HITMAN™

My first run through Paris ended with me frantically sprinting across a rooftop after a guard spotted me mid-disguise swap. My second run, I poisoned a champagne glass, watched a fashion mogul excuse herself to the restroom, and walked out without raising an eyebrow. That gap between those two experiences is the entire reason HITMAN (2016) works as well as it does. What IO Interactive built here is a sandbox stealth game structured around six large, dense environments spanning Paris, Sapienza, Marrakesh, Bangkok, Colorado, and Hokkaido. Each one functions less like a traditional level and more like a puzzle box you can crack from dozens of different angles. The core loop is simple: pick your starting point, assemble a loadout, acquire a disguise, learn a target's routine, and find an opening. But the depth comes from Opportunities and Escalation Contracts, which layer guided and creative challenges on top of each other, and from Elusive Targets, one-shot timed assassination events that land with genuine tension because failure is permanent. Contracts Mode lets players design and share their own hits, flagging any NPC on the map as a target and setting kill conditions, which adds a community-driven long tail that still has people playing this entry years later. The rating system rewards clean, silent kills but never forces them on you, meaning newcomers can go in loud while veterans chase Silent Assassin runs on self-imposed rules. That flexibility is rare and genuinely well-implemented. The levels themselves are the star. Crowds feel alive, NPC conversations drop actual hints about your target's movements, and interactable objects are scattered throughout in ways that reward curiosity. A can of rat poison near a kitchen, a microphone rigged to electrocute, a chandelier above the right spot: the environments are stuffed with these setups, and discovering them organically is consistently satisfying. The Instinct system, which highlights enemies and objects through surfaces, keeps the experience readable without hand-holding you into a single solution. Controls can be slightly fussy, particularly when the game distinguishes between a held button and a tap for different actions, but it stops being an issue once the muscle memory settles. Where the game earns legitimate criticism: the story is thin and largely delivered in cutscenes that feel disconnected from your actions on the ground. The always-online requirement for challenges, Opportunities, and progression tracking is still a real friction point for anyone with an unreliable connection, even though an offline mode exists. Some players will also find the level count on the low side if they are only interested in running each mission once rather than mining every challenge. And if you are someone who already owns HITMAN 2, the GOTY Legacy Pack route is worth knowing about, since it brings this content into that engine with additional improvements. For the right player, though, none of that tips the scales. If you like stealth games that respect your creativity and give you room to experiment, this one does that better than almost anything else in the genre. The replay value is genuinely exceptional when you let the game pull you into repeat runs.

Alex · Scout Team

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