Hitman | Review

Hitman is one of the most unique games on the market today, and we here at TheLifeStyleElite.com have been fans of this franchise for some time. Even going so far as to include it as one of our “Best of” entries in the 2012 Year End Review. Though the franchise started as a platform game for Windows in the year 2000, it has since gone on to create six platform/console games (one compilation game) and two mobile games. In March of this year, the franchise returned with its seventh installment simply titled “Hitman”. This latest entry also promises to be a more in-depth game, with more exotic locations, more elaborate ways to eliminate your targets and more weapons than its predecessors. Though the story takes place seven years after the events in Hitman: Absolution and we are given more of a glimpse at Agent 47’s past. 

The plot begins 20 years in the past when 47 began his employment and first met his only real contact outside of his missions Diana. The dialogue driven cut scenes add a great deal to the story line. Though this is refreshing, the greatest feature added to the story is the episodic layout of the campaign mode. Each month since its release a new mission is added that furthers the plot. The main antagonist is un-named but seems to be pitting two rival secret organizations against one another.  One being the company that employs our protagonist and the other one is a much older with the allure that is stuff of legend. Though season one does leave us on a cliffhanger we can truly say the story is a cinematic treat…..if only the live action movies would take a nod from the game’s writers.

The gameplay has had some considerable improvements since its predecessor the first notable change is the instinct no longer shows you the path of the enemy but now just shows their location when close enough. Which comes in handy more often than not. Mainly when trying to avoid enemy detection, which has improved. There were several times our testers were spotted in or around an area wearing the wrong attire and was forced to compromise under the threat of captured or killed. We had a lot of rather interesting encounters ourselves, but one thing that will help you avoid this is the white circle above individuals. This circle indicates the threat of being exposed in your current outfit, and it is best to avoid these targets at all costs. If spotted it is better to eliminate the suspicious individual or individuals immediately.

Ultimately Hitman is a stealth game, but that is not to say if you come across an opportunity to take out your target or targets you shouldn’t take it. Rather you should be mindful of your surroundings. If you have to improvise a hit we suggest finding an area that fits your current apparel and blending in to avoid any further detection. If this is not possible find a hiding spot to lay low for awhile. Whether non-lethal or lethal taking down individuals will make your mission very difficult. And remember killing a non-target will negatively affect your overall score at the end. It is best to hide any unconscious/dead bodies as well. This allows you to continue with the surrounding crowd being unaware of your doing, and will help you being negatively affected at the end of each mission. Another interesting addition we found very useful is “the opportunity” feature. Which allows you find out information about your surroundings, targets, and potential target elimination scenarios. For us stealing the pilots uniform afforded us the chance to get close to the doctor. This allowed us to get close enough to our target and make our hit look like a surgical accident.

The elusive targets feature is new to the franchise and should in “our opinion” be only played by experienced players. This stems from the limited chance to eliminate your target, as well as your knowledge of said level. You are limited to one play through of the game, no ability to save, or replay the level. The requirements are so strict if you or your target dies you will not be able to restart the mission. If you are killed during these missions you fail and will never have a chance to replay. If you manage to kill the target and do not safely get away you will fail the mission as well. All elusive targets are available for a very limited time, and with each successfully completed level there is a potential to earn exclusive unlockable items with a high enough score.

Contracts Mode

The wildly popular Contracts mode returns. For fans of the franchise, this was one of the more unique features in Absolution. Which allowed players to create missions with personally selected targets, execution and wardrobe requirements. Unfortunately, all your hard work was next to impossible to showcase as there was no way to share these contracts with none friends. This time around the issue was fixed with a search feature. The search feature allows you to not only search the contract by name, but also allow you to search by mission location, a number of targets, and kill conditions. All of which add to the complexity of the contract, and if you follow us on Twitter many of you have found our contracts are some of the hardest to complete. Some of which were nearly impossible for even us.

Pros:

The searchability of the on the contracts mode is a much-needed improvement. Making the whole concept of contracts more interesting allowing you to play not only featured

Cons:

As with what we liked, there are a few things we disliked. The first of course being that it is purely an online game. Understandably you can play the game offline, but all the main features including new levels and achievements are strictly online. Which is alarming as in the future if the studio behind the game no longer want to pay for the servers to run the game your game would be essentially incomplete forever.

When downloading a new mission we constantly were directed to re-purchase the game. (an issue we later found out was an issues across all platforms)

One of the more annoying and narrowing the scope of our gaming divisions completive side, was the small change to the contracts mode. Unlike Hitman: Absolution, the contracts mode does not allow you to set strict requirements for the contracts. In the previous version, the weapon you used to take out the selected target, and attire worn were a requirement and a determining factor in player’s overall score. Instead, developers opted to make everything optional.

We also found it very difficult to aim with the weapons as well. Unlike Blood Money the weapons awarded are not customizable and there are what you see what you get. This was a feature many including us were hoping would be returning to the game.

Final Verdict:

With all pros and cons considered we did still enjoy playing Hitman. We happily rate the franchise’s return to form with a 4 out of 5 stars. This impressive game seems not only to have a promising future with the upcoming season two but is constantly updated.