Hitman 3

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Hitman 3 Review — Perfect Execution

Hitman 3 doesn’t make changes to the World of Assassination formula—instead, it refines it through excellent level design.

on January 19, 2021 at 9:46AM PST

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Since it rebooted its Hitman franchise in 2016, IO Interactive has been putting on a level design masterclass. Each of the missions the developer rolled out in what it calls its World of Assassination series has contained a huge, intricate collection of scripted and free-form systems that create harrowing moments, presented elaborate puzzles to solve, and allowed the player to orchestrate ludicrous and often hilarious situations. Levels are designed to be played over and over so you can explore, understand, and eventually master all their moving parts, and it’s impossible to see everything one has to offer in a single playthrough (or in most cases, even two or three).

At first blush, Hitman 3 appears to be more of the same. It makes no drastic changes to the underlying formula, instead adding a few graphical upgrades and quality-of-life improvements to the existing Hitman framework. But Hitman 3 improves on the World of Assassination through consistently excellent level design—which is saying something, given how strong all the previous missions are. Hitman 3 is full of fun and fascinating ideas, many of which play with the concepts underpinning the last four years of Hitman levels.

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Now Playing: Hitman 3 Review

Presumably knowing that players have spent all sorts of time mastering its many settings and systems, IO throws in some brilliant curve balls that require you to use your assassin skills and knowledge in clever, challenging new ways.

In Hitman 3, all the stealth mechanics, the ways you can interact with the world, and enemy AI remain the same as in the past. That’s essential to how Hitman works, however—your knowledge and understanding of the game’s underlying systems are what make it possible to replay levels again and again to exploit their intricacies in different ways. Rather than feel dated, Hitman 3 just highlights how satisfying it can be to understand how all these moving pieces work together. There aren’t any major mechanical additions to the game’s construction, but seeing how it all harmonizes is as impressive today as it was when the first entry in the World of Assassination trilogy launched in 2016.

In each of the game’s locations, your goal is to find a way to eliminate your assassination targets and then escape the level without being found out. You do that largely by knocking out enemies, hiding their bodies, and taking their clothes. Some areas are restricted based on what you’re wearing, and some enemies can still see through your disguises, requiring you to carefully avoid them. Agent 47 has the benefit of Instinct, a vision mode that lets him intuit where enemies are through walls and which highlights interactive items in the environment.

As you sneak around each level, your goal is to try to uncover information that will help you get close to your targets and eliminate them. Those assassinations can be accomplished in simple ways, such as shooting them or strangling them with a garrote, or more complex ones like exposing an electrical wire in a puddle and then turning on a nearby switch to electrocute your prey. The stealthier (and less deadly to non-targets) you are, the better your score at the end of a level, and each stage is full of challenges to complete that encourage you to find weird and creative ways to take out your mark, without anyone knowing you were ever there. The more challenges you complete, the more you «master» a level, which unlocks additional starting locations and loadout options to change the experience even more.

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Part of what sets Hitman 3’s levels apart from those of Hitman 1 and 2 is how they fit into the overall story that IO has been telling in this series. In the past, each of Hitman’s levels has functioned as a mostly standalone chapter in the tale of titular assassin Agent 47. You’d go into a location with one or more targets, and each mission had a bit of story about the people you were after, which doubled as an opportunity to get close to them.

But those targets were usually somewhat tangentially related to what was going on in the unfolding story of Agent 47 and his handler, Diana Burnwood. Across Hitman 1 and 2, the pair slowly realized that they were unwitting participants in a war between the Shadow Client, a guy who was carefully manipulating them through their assassination contracts, and Providence, an Illuminati-like organization of world-controlling super-rich people. In Hitman 3, Agent 47 and Burnwood are fully involved in the battle against Providence after the events of Hitman 2, and that larger story is finally at the forefront of everything that’s going on.

That means that missions feel like they have a bigger impact and targets are more interesting and make more sense. The characters you eliminate have consequences for the story, and those consequences lead to imaginative takes on the series formula as 47’s enemies try to fight back against him. After developing a brilliant mold for Hitman missions, where you’re dropped into an often-huge area and have to learn to understand how it works to accomplish your goals, IO breaks that mold again and again to create fun, memorable, inventive assassination experiences.

, set in Dartmoor, England, where you’re trying to assassinate a target in the middle of what is essentially a riff on the movie Knives Out or any number of Agatha Christie stories. You’re planning a murder of your own, but one has just taken place in the huge mansion where your target is staying, and you can even take on the role of private investigator and search for clues to figure out whodunit. It feels like taking a brief vacation in the middle of Hitman 3 to play another game, but the brilliance of the murder mystery’s addition is that the whole time you’re solving it, you’re thinking about how you can use the information you learn to your advantage to finish your assassination. Your inquiry might let you expose the murderer, or frame someone else for the crime, or give you ammunition for a blackmail threat, depending on how much you explore. It’s a three-dimensional chess game where you’re not only putting the clues together to close the case, but also thinking ahead to what opportunities your actions might offer you, and it’s an absolutely phenomenal expansion of how Hitman’s intricate levels already work.

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Later missions also put intelligent spins on the series framework. Just about every Hitman mission up to now has given you a briefing about your targets and lets you plan your starting point and weapon loadout—so one mission robs you of all your preparatory information, dropping you into an unfamiliar location and forcing you to wing it, locating your targets and learning what you can about them on the fly. Another mission takes the things that work about Hitman—sneaking past guards, donning disguises, using the environment to distract or pacify enemies—and shrinks the scope from its normally expansive settings to a tight, crowded train, so that every move and decision you make has to be quick and calculated. There’s a mission that purposely leaves you on the back foot at one point when an alarm is activated, forcing you to sneak or fight your way to safety as guards search for you.

None of Hitman 3’s missions change how you’ve played these games since 2016. They don’t throw new mechanics at you (other than a camera that can scan some objects and persistent shortcuts that give you new opportunities for assassinations) or require you to learn to deal with new enemy behaviors. Instead, Hitman 3 finds new ways to challenge seasoned assassins purely through excellent design. You’ve honed your assassination skills—but can you solve a mystery? Can you avoid other hidden, disguised assassins hunting you? Can you sneak out of a locked-down facility full of soldiers who know you’re there? It’s a fitting testament to how strong the World of Assassination games have been all along that IO can make Hitman 3 feel fresh and new simply by finding creative new ways to take advantage of the series’ design foundations.

The drawback of Hitman 3 is that, while the missions often feel even more ambitious in intricacy than those of the past, the game itself is scaled down somewhat as an overall package. Gone are some additions that appeared in Hitman 2, including the competitive Ghost mode and cooperative Sniper Assassin missions (the Sniper Assassin missions still exist as single-player experiences, but only if you own the content from Hitman 2).

There’s an argument to be made that IO has maintained its focus on what people like about the series in Hitman 3 while letting experiments that worked less well fall away, but it still feels like there’s a bit less game here than in the past. That said, the World of Assassination games also have excelled with their post-release content, and we know that the timed Elusive Target missions are making a return at some point, which softens the blow of multiplayer mode losses. There’s also the addition of virtual reality support for PlayStation players, allowing you to play Hitman 3 in first-person mode (along with all the missions from Hitman 1 and 2, if you own them), although we played on PC and thus couldn’t test it.

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And as with Hitman 2, Hitman 3 functions as a platform for past games’ levels, so you can play everything from Hitman 1 and 2 with your new unlocked weapons and Hitman 3’s improvements. Continuing to have access to all Hitman content in one place is a nice addition, although you have to have purchased it all at some point or another.

What’s good about Hitman—its level design and the creativity, experimentation, and exploration that affords—is great in Hitman 3. It closes out the trilogy by brilliantly playing off everything that came before it, making use of and then subverting expectations, and rewarding players for their willingness to master the complexity of both its individual levels and the series as a whole.

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«There will be no more confusion over which edition to buy, what content you own, how to redeem Legacy packs or import locations, etc,» IO Interactive said. «We’re done with that.»

Under the new scheme, Hitman: World of Assassination will include Hitman 3, along with the Hitman 1 Game of the Year Access Pass and the Hitman 2 Standard Access Pass. There will be one upgrade option as well, the World of Assassination Deluxe Pack, which will include the Hitman 3 Deluxe Pack, the Seven Deadly Sins Collection, and the Hitman 2 Expansion Access Pass.

(Image credit: IO Interactive)
(Image credit: IO Interactive)

The situation is a little more «flexible,» as IO Interactive put it, for existing players: Steam and the in-game store will offer all current owners an option to «complete the set,» which means that they’ll only have to pay for content they don’t already own. The standalone versions of Hitman 1 and 2 are also being removed from sale.

As well as making life easier for new Hitmen, the update can also be seen as formalizing Hitman’s transition from a series of discrete games into a live service offering: IO Interactive said the change was also made with the upcoming Freelancer roguelike mode in mind, «where being able to easily access all locations from across the World of Assassination is paramount to maximising your enjoyment.» After a couple of delays, that’s slated to roll out on January 26, alongside the World of Assassination name change.

Hitman 3 review

published 19 January 2021
(Image: © IO Interactive)

A beautiful, deep, and endlessly replayable murder sandbox, featuring some of the best levels in the series.

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Need to know

What is it? A globe-trotting assassination simulator.
Expect to pay £50/$60
Developer IO Interactive
Publisher In-house
Reviewed on RTX 2080 Super, Intel i7-9700K, 16GB RAM
Multiplayer None
Link Official site

And so we’ve come to the end of IO Interactive’s so-called World of Assassination trilogy, which began with the Danish developer’s first Hitman reboot back in 2016. These are some of the best systems-driven stealth games on PC, and Hitman 3 tops the series off with a superb collection of levels—some of which are among the best in the entire Hitman series. This is a spiritual and mechanical continuation of the previous two games, but IO still has a few surprises up its sleeve. And one level in particular might just be the studio’s masterpiece.

I’m in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Berlin. Spindly lasers and spotlights sweep across a shadowy dancefloor, revealing a sea of bobbing heads hypnotised by throbbing techno music. The music is so loud, and the bass so deep, it makes my headphones vibrate. But I’m not here because Agent 47 has given up contract killing and joined the German rave scene, even though that would be a pretty funny way to end the story. I’m here to murder a team of deadly assassins who are also trying to murder me.

(Image credit: IO Interactive)

Ten hitmen are patrolling the warehouse and a scrubby industrial wasteland surrounding it. And here’s the kicker: they know what I look like, even if I’m wearing a disguise. I can still change clothes to stroll past lowly security guards, but these trained killers aren’t so easily fooled. If they catch sight of me they’ll open fire, which means I have to rely on those swarms of pill-popping ravers, and the maze-like architecture of the building, to conceal myself.

Most Hitman targets are cowards hidden away in a fortress behind a wall of armed guards, which makes these guys so thrilling to go up against. It’s a totally different dynamic, and one of the challenging missions in the trilogy as a result. There aren’t even any Mission Stories in this level, the in-game hint system that usually suggests entertaining ways to kill your targets. This encourages you to experiment with the sandbox and dream up your own methods.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to kill them without anyone noticing, in front of thousands of witnesses, in the middle of a rave

To complicate matters, the assassins are also disguised. To identify them I have to steal an earpiece and listen in on their conversations. When I catch one talking to their handler in instinct mode—which highlights targets, points of interest, weapons, and so on—their cover is blown and they’re marked permanently on the map. Now all I have to do is figure out how to kill them without anyone noticing, in front of thousands of witnesses, in the middle of a rave. I could just shoot them and run away, of course, but that’s no way to play Hitman.

It seems impossible at first. Some of the targets follow routines where they’re constantly surrounded by people. One of them, the leader, even has a bodyguard who never leaves his side. But the beauty of Hitman is carefully studying these big, intricate levels, making a mental map, and finding holes in the security to exploit. When you do finally manage to kill five of these assassins—enough to send the others fleeing—it feels incredible.

Although Hitman 3 builds on the solid foundations laid by the first two parts of the trilogy, sharing the same AI, stealth systems, and user interface, IO has also taken this opportunity to experiment a little with its tried and tested formula. The complex, open-ended Berlin level is the most the studio has ever trusted a Hitman player to take the lead and figure things out for themselves. And in the other levels there are, surprisingly, only three Mission Stories per map, compared to an average of about ten in the previous two games’ levels.

The opportunities are still there: elaborate traps to set up, people to pose as, shortcuts to take, keys to swipe. They just aren’t as clearly signposted this time around, forcing you to engage more with the environment around you. At its core this is still very much a classic Hitman game, but in many ways a more playful, experimental one. One level set in a dusty old mansion in Dartmoor, England sees Agent 47 posing as a private detective and solving a murder mystery straight out of an Agatha Christie novel. It’s a gimmick, but a fun, unique spin on what is otherwise a fairly typical assassination mission.

The mansion itself is brilliantly constructed. Long, dark corridors lined with oil paintings open up into bright, lavishly decorated drawing rooms. And behind the walls there’s a labyrinth of secret passages to discover with peepholes for spying on people. There’s also a wonderful feeling of isolation, with the house standing alone in an expanse of barren, overcast moorland that stretches infinitely into the distance. No one makes places quite like IO Interactive, and in Hitman 3 you’ll find some of the developer’s finest creations to date.

(Image credit: IO Interactive)

Chongqing is another standout. It’s a pretty straightforward mission compared to Berlin and Dartmoor, but an incredible piece of level design. Above, rain-soaked streets buzzing with fluorescent neon signs, noodle bars, apartment blocks, and winding, trash-stuffed alleyways. Below, a gleaming futuristic facility with multiple layers of security, heavily armed guards, and vent systems to slip through. This impossibly intricate double-stacked level is one of the most impressive things IO has ever created; both in terms of atmosphere and aesthetic, and in how many interesting ways there are to navigate it.

As for the other levels, Hitman 3 opens with Agent 47 taking a trip to Dubai and infiltrating a glamorous soirée at the top of its tallest building. He enters the level by parachute, crawls through a window, slips into a tuxedo, and blends into the crowd—as if we needed any more proof that IO loves James Bond. It’s a real visual treat too, with immense gilded palm trees, reflecting pools, and dramatic views over the cloud-covered city. But for all its glamour it’s a rather simple, reserved level, feeling more like a tutorial to ease new players in.

This impossibly intricate double-stacked level is one of the most impressive things IO has ever created

Dubai introduces the digital camera, a largely forgettable new gadget that 47 always has in his inventory, regardless of what you selected at the mission planning phase. With it you can scan things for extra intel or hack electronic panels to trigger certain things—for instance, activating a futuristic window’s frosted glass to cover you, or remotely opening a vent cover. It’s a frivolous addition, really, and feels slightly out of place in a Hitman game. But the levels are almost never designed around it, so thankfully it’s not too intrusive. And in its favour, I do like how you can use the zoom function to scout ahead.

Later, 47 travels to Mendoza, Argentina and sneaks into yet another high-class party: this time at a winery. With golden early evening sun falling over the vineyards, it’s gorgeous to look at, and a Mission Story involving a sniper is especially devilish. The level is split between the winery, where the party is being held, a scattering of rocky foothills patrolled by gaucho guards, and a colonial villa where one of your targets lives. It’s another level that plays things relatively safe, but it’s much more detailed and involved than Dubai.

(Image credit: IO Interactive)

The sixth and final map, set among Romania’s rugged Carpathian Mountains, isn’t a typical Hitman level at all. It’s more like an action set-piece, designed to finish Agent 47’s story in spectacular fashion. It’s a tightly choreographed, visually impressive finale, but it is, essentially, scripted. Without spoiling anything, the nature of the level means there’s no room for exploration. You do get a few opportunities to flex your creativity, but mostly you’re just doing what you’re told. This makes it the weakest by default, even though it’s crafted with the same level of care and polish that defines all of IO’s levels.

Over the years, IO has gotten really good at designing the many small stealth challenges that litter its levels. The placement of guards, improvised weapons, blind corners, security cameras, and places to hide bodies is often pitch perfect. There are countless tiny, satisfying moments in these levels where you’re given just enough to cleverly outfox the AI and use the environment to your advantage. You rarely feel backed into a corner, or in a situation you can’t find a way out of, which speaks to the quality of the game’s design. And as you unlock additional tools and gadgets, the sandbox only gets deeper and more varied.

Despite a couple of weaker levels, Hitman 3 is a sensational stealth game. Berlin, Chongqing, and Dartmoor represent the series at its best, which is a fine way to end the trilogy. And if you own the first two games you can—once Epic figures out how—access all of those levels here, with improved visuals and the ability to use the new game’s gadgets and weapons in them. Do that, and this is easily one of the best games on PC. If this was a review of the trilogy as a whole, I’d stick a couple more points on the review score. But even on its own, Hitman 3 is a magnificent videogame and a perfect swansong for Agent 47.

Источники:

https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/hitman-3-review-perfect-execution/1900-6417632/&rut=f8d401d1795fca23aba3ee9d145586321a397d77b40c7050560fbff4e69f5eaf
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1829591/HITMAN_3__Deluxe_Pack/&rut=ff61debf547db1ad814a40f664f0eed130a7fcb5c770b539ac747c2744438109
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1659040/HITMAN_World_of_Assassination/&rut=37e0cd48293397cdee70f5ff35e20921b55cda9d09a901570bf5b1fcf2a69ae1
https://www.pcgamer.com/hitman-3-is-becoming-hitman-world-of-assassination-with-all-content-rolled-into-one-big-game/&rut=be7268cb73d104da0296886511890262aad59029d3a113ef06407d71a3678264
https://www.pcgamer.com/hitman-3-review/&rut=623918a4e1ba3c4592d805b0f2c80459de1f5c7d79f1b851e2ef81c55a5ec030