Game review: Silent but deadly, Hitman will bring out your inner assassin

Hitman

Square Enix
4/5 stars

Episodic games have proliferated in recent years but, until now, have broadly conformed to a specific blueprint in which storyline has taken precedence over gameplay. Well-known examples such as Life is Strange, The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones have many merits but underneath their visuals they belong to the most archaic of genres, the point-and-click adventure. So when a major franchise such as Square Enix’s Hitman (for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC) turns itself episodic, that’s pretty big. You might not have flagged Hitman as an obvious candidate for such an experiment but it turns out to have been an inspired move.

While the series is ostensibly about stealth, it also offers meticulously realised environments, providing its taciturn star Agent 47 with all manner of ingenious means to conduct his sinister business. In Hitman games, you are really playing your surroundings. Having experienced the prologue and Paris-based mission that constitute Hitman’s first episode, plus most of the following mission (set in the fictional Italian town of Sapienza), it’s clear that putting Hitman out in this format has given Io Interactive a newfound freedom to craft missions that explore the intricacy and richness of these environments in new ways.

The need to engage gamers while they wait for the next episode has motivated the studio to develop a clever structure that immerses you in those environments to an impressive extent.