Overall, this is the best version of Hitman you can get, as it is the complete version. This is especially nice, if you don’t own any of the prior content.
It has been a year (and some change) since we last reviewed Hitman. Devon Lloyd, a brilliant young writer for the site, put together a helluva piece on a chapter-oriented Hitman (https://digitalchumps.com/hitman-complete-first-season-review/), which promised a lot of freedom to the gamer without much compromise to the gameplay. Definitely a departure from a linear form of Hitman storytelling. It’s tough to go away from that formula, especially since it has worked in the past. Thanks in part to Hitman: Blood Money, the changed structure that focuses more on an open way of doing things helped to propel the new Hitman into something more than the usual.
A year or so has passed now, and Hitman Definitive Edition has released by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, which includes the base game, all the episodes, locations and such for season one, Patient Zero campaign, all of the escalations contracts, challenge packs, featured contracts, and everything that game with the GOTY. That’s a lot of content in one place and all of it is, for the most part, good.
While you can certainly read Devon’s full review of the initial release, let me just say that playing Hitman over again has brought back some fun that I had forgotten it contained. For starters, the aforementioned openness of the game, which features a heavy amount of stealth to a degree, is mesmerizing when it comes to how one would play Hitman. The opening scenes in training on a fake yacht had me ducking, strategizing, and executing my plan of attack, which shed the confines of linear gameplay and absolutely just opened the joy of complete control. There’s nothing quite like doing what you want in a video game, ask GTA V fans.
Anyhoo, typically, in a stealth oriented game like this, you want to stay out of the sight of onlookers and want to sneak in, do the hit, and get out. That’s certainly an eloquent way of doing things for this type of game and it adds more James Bond to the allure of Hitman, where you can deal major damage, but in a British ass-kicking sorta way. Of course, instead of doing it with precision and taking out guards methodically, I was able to choose the ‘kill them all’ method of gaming and it worked out splendidly. Knowing that I have flexibility with my strategy and knowing I can break out the ‘run and gun’ fun that I enjoy in my first-person shooter games (I know this is third-person, I just enjoy fps looseness) made me want to keep playing the shit out of this game. That sort of joy and motivation is hard to find in a stealth game.
Now, I did find a flaw in the game, but one that was more amusing than frustrating. If you stand behind the door of any bathroom in Hitman, you can continually kill guards. That is something I didn’t catch the first time I played this last year, but found it to be a fascinating solution when I just want to lock and load. I’m sure you can write this up as a glitch, but identifying patterns and finding weird solutions for disposing of enemies isn’t anything new to action-stealth games like this (see any Metal Gear game for details), so I will give it a half-pass because I’m sure someone on Reddit is super-pissed about this…as they are about everything.
Anyway, the looseness of the game mixed with the large levels and different combinations of approaching a contract is what makes this game delightful. The amount of options from what you’re wearing, what you’re packing, and how you’re killing your target (if the target doesn’t have a specified way to die from the client) is just oddly satisfying. It certainly makes the game deeper than it should be, and more delightfully complicated.
In addition to the style of gameplay, and its limitless options, the game does a great job of presenting different scenarios to the gamers through the extra content to bring different challenges. The variety is nice and I’m especially fond of the multi-layer Patient Zero addition. Some of the episodic stories are done well, some are short-lived, but the cornucopia of the entire season one collection is worth the time, effort, and money, especially if you don’t own this game.
On the presentation side of the track, our favorite silent badass looks great in all scenarios, even dressed as a clown (that’s a bit odd). IO Interactive did a fantastic job the first go around with bringing the visual goods to the title and sprucing it up in texture, lighting, and shading. Getting the right amount of shadow cast down on Agent 47 or proper lighting off his big bald head makes for a visually pleasing time. Also, and this is all joking aside, the environments are gorgeous, deep, and give you a variety of ways through their construction to help you approach a contract situation. I think IO spent the right amount of time on the environments and consistently brought something special to the table.
Overall, this is the best version of Hitman you can get, as it is the complete version. This is especially nice, if you don’t own any of the prior content.
