2021 has just been waiting and we already have one of the most anticipated games of the year here. Ready, without delays and multiplatform to the max. IO Interactive opens the AAA calendar with Hitman 3, which ends the Murder World trilogy and the story of Agent 47. He couldn’t say goodbye without taking a perfect shot.
Radical change in the story that has been told over the years because the starting point of the protagonist is the opposite of what we were used to. The most famous murderer of the place this time will face the agency for which he worked in the previous conspiracies. Providence is the bad guys, and it’s up to Agent 47 and a few other coworkers to kill them. Needless to say, precision and dexterity are more important than ever when facing those who have the most accurate triggers on the payroll, as they know everyone and don’t hesitate to cause as many victims as necessary.
I told you in the final print a few weeks ago that it looked like the best and most successful delivery of them all, and I hold that opinion. Don’t look for a nut fly or anything completely different from the previous ones as you won’t find it. In turn, IOI created the most perfect game in the series, applying all of the knowledge and positive and negative criticism of the previous one. Hitman 3 brings you everything you want from this series, from the first minute to the credits.
The infiltration, stealth and hide-and-seek game is more successful than ever. When you pretend to be someone or sneak in where they don’t call you there are very entertaining situations. Something that extends to combat. Let’s see, his thing is that you don’t have to fight shirtless in these games, but there are so many ways to kill here that any situation can arise. I’ve squashed people in wine presses, blown targets with explosive golf balls, and even buried some early. The world is literally open to your sickest ideas.
Berlin, Dartmoor, Dubai, Chongquing, Mendoza and the Romanian Carpathians are the six scenarios that one must travel through on missions. By definition, they are all expected to be different from each other and achieve this in terms of both appearance and interior design, but once inside there are some that are more diverse than others. They are not only used there to provide the player with a combat zone, but also serve their purpose in the storyline. Of all of them, the Argentine arable land is my favorite. It contains so many different environments that it gives you a multitude of ways to fulfill very broad contracts and, being so broad, you can always find a new corner to think of mischief.
Finding new corners is one of the strongest points in Hitman 3. You can always go into the fast lane and hit the target more or less easily with one shot, but then you miss the best of the game. You have to get into the skin of the character; or rather, in that of many characters. For example, in Dartmoor (Germany) a little story happens that is one of the funniest of the entire trilogy. You have to become a private investigator to solve a murder. This disguise guarantees you almost complete freedom of movement on stage and opens up a situation like Cluedo in which you completely forget that you were in Hitman.
Well, this example needs to be expanded to each of the six cards and multiplied by several mini-frames that can appear anywhere. In addition, you will have to keep going back to the area to check the complete evolution of the situation, because regardless of how much the goal is always the same, what forms around it changes depending on how you feel about it put, completely. That means, ladies and gentlemen, pure replayability. Either because the difficulty is increasing, because you got a new item to try out, because you start in a different part of the map, or simply to get a better time, there are plenty of reasons to do it again.
This is in contrast to the other perspective, the linear duration. The plot itself is not very long to say. Without rushing to the sites, you can finish the story in about five or six hours. It is up to everyone to use what it offers or to stick to the bare minimum.
Of course, you also need to remember that Hitman 3 goes hand in hand with Hitman and Hitman 2. The old content is free for those who have previously purchased it or can be purchased for those who want to play it for the first time (or switch platforms). The entire trilogy of the expansions is made up of many, many hours of murders, and the ease of having them on all platforms, with the last-minute surprise of the cloud version of Nintendo Switch as the icing on the cake, is appreciated.
IO Interactive did a good technical job but left some marginal areas open. There were some performance issues, though none alarming, and some frost scares for a few seconds from time to time that luckily passed and didn’t force the game to restart.
Hitman 3 wraps up the Murder World trilogy and we know Agent 47 will have a great vacation because the Danish studio got the 007 license and it doesn’t look like he’s stepping on himself. But he’s leaving the story pretty open, longer than expected, so there’s a good chance his little jobs will continue in the future. Given that IOI has managed to improve its own formula even further, it will certainly be time to return with renewed energy. Such a closure is a privilege.
