily. It is a bit unrealistic, since it totally defeats the purpose of you wearing the disguise in a level. Also, a professional hitman should use a balaclava to hide his face for the perfect disguise. However, in this game, Agent 47 did not do that. It is a bit dumb and unrealistic from a professional hitman. Secondly, the overall gameplay itself. As much as I like the gameplay itself, I felt that the game implemented several similar features from other games, namely Splinter Cell: Conviction or the recent Batman games. The Instinct mode is similar to the Detective Vision feature from the Batman games, and the Point Shooting is similar to Splinter Cell: Conviction's Mark and Shoot feature. I expected that this game will have more original gameplay features when it is launched. However, this did not happen since I have seen and played the similar features many times over in other games. Those two features certainly are new to the Hitman series, but might not be totally original compared to other games. Despite on how well I like the game's gameplay, I can't help but feel that the game does not feel original entirely. Other than those two major complaints, I am satisfied with the game's overall gameplay.
Graphics
Good graphics, but character models look slightly outdated.
The game's graphics is good, where it able to simulate a large number of NPCs on a screen without having any actual downgrade in game performance. To me, that achievement is simply admirable and awesome. The environments also look great, with distinct visuals for different areas. However, the game's character models does not look exactly great while playing it, particularly their faces. They don't look particularly great, but not too bad either. Since this year has many great looking games in the market today, I expected that this game's graphics to be top-notch and can rank up to other great looking games like Assassin's Creed III, Max Payne 3, Mass Effect 3, and many more.
This game also has certain bugs and glitches, where few of it involves freezing of the game, crashes, and etc. I sincerely hopes that IO Interactive to release a patch quickly to fix these problems, since these bugs and glitches are gamebreaking ones. I also advise any other interested players to beware of the game's bugs and glitches when playing it, or avoid buying the game before the patch is released.
Sound
Good voice acting and soundtrack.
The game's voice acting is pretty good, with good voice acting by the voice cast. I am pleased to know that David Bateson reprised his role as Agent 47 in the game, since I like his voice talent since Hitman: Blood Money.
The game's soundtrack is pretty good, full of orchestral and some ambient pieces. The music is only played in crucial cutscenes or crucial phases while playing the game, such as when you are in Hunted mode.
Replay Value
Good replay value.
The game has good replay value, where you can play the game in different difficulties or invest your playing time in Contracts mode. There are several advanced difficulties for you to play, such as Hard, Professional, and Purist. As the difficulty increases, the game's levels are much more difficult to complete, such as increased number of guards and getting detected by enemies faster while wearing a disguise. The most notable and hardest difficulty in this game is Purist mode, where you need to complete each level without any HUD active while playing. In other words, this mode is for actual hardcore players, and for those who wants to play more realistic difficulty games. However, the harder the difficulty mode is, the score multiplier is increased as well. Playing harder difficulty modes will net you more points, allowing you to get the top rank as Silent Assassin easily.
Conclusion
A good stealth action-adventure game that promotes flexibility of completing your missions with different ways.
I like this Hitman game. The game may not certainly up to par with the previous game, but the game is good on it's own. It has interesting storyline, good gameplay, nice sound design, good music, good voice acting, good graphics, and etc. The only things I have major reservations with the game are the outdated character models, unrealistic and broken disguise system, and the presence of gamebreaking bugs and glitches. This game may not be my Game of the Year, it is still certainly a good game to play for those who likes stealth games.
Score
Story: 9/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Graphics: 8/10
Sound: 9/10
Final Score: 34/40 or 8.5/10
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Interesting storyline.
- Good characters.
- Lots of ways to complete your objectives in the game.
- Stealth gameplay is well-implemented.
- Well implemented game controls.
- Good sound design.
- Good graphics.
- Great orchestral soundtrack.
- Memorable voice acting.
- Variety of ways to assassinate your targets.
- Good replay value.
- Harder difficulty modes provide increasingly harder challenges to players.
- Contracts mode is fun to play.
Cons
- Many outdated character models, albeit slightly.
- Bad and broken disguise system.
- Gameplay is not entirely unique.
- Hitman fans may not like this game.
- Game controls may feel too simplified for some players.
- Sexist elements may be present in the game.
- Gamebreaking bugs and glitches are present.
