HITMAN™ Review: Close to Perfection!

I don't think that Hitman Absolution was a bad game. I don't hate it at all and I actually thoroughly enjoyed it but linear story progression and non sandbox missions really hurt the game in my opinion. The new Hitman game is fixing pretty much EVERYTHING that Absolution came up short on, giving us a true Hitman experience we have longed for ever since the masterpiece of the series, Blood Money.

Before I review the game, I would like to share something. I am not competitive player and I don't do achievements in games to compete with other people. I do them because it gives me many interesting options to play the game. It also significantly increases the time I spend playing the game. I worked really hard on Hitman achievements and I realised that I became the very first person on TrueSteamAchievements to reach 100% achievement completion in HITMAN™. This made me extremely happy for some reason so I'd like this to be recorded on my blog. 

After I got that out of the way let's get back to reviewing the game :P Does the new Hitman have shortcomings? Of course it does, especially in AI department and I'll talk about them but first I have to talk about all the other things that Hitman got it right!

Sandbox

Sandbox levels are back! To me and from what I've seen during my conversations with other Hitman fans, to many others, Hitman is not about just assassinating your target. It's about preparation, the planning. It is about how you approach the problem and which solution you want to apply to get rid of it. Sandbox levels give you so many options to choose from that one can't help but feel overwhelmed with joy at the complexity of levels.

With the sandbox being back, this also means that there are now ridiculous numbers of ways to kill your target. I will give credit where it's due, Absolution also provided many options but as the levels were limited in size, the assassination options were also limited compared to the current game.

Disguises

Disguises finally work properly. Currently there are only a couple of disguises that give you full access to almost all areas (some are still restricted). But the most important thing is how well the generic disguises work. In Absolution, let's say you wore a Swat disguise (I won't even mention wearing a helmet here and how ridiculous that you still get recognised), anyone who also wear the same Swat disguise would recognise you almost instantly at higher difficulties. Entering a police station with my police disguise and the whole room going hostile on me in a matter of second will always haunt my dreams.

The new Hitman games fixes that but don't worry, you never ever get a free pass at all times. There will be some guards here and there that will still recognise you. There has to be some supervisor who actually knows the faces of all their employees right? So if you wore a Waiter disguise, not all but some of the waiters will still detect you and warn the authorities if you aren't careful. Levels are full of rooms with varying security clearances so if you want to go with disguise option without sneaking around, you will actually have to change disguises quite a lot :) While I admit that there is a huge improvement, disguises are still not working perfectly by any means and I will talk about why later when I list the negatives. :)

General Gameplay

When I first started playing the game, I was baffled by the omission of difficulty settings. Even after finishing the prologue the game never asked me which difficulty I wanted to play in. But the more I played the more I realised that the game is already challenging enough. But there are also Escalation Contracts that get more difficult as you pass a level. Each Escalation Contracts have 5 levels, they all take place in the same location and they give you certain conditions to fulfill before allowing you to complete the mission. As you pass each level, you will be faced with new conditions that you also must complete on top of the previous conditions. On the highest level, you will be given 5 requirements and you must complete all of them. You can't plan your approach in Escalation Contracts and they also don't have checkpoints, auto saves and manual saves. If you fail an Escalation contract, you have to start at the beginning of the level you are currently on, if you want to increase your overall ranking after finishing all 5 levels, you can reset this progress and start from 1 if you desire.

Speaking of manual saves, the game has manual save options. You can choose 8 slots to manually save your game on top of 8 additional slots for auto saves. These two are separated in the menu and you must choose whether you want to load a manual or an auto save first before you load the particular save file you want.

When it comes to stealth games, it's the little tiny itty bitty details that draw the line between getting detected or remaining in stealth. For example Absolution didn't give its players the option to manually close doors, they only closed by themselves after a couple of seconds. New Hitman game allows you to manually close the doors without having to wait and while this might seem like an insignificant detail to some of you who might not be too into the stealth genre, I can assure you that I have already made use of this function more than a dozen times in my playthrough and it really makes a big impact.

Another tiny detail is that in previous games you could pacify a guard and the leftover gun wouldn't make much of a difference, but now Hitman allows you to use these guns as a mean to distract guards. When a guard finds a gun on the floor, they will pick it up and take it to a place where there is a weapon cache giving you all the time you need to make your next move. If you want to collect these weapons after a guard transfers them, all you need to do is find the weapon cache and all the weapons will be waiting for you there.

Markers can be disabled.

Before each mission the game allows you to plan how you want to approach. In planning section you can choose different starting points, ask for agency pick up to smuggle items that might otherwise not be found in that level. You can also choose what kind of items you want in your starting inventory. However, planning inventory is fairly limited, in a good way, by forcing you to choose only one utility item. Absolution gave you the power to freely unlock doors without requiring an item for it but Hitman needs you to either find the key or use a lockpicking tool to unlock doors. If you want to get this lockpicking tool, this means you have to say goodbye to other items like coins that will help you distract guards, or more destructive items like proximity mines or remote explosives. But this is strictly about the starting inventory in planning stages. You can freely pick up all these items that are scattered around the mission area with the exception of lockpicking tool.

In order to unlock more options in planning stage, you need to earn mastery levels in a given mission. These levels can be earned by successfully completing challenges in a particular mission. There are tons of challenges that need you to kill a target in a particular way or discovering items around the mission area etc. And there are the usual challenges like finishing a mission using your suit only, using all disguises and of course last but not least the most prestigious one: no detection/no body found/only kill targets/all bodies hidden/suit only. As you complete these challenges and raise your mastery, max 20, you will unlock additional planning options such as starting the level in a kitchen disguised as a chef or on the 2nd floor disguised as a crew member etc.

There is a new gameplay element in Hitman 2016 and it's called Opportunities. During each mission you will be given a set of opportunities to take out your targets. Once you select an opportunity, the game will provide you with markers to follow. However if you want to make things a little more difficult, it is possible to disable all these markers from the game. Fulfilling these opportunities require a number of conditions to be met. For example in order to set up an interview and blow up your target with a camcorder, you first need to find the camcorder, then a remote explosive device and then place this device inside the camcorder and so on.

Negatives

My general complaints will be about the AI as I believe it still needs a lot of work. In The Final Test mission, I used the disguise of a KGB Officer who has white hair and beard, I should also mention that this was the only KGB Officer in that level. Despite his body being found (left him out in the open on purpose as I was testing AI reactions), everyone in the level still saluted and acted like I was him.

I faced another odd problem with AI in Paris mission when security guards searched me before giving me access to the next area. I tested this function numerous times and I came to the conclusion that it needs some work. It's obvious that if you are carrying a gun in your inventory, guards will turn hostile but this applies to other items like wrenches and screwdrivers too. However, oddly enough the guards let you go if you are carrying a RAT POISON!

Sadly there isn't a difficulty option. Yes, Escalation contracts prove to be challenging up to a point; however, once you do those contracts over and over again you learn the ideal way to approach them, whereas doing this on a harder difficulty would make things even more exciting!

Mission completion should be disabled if you are being chased at a very close proximity. In a particular mission I still managed to complete it while there was a guard aiming a gun at me from only 2-3 steps ahead. Now this should not be possible!

Graphics are not as well optimised for PC as they should have. Game basically becomes unplayable on Ultra graphics settings on my system. My system can easily handle Ultra graphics and 2k resolution on Tom Clancy's The Division... So, for a system that handles The Division graphics with ease to struggle a lot with Hitman graphics screams poor optimisation to me.

Conclusion

I am aware that there is currently a lot of hatred towards this game due to it being episodic. While these concerns are totally legit, the game is not "half-baked" by any means. Yes there are only 3 missions but only 1 mission alone had me play the game for at least 15 hours and somehow I still find new rooms I haven't discovered before!

In its current form, Hitman will not truly satisfy those who don't like to replay games or do the same mission over and over again (however many different approaches there might be), but I am reviewing this game in my own eyes and as a Stealth obsessed maniac, this game episodic or not has me totally addicted to it! For now I'm giving the game 9 out of 10. If the AI issues I mentioned are addressed in upcoming episodes, I will happily change it to 10!!