Hitman 3 – Review

What’s up? Genvel here reviewing today, Hitman 3 on the Playstation 5. Now I need to begin this review with a very important question: Why do you consider a game to be beaten? Is it a matter of just killing the last boss and watching the Indian credits? Or is it something vaguer like trying to finish off every single side quest?

The reason I ask this is that Hitman 3 is a game that has an enormous amount of side content, hidden objectives, multiple difficulties, and just so many challenges. Honestly, I think that this is what the game is really about. While it is fun to sneak around in buildings and take out targets and stuff, what really made this the most addictive to me is just the parts of this game that are secrets. The sections of this that I love the most were the accidental amazing parts that just happened purely and naturally.

Honestly, it’s hard to say who has beaten this game because it is something where you can see the ending credits, but the journey of Hitman 3 is about the perfection of being the flawless assassin. Basically, this game is a series of set pieces, giant dramatic levels like a neon nightclub or a high dollar hotel or a huge building in the center of Dubai, and you’re tasked with silently taking someone out. Usually a very, very evil billionaire and then slipping away unnoticed.

Gameplay

At the start, every mission seems incredibly straightforward, and your path is obvious. I mean, after all, we are the great agent 47, a person who’s called the apex predator but things are very rarely what they appear.

There’s some scenario like you’re at a fancy vineyard. There are some evil people here, and you need to try and slip in undetected while you may have an invite to this event itself. You need to try and be extra stealthy. Now agent 47 is a huge buff, scary-looking dude, so sometimes security will take notice if you’re walking where you’re not supposed to. Maybe you could do something like secretly killing a security guard and take their uniform and go behind the scenes, or maybe if you’re in a nightclub, you can try and steal some dancers’ clothes and blend in with the crowd. Maybe you’re going to do something like become a chef and sneak around in a kitchen and poison their foods.

The hitman’s real glory and the reason this series has exploded in popularity is that it’s a surprisingly dark universe that is just so freaking funny. Like one of my favorite kills I’ve ever gotten was at one point there was a weirdo guy who kept trying to talk about how he needed the ultimate bodyguard, so I managed to find the guy who was supposed to be his bodyguard. I switched clothes with him, and then I showed up and went hello I missed her bodyguard, and he was like, all right, you seem pretty cool, but I want to test your abilities. Show me you can truly protect me by throwing these knives at targets, and so for some reason, since he took me alone by himself and I had these giant knives, I just stabbed him in the neck and got my paycheck.

Story

What’s the best part about this game, and what really sets it apart from the other Hitman games is that the storylines this time around are completely ridiculous. Like one of the favorite ones is, at one point, you take the place of a private detective who’s been hired to go to this manor and inspect a murder. While you’re trying to solve this crime, you’re investigating the crime scene, and you’re trying to search for clues and stuff while simultaneously trying to murder your own.

Every freaking level is so insane. It’s like every classic Agatha christie novel got merged and lit on fire, and it is just so fun. But I want to make it a note that’s part of this game’s excitement because there isn’t really a clear way to win. Like if you truly want to, there is the main course there is like a specific way that they will go through and guide you if you try and play this on easy mode. But it’s also sometimes fun to see the times that things go badly. Like at one point, I was trying to knock out one guy in one room, and guards just kept spotting me, so I secretly had to take down five people in a row back to back, “Oh no, I’m spotted. I gotta knock this guy out,” and sometimes you can’t if you get really frustrated, go in guns blazing.

A few times, what I did while I was trying to learn a particular map and find some of the hidden challenges, I’d walk in with a freaking machine gun and mow down everybody, but this is, of course, not the optimal path. This game’s major appeal is definitely the replayability because a detailed point system can take a target out silently, not killing anybody innocent or sometimes just using an improvised weapon like an icicle or something. These can all give you a bunch of bonus points that get tallied up at the end and kind of rank you as to just how good you are against other assassins worldwide, and it really feels nice to be rewarded for your own extreme ideas times.

AI

It’s nice to see this game, but one of the major drawbacks is that it still feels like the AI is very hit and miss. Sometimes I’ve had people see me through doors; I’ve had times where people would just be standing there where I killed targets right next to them. There is still a little bit of a random feeling to stuff. Since this is about meticulous planning and carefully dropping targets, it can be frustrating that there is a certain unpredictability to the AI.

The programming of the computer-controlled players is just a little bit inconsistent. Not so much that I got frustrated but the fact that I could still save when I wanted, and stuff made it where I did have a lot of trial and error, experimentation that was mostly trial and a lot of freaking air. But this could also be highlighted by the fact that there is just so much to do at every level. There are literally hundreds of ways to kill your targets, from dropping them in an elevator, electrocuting them, or just straight up trying to steal a gun off the ground and kill somebody.

At one point, I got into a freaking mind control experimentation booth and fried somebody’s brain by messing up an experiment on purpose. Like there’s just so many tiny chances and great opportunities for epic deaths. This does bring us, though, to the challenge mode, which is that there are tons of hidden objectives in every single map, like trying to drop people in a specific way, or sometimes you can have it where a person dies after you’ve left I’ve poisoned drinks and food occasionally while posing as a chef disappeared and kind of let nature take its course. This is really where I feel like the game shines the brightest is just getting to let your creativity be weaponized.

Another drawback, though, is the fact that I didn’t particularly love the story. I’ve loved the Hitman games in the past; I have played all of them literally, including blood money and contracts and everything, but this one, I feel like the plot is too thin. This is supposed to focus on agent 47; on these characters, it is his final game.

The trailers and stuff have really advertised this as the conclusion of the agent 47 storylines. Still, it’s barely talked about, like many times you go in here, and you have these fun missions and the incredibly cool gameplay and stuff, but it feels weird that there isn’t more of a resolution. It does kind of feels like a drawback that they didn’t try and emphasize the character of agent 47 more, like I kind of wish the fact that there was more writing or more of an emphasis on the fact that we are the apex predator, we are this special cloned super killer and it just really feels like it’s not addressed to a good conclusion.

But I mean, it’s not even a matter of the ending. It’s just the fact that this is the last part of a trilogy and doesn’t really feel like it. It doesn’t feel like there’s any payoff to any of the clues and hints and stuff established in the earlier Hitman games. Overall this is an enjoyable experience.

Verdict

If you’re looking for a very sneaky game with a lot of replayability that will give you a lot of freedom and choice and chaos, this is absolutely it. If you’re somebody looking for a more cut and dry experience, this might be too freeform for you.

As a final note here at the end of the review, I want to mention that this is played on a PlayStation 5, and there is some tiny stuff in this version that feels great. I like the fact that there are no load times. I do really enjoy the haptic triggers. Different guns actually pull the triggers physically in different ways. Obviously, the graphics are gorgeous.