Playtime: 1000+ hours

What is Hitman - World of Assasination?

Between 2016 and 2021 IOI released Hitman 1, 2 and 3. These are enitrely new games, not to be confused with older Hitman games. In January 2023 IOI merged these into "Hitman: World of Assassination". This game has almost all of the content of the three games, plus the newly introduced roguelike mode called Freelancer.

What is the gameplay like?

Hitman WOA is a third-person stealth-action game. You are dropped into a map and have to find a way to take out one or more targets.

What makes Hitman so great?

The core gameplay is endlessly entertaining. You can kill people in a wide variety of ways, sometimes even indirectly. Of course, you can simply shoot or stab someone, but the game encourages you to use opportunities and the environment. Hitman especially rewards you for "accident" kills which can't be traced back to you. Poison, a fall, a heavy object falling on them, electrocution - or even having someone else do the killing because of information you've given them. Each target can be taken out in at least a dozen different ways.

Another important aspect is the environments. There are medium to large maps which place you in the center of an Italian town, an island fortress in the North Sea, a winery in Argentina or one of the other 19 major locations (there are four smaller story/tutorial maps too). These all look great, are filled with interactible objects and populated NPCs that have hundreds of voice lines.

Each map offers different ways to reach your target and each map has its own mission stories and other events. You can easily spend a dozen hours on a map and still not know all the various paths and other options. Even after a thousand hours i still discover new things sometimes, especially conversations i haven't heard before. Some of these are absolutely hilarious, like the guy who tells someone he's trying to grow gills or guards complaining that the weapon they found on the ground was probably left by Gary, who is such an asshole.

It's just an incredible joy to have this sandbox to play in. You can climb ledges, use disguises, sneak past guards, draw targets out, distract guards, find secret passages, trigger in-game events - or just shoot the target from a long distance. IOI offers a variety of levels of assistance and multiple difficulty levels so you can have the game hold your hand or offer quite a challenge.

How much content is there?

Hitman WOA is essentially three games in one for €70 (it's gone as low as €20). You get 19 maps, each of which you can easily spend a dozen hours on. Some maps also have additional missions that are less extensive but still offer hours of gameplay. On top of that there are other forms of content like player-made Contracts, time-limited Elusive Targets and Escalations (tiered short missions that get progressively harder).

And on top of all that comes the newly added rogue-like Freelancer mode. In Freelancer you play through four consecutive mini-campaigns against crime syndicates of your own choosing. Each consists of 3-6 missions in which you have to take out targets randomly chosen from existing NPCs. The final mission of each mini-campaign has new mechanics that require you to figure out who the crime boss is while avoiding enemy lookouts and assassins (bodyguards). Overall it's a lot of fun and even though i generally hate rogue-likes i played it for 150-200 hours.

What are some of the negative aspects?

Hitman WOA isn't perfect, of course. It has minor drawbacks like needing to be always online for proper progress, some of the menus being clunky and the overall story being pretty bad.

Worse is that IOI likes to lock content behind time/skill walls. Elusive Targets are only available for a few weeks, and might not be repeated next year. They're also locked if you fail or complete them. You also have to complete an incredible amount of Escalations (which i don't really like) to unlock a bunch of cosmetic items.

The only real problem with the gameplay is that Elusive targets, Freelancer, Escalations, Master difficulty and some extra content all prohibit saving (except once in Master). Hitman invites you to take your time to find a clean way to kill targets then prevents you from saving your progress in all these modes. You can easily lose 30-40 minutes of progress because of a small mistake or bug. It's infuriating and a terrible design decision.

Can you dress up as Santa Claus, slap someone with a fish and then blow them up with a rubber ducky?

Yes.

10/10

I don't love it. I tried out of loyalty for HItman but I can't.

By Hitman 2 it's just EIDOS flexing that they can make a huge map with nothing. They're enormous and 47 isn't fast enough. I know it's some people's cup of tea to take 45 million light years to get to their objective (immersive and whatnot), but wasting time certainly isn't mine. I will give the game credit where it's due: it returned to the old beloved formula that Absolution briefly strayed from. But I think that is precisely what is having people cry out from the rooftops that "Hitman WoA is the best Hitman's ever been!"

No, it's not. Hitman was never made for sandbox replayable levels with grindy mastery aspects. In all honesty, the fact that the fanbase was gaslit into believing this was okay (with an episodic release format of all things) completely baffles me. I think I'll do a full runthrough of the franchise at some point, starting from Codename 47, to see if it holds up as well as it does in my memory (highlights being Contracts and Blood Money, which I am COMPLETELY fucking sure pass the bar).

And that's another thing; the atmosphere is just completely changed from the grounded realistic "bad guy killing others in cruel and gruesome ways for money" to the "James Bond simulator". Why am I infiltrating a fucking Colombian town run by one of the biggest cartels in that region of the world? Am I a fucking superhero? And the fact that I'm doing this by assisting a shadow illuminati-esque organization... Maybe I've outgrown videogame writing. It's not like Hitman was a master-piece in storytelling and narrative (although it was a master-piece in worldbuilding and atmosphere), but at least it was on planet fucking Earth.

Hitman 1 and 2 were enjoyable, the most notable aspects about each game was definitely the locations and world building within each mission. Hitman 3 keeps this up and offers some fun, detailed maps for players to explore and experiment in. However without any further major innovation in the series it's hard to justify coming back a third time.

I have never been one to focus on the story in Hitman games, instead I prefer to treat each level as my own sandbox, exploring all the ways in which the objective can be completed. This is what hitman does best - creative problem solving with lethal results.

My biggest problem with the game, and more so the franchise as a whole is that the past two games have done little to innovate the series. Each instalment has felt like a map pack DLC, with very few gameplay changes. Hitman 3 gives us the camera, used mostly for intel gathering and some "hacking". We also get the addition of shortcuts which helps players to get around the maps a bit quicker. That's pretty much it though. Movement is identical, gun handling, UI, NPC interactions etc etc. It all feels like you've seen it and done it before.

What I'd like to see in future games is more interactive elements and interactions that make each encounter feel believable. For example, during one mission I was inside a family manor house with the family present. I killed one of the members, none of the family reacted as her body was dragged through the house and dumped in a closet. Dialogue did not change, routines did not change.

It would also be nice if they fleshed out the roleplay a bit more; let us dress up as bar staff and make drinks, deliver drinks etc. Don't allow NPCs who shouldn't be in an area to suddenly walk in when they hear a noise, and when a guard doesn't report back other guards should investigate. Why aren't human shields a thing yet either? Deepen every system currently in the game so that players who want to take it further, can.

Until the Hitman franchise innovates on its mechanics I can't justify giving a glowing review for a game that's effectively a map pack with the price of a new game. The maps, details, costumes, characters that are in hitman 3 are all to a high standard, but unfortunately the game doesn't go far enough to justify it being a new instalment.

The Hitman series was always about roleplay. 47 was a sociopathic killer with no emotion who only sought to get the perfect kill. He was the perfect vessel for a player to immerse themselves into a cold and brutal world where lives are taken and innocents are always in danger, all for the purpose of 47 getting his payout.

My biggest issue with Hitman 3 and most of the World of Assassination trilogy is the complete sanitization of the game’s world. It now seems like 47 only kills international terrorists, crooked politicians, drug cartel bosses and other spy agency employees, they even changed the motto of the ICA to "Necessary Evil" in Latin. What used to be a dog-eat-dog world with 47 as a mere tool became a generic good vs evil conflict no different than Call of Duty or Mission Impossible. The games used to be about the thrill of the hunt, but now it’s just spyslop.

This is the most apparent in Hitman 3, where every level isn’t a contract, but rather 47 carrying out a strategic hit against Providence. Every level you kill some important person who has been pulling the strings from behind the scenes and after 3 back-to-back levels of that it gets exhausting. 47 wasn’t supposed to be the kind of character who has emotional vendettas, nor a character who is willing to risk his life for others out of the goodness of his heart. The fandom rightfully scorned Absolution for breaking 47’s character by having him deliberately botch his opening contract and throwing away his life to help a random girl, but here 47 is throwing away his life to save Lucas Grey, taking down Providence for no real personal gain and going to war against spy agencies to send a message. Why the double standard?

I personally don’t care for massive underground spy facilities when the real-life city of Chongqing is already massive. I don’t need to have some story beats happen right before the actual mission starts like in Dubai, Berlin and Mendoza. The most fun I had was in Dartmoor solving the murder mystery and just ignoring my target. The entire game feels like its desperate to wrap up the plot and every mission feels like a finale. You can tell the devs just wanted to get everything done when they have two missions called “End of an Era” and “The Farewell” back-to-back and neither are the final mission. And to be quite honest here, the story isn’t even that compelling as the 50th spy story in a row where the lead must go up against another shady organization and his own allies. I mostly ignored the story in the first 2 games, but here it was unavoidable. Where 47 used to be the perfect vessel for player expression, he is now supposed to be his own person with goals and aspirations, except the devs forgot to flesh that out so now he’s just dull.

Hitman 3 tries its hardest to shatter any form of immersion or roleplay, making me keenly aware that I’m playing as Agent 47, not that Agent 47 is playing as me. The best missions of the WOA trilogy were the ones where you’re just a dude killing a target for money, a cog in a machine you know nothing about just there for personal gain. While I do appreciate the shortening of the individual missions, for example, there are now just 3 Mission Stories as opposed to the normal 6, surely the devs could’ve used that reduced dev time to giving us some more standard contracts?

This review is spoiler-free.

Developer IOI recently changed the purchasing options for this game, calling it "Hitman: World of Assassination" and including Hitman 1 and 2 campaigns in the base edition. However, the last 2 missions of Hitman 2 are only available as DLC or through the Deluxe Upgrade. Now, these 2 missions are not super vital for the story, but its still sad to lock campaign missions behind DLC after they restructured the purchasing options anyway. Seems odd.

About the Gameplay:
The Game itself feels very polished. I played on "Professional" Difficulty, which feels just the way its supposed to be: Not too easy, but somewhat challenging.
Essentially, there are 2 basic ways to complete every mission: Either simply eliminate the targets/complete objectives, or follow complex story opportunities to complete objectives in a very unique way.
The latter is where Hitman's strength lies: convincing story-telling through very good dialogue, while still keeping it entertaining enough to not take itself too seriously.
Within the missions, you can do a lot of stuff. There is stuff everywhere, and the maps are packed with NPCs. Every play of a mission feels unique, its amazing.

Completion:
I completed the campaign in about 20 hours, taking my time with each mission. Where it not for some minor bugs, AI misbehaviour and the (still) weird purchasing options, I would give this game, based on enjoyment and gameplay, 5/5.

Note: I have yet to play the new "Freelancer" Mode everyone raves about, so this review is for Campaign only.
Pricing: Game is good for its current price, but I got it on sale for about 37€, which is more than fair.
Tip (very mild spoilers): Hitman 3 Mission 2 or so lets you play Detective, and I highly recommend doing that. Very enjoyable little "Who-Done-It" experience!

Update on Freelancer:
I now had the chance to play the new Freelancer mode extensively (about 60h).
It is so very addictive! You essentially play the same missions from the story, but your target is always some random NPC from the ones who appear on the map. Every playthrough is different and there even is a hardcore mode, which forces you to do the prestige objectives to advance. Lots of replayability here, I can wholeheartedly recommend the game for this mode alone.

Hitman 3 was a fantastic experience of stealth gameplay and definitely the best in the trilogy for me. What puts Hitman 3 in a higher regard in comparison to Hitman 1 and 2 (which were also great games) is how unique each mission is in comparison to the others.

Each mission in Hitman 3 has a unique theme and idea about it that makes each one a different experience all together and not just the same formula repeated in 6 missions with just different locations, from playing a private detective investigating a murder case, to searching for different targets in one night club without aid or assistance of mission stories, to having an actual ally helping you eliminate the targets. Even the few ordinary Hitman missions offer a fantastic environment to explore and get the job done. The only mission that falls flat a little bit is the last one, as it was mostly linear and not as open as the other 5, though this as well makes it "unique" in its own way.

Story wise is decent enough to follow, and offers a good conclusion to the story if you are interested in its events. Cutscenes were done well and voice acting was good, but ultimately the main draw of Hitman is the gameplay which is done exceptionally well.

Considering that the replayability value of each missions, with doing them for first time unlock other starting points, weapons and stuff to do on your second visit that wasn't present in the first one, the game also allows you to gain access for Hitman 1 and 2 missions if you have the original games or if you decide to pay for them, overall offering an insane package of content and an easy way to play the entire trilogy in one game with the enhanced graphics setting.

Speaking about graphics, the game looks stunning in comparison to Hitman 2 (which took a little bit of a low budget effort by having the story expressed through slide show of photos instead of full fleshed cutscenes) and works mostly flawless on average 60 fps. Chongqing seems to be the place that highlights how strong the game graphically is, with all the rain and the light reflection in streets, it's just a joy to look at. However though, I encountered several crashes with the display being exclusive full screen on my PC and had to change it to full screen only to stabilize the game which solved the issues, though I don't know the reason of such issue. I'm pretty sure these will get solved on upcoming patches though.

Overall this is worthy of your time. If you have played the first 2 Hitman games, well, you don't need my opinion. If you have never played them, this is a great opportunity to jump into the series since it offers you the ability to buy and gain access for the previous 2 games in Hitman 3 so perfect chance to play the entire trilogy with its unique mission designs that you won't get tired of repeating and trying different routes every time.

Story : 7/10

Gameplay : 9.5/10

Graphics and performance : 8/10

Voice acting : 8/10

Overall : 9/10

I’ve really been enjoying the new Hitman series. For Christmas I got the final chapter of the World of Assassination trilogy, Hitman 3. So, how does this game stack up in the trilogy?

When it comes to the gameplay, IO Interactive got the recipe right with Hitman 1 and they realized it. They could’ve mixed up the formula for the 3rd game, but if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. You have the same mix of tools and disguises to get the job done. For me, Hitman is one of the few games I enjoy replaying levels over and over again to try different tactics. When it comes to stealth games, I always love the ones that incorporate social stealth, like Hitman or the Saboteur. Though Hitman is more a puzzle game than a stealth game. IO has crafted a sort of freeform adventure game. You have to combine and use tools to solve puzzles, but they aren’t hard and fast solutions like an old LucasArts or Sierra game. The game guides you with mission stories to help you out, but ultimately, how you answer the puzzle is up to you. I rely heavily on disguises and poison to do my dirty work. If my Agent 47 has to pull out his gun, he’s done something wrong.

One thing Hitman 3 brings to the table is a greater focus on the mission stories and interactions. In the first two, I don’t recall Agent 47 interacting with the people int the world outside of assaulting them. Here in Hitman 3, Agent 47 often interacts with either the target or another NPC in each level. It opens up the options for new puzzles. Several targets can be killed by other NPCs with a little urging from Agent 47. My favorite mission is the second level where you solve a murder mystery in an old English manor deep in the moors.

The levels are often the star of a Hitman game and Hitman 3 has a good smattering of levels. There’s the forementioned English manor level, one set in a South American vineyard that was fun to explore, and another one in China that turns Hitman into a Blade Runner game. The developers did a good job mixing immersion with gameplay. These level feel like real, lived in places, but there’s still enough interactables to make a fun game.

The one level I didn’t enjoy, that everyone else seems to love, was Berlin. It was set at a rave in an abandoned industrial building, with a large forest area around it. My main compliant was you weren’t able to bring in any gear with you, which my playstyle relies on gear. Subsequent playthroughs let you bring in some items, but I was turned off by the first playthrough. The Berlin mission also does something different with the targets. Usually the target is highlighted in Agent 47’s Witcher sense, but in Berlin you are hunting fellow agents who have the same tricks as you. You have to explore the space to deduce who the agents are. It’s a neat concept that I think they could’ve built on. The final level is set on a train and is more a spectacle conclusion to the trilogy than a traditional level. I have heard that this train mission was also IO’s trial run for the James Bond game they’re developing.

The story of Hitman was never the focus. Agent 47 and his handler, Diana Burnwood are trying to take down the Rothschilds, the Gettys, and the Rockefellers basically. The evil organization Providence is a group of old money families that are secretly controlling the world and Agent 47 took that personally. The big bad Agent 47 kidnapped at the end of the last game escapes and tries to hunt down Agent 47 and his friend, Grey. Grey's voice actor felt like he was a Scandinavian guy struggling with an English accent. I was disappointed with Hitman 2 using stills for cutscenes, luckily IO put in the time to give us proper cutscenes for this entry.

Diana has always been a known unknown in Hitman lore. During Hitman 3, she’s trying to play both sides. She is being groomed to be the next leader of Providence. She seems to have wavering allegiances. She states she wants to lead Providence to dismantle it from the inside, but, as the former leader remarks, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Diana ends up betraying Agent 47, but not really. Again, you never know how far you can trust her. She does join you for the party mission at the winery and I’m glad to see a game that appreciates older women. I do enjoy the game sort of ends where the trilogy begins, if it was intentional. Agent 47 walks through the snow in the same coat he entered the ICA facility in.

I’ve mentioned this in my other Hitman reviews, but the tone of the series is something that I always ponder on. The story is very self-serious, but Agent 47 can complete his missions dressed as a clown. Agent 47’s coat game is on point though. No one questions the 6ft, Nordic looking man who’s supposedly a line cook in the middle of a Chinese slum. There’s several mission stories where you can watch a named NPC speak with a receptionist, then Agent 47 disguises himself as the named NPC and talks to the same receptionist who makes no notice of the different appearance. When Agent 47 does converse with NPCs he usually speaks in euphemisms, which I do chuckle at each time. The game doesn’t lean into the tongue and cheek, but the humor is still there.

All in all, this game is a neat bow at the end of World of Assassination trilogy. It’s more of the same, but the same is solid gameplay. Hitman 3 ends the story of Providence. They leave the door open for a sequel, but I don’t expect Agent 47 to return anytime soon. If you’ve liked the other 2 Hitman games, then you’ll like Hitman 3.

I know everybody loves this game but I’m sorry, I just need to rant.

So I’m hyped and fresh from my recent back-to-back Hitman 1 and 2 playthroughs. I start up Hitman 3 and immediately get immersed back into the role. Dubai looks amazing, if not from a level design POV at least from a visual one. I go through the mission, which is more of the same, but since I love Hitman’s gameplay loop that’s what I wanted anyway. Get briefly disconnected once, no biggie. Then the game really hooks me when I get to Dartmoor, easily one of my top favourite levels in the entire trilogy due to its interconnected areas and uniqueness in playability. At this point I’m just drooling over what’s coming next.

Then the story changes (spoilers on this later) and I’m like ‘meh, not a fan but whatever’ and I continue playing. Onto Berlin, another visually impressive level even though, like Dubai, there isn’t much greatness going on in terms of design. Get briefly disconnected again, that’s fine. At this point though, I just can’t shake the feeling that something feels off. The story doesn’t have the same emotional grip anymore, the beats don’t seem as well paced, and the whole thing just feels like it’s being rushed to the finish line. I get to Chongqing. ‘Looks dark and moody, awesome’, I thought, but the mission just seems like it came out of nowhere for filling. I go through it, and when I get to the Mendoza cutscene I’m like ‘What?’ At this point the story isn’t making that much sense to me, it’s less focused, less refined, almost like it’s just there for the sake of it, and I’m feeling detached from the whole thing. ‘No worries’, I say to myself, ‘it’s almost done and I love the gameplay anyway, back to disguising as a waiter and poisoning everyone’s muffins or something’. Mendoza’s an unremarkable mission, I go through it quickly and without much effort. Another server hiccup here, and a cutscene that needs to play out again because of a disconnection, but that’s okay I guess.

Then I get to the Carpathian Mountains, and I quickly find out this level’s relentless linearity is the antithesis of everything this trilogy has tried to be up until this point. Limited agency, minimal options, one way forward. Halfway through the mission, when I’m already questioning several of the game’s design choices, the servers decide to tell me to fuck off. I get disconnected. I try to reconnect. No good. I try again. Nah. I check my internet, it’s fine, so I know it’s a server problem. I restart and try again. Nothing. I’m like ‘Fuck it, I’ll go offline’, no mission score or challenges or whatever, but at this point I just want to finish the game. I go offline and then it dawns on me that I can’t even save the game. I notice that, at first glance, this level is a lot more encouraging of direct confrontation than any other level on any of the 3 games, a style that the gameplay mechanics aren’t particularly designed for. I die after a good chunk of the level, and because I couldn’t save, I need to load up one of my previous saves I got in before I started having server issues. Save file is corrupted, the game tells me, and deletes it. Apparently, all my save files are ‘corrupted’ and I can’t load any of them. I try to go online again. Nope. So I restart the mission only to die near the end once more, this time due to a silly mistake, admittedly because at this point my patience was already wearing thin. I restart the mission yet again - all the while getting interrupted because the game keeps trying (and failing) to auto-save -, eventually making it to the last scene, at which point the game decides I’ve had enough and graciously grants me online status and the ability to save again. I finish the game with a mix of frustration, annoyance, and the feeling of an underwhelming story payoff (alternate endings notwithstanding).

Always online games are rage inducing. Even if your internet connection is top notch, there’s absolutely nothing you can do if the game servers decide to act up. It’s already ridiculous to remove so much of the single player content if you can’t be online, but to downright remove the ability to save your game is next level asshole. I try to be objective when I write about my experience with games, but this particular one directly impacted the enjoyment of my playthrough and I can’t dissociate my views from it.

This issue added to the already questionable changes the game makes, especially when it came to its story. I fully appreciated the return of the cutscenes, but the story itself was a clear downgrade from the previous entries. Lucas Grey’s untimely, somewhat non-sensical death was a blow to the entire narrative, because it meant losing its main driving force, and the story never quite knew how to adjust from there. I almost wonder if the game was made shorter as a consequence. The moment when Diana and 47 reunite is weird too, because it happens without any questions or doubts whatsoever. Did 47 assume she had been kidnapped, and if so, why didn’t he try to find out more? Ask more questions? There was just a total acceptance of the situation without any exploration, which didn’t sit well with me, but perhaps I missed something. As for the rest, presentation is amazing and the gameplay is solid as ever, but there was an inconsistency in level quality I hadn’t seen in either of the previous games. Dartmoor was easily one of the best maps in the entire trilogy, but by that same token, the Carpathian Forests was arguably the worst one and almost a middle finger to the creativity the franchise has always - or almost always - encouraged. I liked that there was more variety in terms of mission goals, but the longer nature of some maps, and the fact that the level design wasn’t as tight for the most part, turned it into a less enjoyable experience.

All of this really tarnished my overall impression of Hitman 3, resulting in a lacklustre conclusion to a trilogy I had been having an awesome time with. I know this will be a highly unpopular opinion, and I truly wish I had enjoyed this final instalment as much as almost everyone seems to, but I just didn’t. Hitman’s usual gameplay, the graphics and the Dartmoor level carry it, but the combination of the server issues with the game’s pitfalls, especially when compared to its predecessors, were a real bummer for me. 7/10.