This is important, as Hitman has an involved challenge system practically daring you to try every possible strategy and dig through every level as thoroughly as possible. I felt forced to make use of the environment much more, and this was a good thing. Where a crowbar or wrench may have been a level-specific prop in previous games good only for mayhem, here, they're necessary to complete certain tasks.
You can tamper with objects and sabotage various bits of equipment and machines, but you'll often need tools found around the world to do so. This organic sensibility does add a new layer of complication to the series. Wandering with deadly purpose through hundreds of partygoers inside a massive mansion, Hitman has moments of true disassociation from the obvious systems that dominate most stealth games.
#HITMAN ABSOLUTION REVIEW IGN SERIES#
The game's prologue missions feel on par with previous games in the series regarding size and scope, but Paris, the first chapter, feels bigger than almost any previous level in the series, with what seemed like more than half a dozen possible ways to complete its objectives.Įxploring this episode - a fashion show in Paris complete with a runway you can experience firsthand - felt like the realization of Blood Money's often clumsy attempts to build a world on hardware that wasn't truly capable of it. In that respect, this new game so far seems poised to top Blood Money or any other game in the series for that matter. The goal is simple, but the complex world that exists around that target is Hitman's appeal. Hitman is a game with a narrow focus: Kill your targets. What they're for, ultimately, is killing. The in-game UI taps them on the shoulder with important bits of information and providing waypoints on the screen leading to vital mission intel and targets often before the game has even established what they're for. But without tweaking those settings, Hitman feels a little aggressive in telling players about the different options available to them. Hitman allows you to disable almost any UI element and information supplement you prefer, even walking through each type in the tutorial and giving an option to disable them. Of course, with the game's defaults enabled, this can feel like overzealous babysitting. With so many opportunities, it's vital that players understand exactly what 47 can do, and how the world will react to his actions, and in that respect, Hitman does particularly well. While many games take place in an open area, allowing players to screw around without issue, Hitman has numerous overlapping systems that allow for improvisation and creative play that depend almost entirely on the reaction of NPCs to make magic happen. Io has always struggled introducing its systems to new players. The ICA immediately subjects 47 to a battery of training scenarios to ascertain his field competency in completing assassination assignments, an opportunity Io smartly uses to serve as Hitman's tutorial. It opens prior to the events of its predecessors, as Agent 47 is inducted into the clandestine International Contract Agency, or ICA, and meets his handler and confidante throughout the series, Diana. Hitman's first episode is a promising start for the game. This review will follow the series as it develops, with updates as each chapter arrives detailing the current state of the game. Instead, the game has been separated into "episodes" scheduled to be released throughout 2016, each one a proper chapter as would be expected in previous Hitman titles.
But for reasons best speculated on elsewhere, Io Interactive is once again adding a new, impossible-to-ignore variable to the equation: Hitman isn't releasing all in one piece. While 2012 saw a follow-up in Hitman Absolution, Io's turn toward a more cinematic, action-driven bent for series protagonist Agent 47 alienated fans who wanted more of Blood Money's puzzle boxes.įrom a design perspective, this new Hitman feels like a response to those fans, and their desire for a more perfectly realized system to experiment with their more murderous, Rube Goldberg-ian impulses.
Blood Money refined developer Io Interactive's sandbox sensibilities into something both approachable and sophisticated, honing the ideals of experimentation and improvisation that the series had been building until then. Hitman: Blood Money has become a cult hit since its release in 2006, its methodical and creative assassination gameplay serving as a benchmark for a different take on the stealth action genre. It may be the sixth proper game in the series, but Hitman (2016) is likely being held to the standards of just one of its predecessors.
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