DISCLAIMERS:
- the reviewer has not finished the game with 100% completion
- the game was played on the Xbox One S using the version of the game intended for United States audiences
4 years after Hitman’s departure from its original genre in Hitman: Absolution, classic Hitman returned with Hitman, which is also commonly known as Hitman 2016. This game reintroduced the more open-ended stages of the older Hitman games and introduced a new episodic payment model. This review will judge the game on its own merits based on every main episode released.
The gameplay of Hitman returns to its more tactical and carefully designed roots. Agent 47 isn’t an action hero and playing in that way isn’t rewarded by the game in essentially any way. The objective is to kill a target with hopefully one of the preferred methods while hopefully not blowing Agent 47’s cover. This provides a large amount of gameplay variety and replayability. All of the mechanics work intuitively so just about every play style should work without issue. Levels are also well thought out, which is impressive considering their size. The episodic payment model seems to have hurt the level variety, though, as there isn’t much of a difficulty curve or any climactic gameplay moment to speak of. Still, the game is obviously very well thought out and provides a huge amount of possibilities.
In practice the intended experience is easily broken, though. Throwing a screwdriver around a corner and simply walking away as the AI has trouble figuring out who could have thrown it is possible in just about every episode. Changing costumes is much stronger than in Hitman: Absolution, which makes attracting attention and running even more effective than it should be. The game can be saved at any time with a generous number of save slots too, which removes almost all of the tension the game would have had otherwise. Though these problems do come down to the player’s decisions and the difficulty they choose, there isn’t any particularly good choice for a middle ground and expecting the player to avoid using mechanics for the intended experience isn’t good game design.
Technically Hitman is rather impressive. Just about everything looks rather good, though obviously not incredibly high budget. The game also runs at far above 30 FPS most of the time which is quite the achievement for a game of this type on hardware like the Xbox One. Mechanics are also rather soundly implemented, too. Overall this is easily the second best aspect of this game behind the gameplay.
The sound in Hitman is about average considering where it was developed. The music is far from memorable, but still perfectly serviceable. The voice acting is also about average and doesn’t take anything away from the experience. Overall the sound in Hitman obviously wasn’t the biggest focus.
The story in Hitman barely exists, though what little does exist is far from intrusive, so it’s not worth awarding or taking any points away for.
In terms of value Hitman is definitely worth it. Although there aren’t an overwhelming amount of missions they are highly replayable. It is easily one of the best values for a single player game without RPG mechanics.
Overall the reviewer would give this game an 8.0/10
If you decide to purchase this game through one of the links below this blog will receive a commission.
