I have always been a big fan of the stealth genre and mechanics in gaming. In Skyrim, I am always the classic stealthy archer, I will always pick up the sniper rifle in shooters, and whenever rogues are an option in RPGs, I will sneak through that undergrowth. Which is why it is weird that the first time I played Hitman on PS2, I hated it.
The specific title escapes me, although I distinctly remember a big manor and a kitchen, although that describes so many levels. I had a few issues with the series, mostly with the level length and the lack of checkpoints/saves. As the name of this very blog suggests, I get distracted easily, and it sucked losing an hour of progress because I wanted to wander off. So, I set Agent 47 down and thought I would never return.
That was until I discovered Outside Xbox and by extension, Outside Xtra. If you haven’t heard of them, they are a group of five – sadly down to four recently – YouTubers who cover games and are absolutely hilarious. I highly recommend them. They used to upload endless videos on Hitman 3, or Hitman World of Assassination, as it was rebranded.
I binged these videos over a few days, and whilst laughing myself sick, the gameplay started to suck me in. So, one evening I decided to try out the free prologue. After installing it to my Xbox, I jumped in, and then didn’t sleep that night. In one glorious sitting I fully completed every challenge they offered in the starting missions, and the very next day, I cracked and went back to the store.
Now, it costs £80.00 for the World of Assassination edition, which includes all the content from the newest trilogy. A very steep bundle indeed, and one I have absolutely zero regrets about buying. Nor do I regret almost immediately purchasing every piece of available DLC.
If you have never played a Hitman, you control the world’s greatest assassin, Agent 47. You sneak through levels, knocking people out and stealing their outfits to become them, which opens up routes to get you to your targets. Your handler, Diana Burnwood, explains this works because “people look at outfits more than faces”, which is utterly ridiculous, but, then again, that’s a theme throughout.
Part of my love for Hitman comes from this underlying zany humour. The vast methods of assassinating people can veer into the absurd, such as pushing someone off a balcony to kill another person below or using the amazingly named Napoleon Blownapart to remotely blow your target up in a haze of French nationalism. You are also regularly treated to dialogue from Agent 47 which in 99% of cases are just puns and references to death. The man is committed to his craft.
Each evel is endlessly replayable, with a massive list of challenges and Mission Stories you can complete. And amazingly, it doesn’t get boring. I relish playing through each one in multiple ways to enjoy all the different routes you can take. It is so fun. However, most of the fun I derive is from my own imposed goal when I play a level for the first time; I go for the Silent Assassin, Suit Only runs right off the bat.
To achieve this you can only killl your targets, have no bodies found, don’t get spotted, and crucially, never change out of your starting suit. The last rule is the hardest because your targets are always in restricted areas, and since it is my first time on that level, I have zero idea how to navigate the map. It forces you to properly assess every single move you make, which is incredibly fun for me. It also leads every assassination to be carried out in what I can only describe as a Mr Bean-eske manner.
As soon as there is a window of opportunity you have to take it, which is very rare because the targets are always around people unless you follow stories or use disguises to lure them away somehow. It is the opposite of the Silent Assassin when you throw a knife at a target, and follow up with throwing a wrench at their bodyguard before they turn around.
I love the stealth play, but what I also love, perhaps more, are the Elusive Targets. These are time-limited contracts, only around for a few days, and if you fail them, you need to wait 12 hours before trying again. You think this would force you to be extremely careful, but I find it to have the opposite effect on me. I take on a more “boot in the door, headshot, run away screaming in a hail of bullets” approach. The score doesn’t matter in these, and it is so strangely liberating to just go full chaotic on them.
There have been so many moments in Hitman that have made me laugh, it is just so joyous to play, which is odd given the nature of the game. I seem to have picked up a signature move of creating massive corpse piles, which started when I was trying to be stealthy once. I accidentally set off a guard and knocked them out, but it was too late. I hid behind a couch, but the next guard saw the first guy and came over, so I had to knock them out, then the next guy saw the two bodies and came over. Repeat until I had a dozen guards all piled up. I was strangely proud.
Hitman: World of Assassination truly has no right to be as fun as it is. You would think a game that has you revisit the same levels with the same people in their same routines over and over would get boring, but I absolutely adore it. The price tag is a big sticking point, but it is so worth it. I haven’t had this much constant joy from a game in a long, long time. You could say it is, to die for.
