3 minute read
hiTman
i N g play Now
Revisiting a newly expanded world of assassination in Hitman: Game Of The Year Edition Martin Kitts
Publisher Io InteractIve/ DeveloPer io interactive / forMat XboX one / release Date out now
body into a haystack or down a well to avoid spooking the others. If they figure out somebody’s trying to shoot them they’ll make a dash for the exit, which means game over. what is it? Super bug A new mini campaign While the infected in included with Hitman: that mission don’t
Game Of The Year actually spread the Edition, or an upgrade for existing players. You can revisit Elusive virus to the others, contagion is the key
Targets, too. gimmick in the last and best of Patient Zero’s levels. It’s a trip back to the hospital in Hokkaido, where one of your targets has the potential to infect anyone who comes within sneezing distance, including Agent 47. Getting to him quickly enough will stop the virus in its tracks, but I had the most fun watching it spread like wildfire through the hospital grounds. Every fresh infectee becomes an additional target, and thoughts of stealthy containment give way to genuine concerns about whether
Despite having spent more hours on Hitman than probably any single-player game since GTA San Andreas, I didn’t need much persuading to jump back in after a few months away. A four-mission Patient Zero campaign on maps I already know like the back of my hand – let’s see if the newly independent Io Interactive has any surprises in store.
Things get off to a familiar start in Bangkok, with two targets in a well-trodden part of the hotel, but by the time the enormous Sapienza map crops up again there’s a first sight of a new gameplay mechanic. Unlike previous missions there’s the you’ll actually have enough bullets for chance of messing it up by missing a everyone in the level. Hitman meets meeting between the two targets and The Walking Dead. allowing one to escape. This being The one disappointing thing the fourth mission set in this map, I about the new missions is that they know all the shortcuts well enough to have none of Hitman’s signature breeze through most of it, although Opportunities attached. Following there’s a challenge involving drowning those guided tours of assassination both targets while wearing a horror added a ton of replay value to the costume that I just can’t figure out. base game, and they were heavily
The third mission mixes things up featured in the three bonus missions completely, and it doesn’t play like released last year, but for some a normal Hitman level. Reusing the reason they’re absent from the Colorado map, the smallest in the Patient Zero campaign. There are no game, I’m confined to the top new Achievements either – another of a tower overlooking the missed opportunity. entire compound. This But it’s great to see Hitman – not one reminds me of a to mention the lost art of singlesimplified version of player DLC – alive and kicking, and the the rather good Sniper quality of this mini campaign seems Challenge game that like a good omen for Season Two. In came with Hitman the meantime, having relapsed into Absolution preorders a Hitman addiction, it seems I neglected few years back, with the to get half a dozen Achievements first added complication of not time round, and because they’re all knowing in advance who most of secret ones I’m not even sure which your targets are going to be. levels they’re from. It’s the game that
In addition to the main target, won’t let go… n there are four random people wandering around, infected with the virus. Diana broadcasts clues about their general location before narrowing it down to a soldier with a limp, a mechanic with a drinking problem or whatever. If you think you’ve got the right one you can take the shot, ideally knocking the
