Have you ever wanted to use rat poison in someone’s food and then drown them in a toilet? How about walking by someone and tagging them with a sticky bomb only to detonate it and watch them fly up into the sky? Well, you are in luck my friends because Agent 47 is back in HITMAN 3, the finale of the Hitman trilogy and we were given a copy of the Xbox Series X version to take for a spin thanks to IO Interactive.
For those not familiar with Hitman, you are the mysterious Hitman, Agent 47. While not spoiling any of the story elements, you are surrounded in a world of deep mystery and murder with Hitman 3 finally bringing the story arc to a close. Oh, so you haven’t ever played a Hitman game before. Not a big deal as there is a nice story wrap-up before you start the main campaign. There are also other modes like escalations, community-built contract missions and a multiplayer sniper mode if that’s your cup of tea. Let’s jump in and look under the hood.
Story and Gameplay:
Hitman 3 is very much a “play your own way” type of game. Want to go in guns blazing taking everyone out including the target? You can do that. Want to take a more subtle approach and do a longer “kill plan” setting up a chain of events? You can do that too. One of the excellent features of Hitman 3 is the “Story missions” inside each mission. You usually get presented with three options and choosing one of those options will place an icon on your map that will kick off a series of events leading to your target’s death. These story missions and along with it the intel that you gather really give the game a cinematic feel to it. It adds a bit more depth to the campaign and as someone who never really played the other Hitman games, it kept me engaged. I really hope they bring this back for any new Hitman games that come. The one thing about Hitman is even on casual, the game is very unforgiving. If you make one wrong move (like in real life), your cover will be blown, and you are in a shootout. My one main tip is safe often, so you don’t have to keep going back over and over. I loved being able to find different outfits to change into that lead to different story paths in how the missions ended. While this is classic Hitman, it feels like the devs really nailed the pacing of everything in Hitman 3. I also really enjoyed the multiple options of how to solve situations. Even if I didn’t want to follow the path of the story missions, there was always some fun option to take out my targets. The locations of each mission span the globe and are huge. You could spend so much time just walking around and exploring the environment. My only negative to gameplay was on several missions I did encounter some game breaking bugs that caused me to do a quick reload. I would have been frustrated but having saved often, it was no big deal to just reload. As I said earlier, once you finish the main campaign (which took me about 7 hours) you can either go back and try the missions again with different loadouts/location drops or you can move on to other modes. I really like the community created contracts and there are also escalations which can be quite challenging. For this review, I focused on the main campaign, so I did not jump into the multiplayer “Sniper” mode.
Graphics and Sound:
Let me tell you something. This game is beautiful on the Xbox Series X. Playing on a 2017 Vizio P-Series 75-inch TV, I found myself staring at the environments. When you step foot in Dubai, you will know what I mean. The dev team really put some love and care into the presentation of the game, and it shows. I encountered zero graphic glitches like tearing etc. in my gameplay and at times I really felt immersed in the world. The game really is “Cinematic” and puts you in the shoes of Agent 47. For sound, I just have an old soundbar, nothing special and the game sounded great. No audio glitches and the music really helped with the immersion. The voice acting is top notch and certainly had the “shadow government” movie vibes to it.
Should you Buy Hitman 3:
Even if you are new to the Hitman series the value is there and this is a good buy. If you are a Series X owner, not only is Hitman 3 going to be a fun experience, but the replay value is remarkably high. There is so much to do even if you pass the main campaign. For next-gen system owners, it really shows off the power of the Xbox Series X. As I said earlier, I have never spent much time in the Hitman world, but I will be going forward. Pick this one up and thanks to IO Interactive for letting us check it out.
