Hitman III review: Let’s call it Hitman 2.5 and get on with it

The Hitman game series peaks in 2018 with Hitman 2, technically the seventh in the series – but hey, the seventh time could be the charm. Everything we returned to in the 2016 series was even better in this sequel, and IO Interactive nailed its concept of ‘murder mystery’ with expansive, macabre playgrounds, all built to encourage a core of multiple ways.

Three years ago, IO Interactive still had compelling directions to take the plot design and composition of the plot, and the resulting sequel doubled on dark humor and inherent folly in video games – while also getting better at how to put the levels together. If you’re a slow, assassin with a slow, mixed person looking for clues and opportunities, you just feel better about Hitman 2.

This week, Hitman III arrives on consoles, computers and streaming platforms with five new arenas of chaos – the least yet in a numbered entry – and a cumbersome list of new adaptations. It feels very, very familiar – even more than the leap from 2016 Hitman until 2018s Hitman 2. It ends up in an almost identical interface as the previous game, with the same XP progress bar, the same goal-based system, the same one-time “escalation” missions and the same sandbox “custom contracts”. And its graphics engine revolves around a seemingly identical core, with one admittedly nice adaptation.

A sequel or an episode?

The worst part of Hitman IIIis then the number in the title. It betrays the game’s true nature as an expansion pack instead of a standalone game that can be easily enjoyed in isolation. This is not bad! If all you want is more Hitman reload levels corresponding to the series’ excellence “(and this was the original” episodic “plan of the game), then III will sit neatly in your brain. IO Interactive concluded the “World of Assassination” trilogy in the finest way, despite the inability to reach the heights of Hitman 2 led me to immediately wish it was a more ambitious sequel.

If you’re not in the series yet, your path is clearer: set a sales alert Hitman 2, if not a package that combines Hitman 1’s and 2‘s levels in the same package. They’re great, and you have no reason to skip them on the way to Hitman III.

This week’s sequel drives the point home by inviting new players to play the 5-year-old tutorial. Hitman 1. It teaches you to sneak on a boat and kill a target. Along the way, guards lure in isolation; knock them out and steal their outfits; use their clothing to interfere in other inaccessible cleanup zones; then pick up keys, access cards and tools of death as you move to your target and try to avoid a firefight.

Once you have finished training, go back to the same mission, with a guide pointing you in other directions toward the same target. You’ll get more experience points for doing this, and it offers mission-specific benefits (new starting points, new locations to hide weapons and gizmos on the map) and ranged weapons and cosmetics.

Two new systems in a familiar game

The fact that this dated manual applies so well to Hitman III says a lot – it’s a serious “is not broken, do not fix it” energy – although the new game does include two new adaptations. The first is a “shortcut unlock” feature, which should comfort the series fans right away.

Your repeated visits to levels to discover new ways to kill your primary targets or to reach goals are sometimes accelerated as you unlock a new starting point for the shortcut, but you can still march the entire length of the level around certain objectives to find and complete. This year, yellow marked yellow doors can be seen in each new level, and you can unlock them from inside the buildings. This means that, after slipping through a motorcycle shelter in your first pass, you can do so permanent Jimmy opens the motorcycle’s barred front door to reduce the boredom when you return. IO Interactive makes sure that it is posted infrequently and deliberately, and that is a good fit.

The other new system is a smartphone camera that serves as a scan-and-hack tool for, for example, turning on a TV or obscuring a security window. You must use it in the very first mission to open the very first closed access point … and then the camera is put away for much of the game. It’s not something like Metroid Prime, where you are expected to constantly scan the environment for clues and analyzes. Instead, it is only used at moments that are clearly marked by the game, such as when a voice in your ear recommends that you scan a specific, colored logo to open a door, or when a detective asks you to to take a photo of a secondary target as soon as you hit them.

The camera contains a 4x zoom to explore the world if you have a sniper rifle, and that’s a welcome blessing, but I was hoping for more camera-based fun and deception than this sequel offers. In addition, Agent 47 is never penalized if he has seen photographs taken in heavily guarded areas, especially in a high-security laboratory at the China level. Pull out a gun, then you’re shot down; take dozens of photos that somehow magically open and close doors, and that’s not a big deal. Talk about a weird disconnect.