Review of the game Hitman: Absolution. HITMAN live review

In recent years, the famous Danish studio IO Interactive has been frankly unlucky. Constant layoffs and not the highest sales Hitman: Absolution could, and put an end to the creators of the team action movie freedom fighters and dilogy Kane & Lynch, but at some point a Japanese publisher Square Enix decided to give the team another chance to prove themselves. And they seized on it with all available forces, in order, in the end, to present to the noble public a new incarnation of their oldest, but still unfading franchise. Hitman. What came out of all this? Read our review today.

However, the first thing we need to focus on is, of course, the content itself. Currently, only the Intro Pack is available to players, which is two short story episodes from the life of Agent 47 (and, in fact, one, since the prologue was free to play during the recent beta testing). The first shows and tells us about the formation of the most famous killer: his escape from the clone laboratory, the first meeting with the signalman Diana Burnwood and joining the ranks of the secret organization ICA. The action of the second one takes place twenty years later, in Paris, when our protagonist has already become a legend in his field, and among other hired killers he has no equal for a long time. If earlier it seemed that there was no plot as such in the new game, but instead a simple set of unrelated missions would await us, now the opposite opinion is emerging, although it is not entirely clear what all this will result in.

Not much? Perhaps, but given the low starting price, the high degree of replay value, and the prospect of playing in seven other exotic corners of the Earth (so far only five of them have been confirmed - Morocco, Thailand, Japan, the USA and Italy), we will not be so categorical and vehemently oppose this distribution model of the project, as many fans of the series. After all, there was another similar precedent before with the same Metal Gear Solid V, and nothing, no one was particularly indignant. In addition, do not forget that the new Hitman, unlike Konami's game, has good chances for a further extension for a "second" and "third" season.

Now let's talk about the gameplay, because in fact he acts as the main instigator of the ball of cold-blooded murders. If we discard some trifles and small inclusions from the previously mentioned Absolution, then we can say with all boldness that the new game is a direct continuation of Blood Money. Classic mechanics, huge locations, one or more main goals and some insane amount of opportunities to eliminate them. The return of a real silent killer and a complete departure from the isolation and combat scope of the previous part. Isn't this what every crazy admirer of the bald master of his craft dreamed of?

During the prologue, kind developers politely lead the players by the arm, showing different ways to pass the same test level, recreated in a special pavilion. Here, for example, you can put on the clothes of a security guard and get onto an expensive, well-guarded yacht without any problems, but pour poison into your target’s glass of wine. Hide the bodies, study the area, look for new approaches and passages that you did not know about before. The same building can have a dozen, two dozen entrances and exits, and no one will ever restrict your movement.

Or almost no one. Local guards and big men will carefully observe your every action and, in which case, they will immediately sound the alarm. Of course, you can hide from them, but even on the average difficulty level, you will quickly get a few bullets in the back before you have time to do something. Nobody forbids changing clothes, and the “attention system” again works the old fashioned way - only certain people (marked with white dots) will be able to recognize a stranger in you, while the rest will not react to you in any way. Although we will not deny that local guards also have “moments of enlightenment” when they cannot openly go beyond their scripting capabilities. But this does not negate the fact that it will be quite difficult to play constant cat and mouse with the villains. Even the old scheme with saves and the notorious “Instinct” mode, which allows you to see through walls, will not have much time to help (we turn off the latter in the main menu).

Against such a good background, only a small number of pre-created missions are frustrating. You can, of course, have fun with the local system of “special opportunities” (tests or paths to pass one location), but you don’t want to know about many of these things in advance. According to the idea of ​​the developers, the remaining time, the players will have to entertain themselves due to the "contracts" mode. Choose your own goals, mark them on the map and come up with new, especially perverted tasks for the gaming community on this basis. As an example, consider the first embedded contract in the Sarajevo Six series, which is part of the exclusive DLC for the PlayStation 4 home console.

Visually, the new adventures of a bald assassin look quite good, but without any frills. The IO Interactive engineering team has once again overhauled its internal Glacier engine, but loyal fans of the franchise are unlikely to notice a big technological leap, especially in comparison with Absolution, which the author of these lines repeatedly mentioned today.

For the most part, it’s not the special effects themselves that draw the game (although we won’t deny that the sunsets here are very beautiful), but the luxurious design of huge levels, an incredible amount of small details for every available square meter and a pleasant atmosphere of “liveness” of everything that happens. Some talk about the last fashion week in Paris and the couturier fashion show, some swear among themselves over a spilled glass of wine, and still others arrogantly call Agent 47, dressed in a waiter's suit ... to drown in his own excrement in a minute and never again don't disturb other people.

Moreover, the game engine itself is well optimized for the hardware of the new generation of consoles, and for the entire time of passing the player is unlikely to notice any serious subsidence in the frame rate, even during the most voracious scenes. By the time of release, the authors of the project had only three main things left unfinished in terms of technology - character animation, level loading time, and a smooth transition from online to offline mode. The first sometimes looks too unnatural and harsh. For example, when a bald killer tries to hide another corpse in a closet, the game produces two separate, unrelated animations. The second can start to get annoying on the second or third time. As for the online mode, after its abrupt shutdown, the user can literally be unceremoniously thrown back into the menu, regardless of the status and state of affairs. You can go back, but already in offline mode, and the unpleasant aftertaste will not go anywhere.

As for the musical accompaniment and voice acting, we did not find any particular complaints: all the weapons sound quite natural to themselves, and the pleasant, strong voices of Western artists are in harmony with everything that happens. But there are still questions about Russian localization and they mainly concern some inaccuracies or constant omissions in sentences. Somewhere, for example, the characters say one long phrase, and our localizers present its shortened, very sparse version, while at other moments they completely depart from the “general line of the party” and give out their own, literary translation. Pleasant little, but the rich, the happy.

The review is based on the digital version of the game for the PlayStation 4, provided by the editors of the "New Disk". All screenshots presented in the material are taken directly from the specified system.

Some time ago, no one could have imagined that video games would become so popular. It would seem that there is something special in such games ... These are quests that have been divided into pieces. But it is more strange to see how this scheme of supply and distribution begins to penetrate into other genres and, moreover, into class projects. B and AAA. The first such project was HITMAN 2016.

In March, I already did a review of the first episode of this game and it came out quite excellent. Now it's time to look at the rest of the released episodes and finally figure out if the "episodic" distribution model is needed for this game and whether it has benefited it.

I already mentioned in the March review that the new part is a continuation of the series. The game takes place 20 years after 47's admission to the Agency. All the events of past games have already happened, but if you were waiting for the continuation Absolution, then these events remained behind the scenes.

Yes, HITMAN (2016) tells a new story that, oddly enough, is partly connected to 47's past. A certain mysterious individual begins hunting down people of the same mysterious organization, using the Agency and 47 to clean up the tails and eliminate those whom he cannot reach. All in all, that's about all there is to say about the plot of the first season without too many spoilers. The developers once said before the release of the last episodes, they say "this is just the beginning." And indeed, in the end, everything just begins to develop, as if you watched the first act of a full-fledged film. Not that it was something critical, all the same in Hitman they play not for the sake of the plot, but after 7 months of waiting, I would like something more complete.

The plot of the game is mainly served with the help of short CGI clips. The staging and dialogues are quite good, but the quality of the animation leaves much to be desired...

In terms of gameplay, nothing has changed since March. The disguise system works, all gameplay mechanics Absolution got accustomed like a glove. During this time, the developers have only corrected some shortcomings in the AI ​​and improved the interface so that it is clear to the naked eye that you are forbidden to carry this weapon, but this is possible, and that interaction with that object will not cause suspicion if you are, say, a waiter .
The only thing I can complain about is the lack of other familiar elements from past games, like a case or the ability to hide items in portable items like a grocery basket. Otherwise, the gameplay of the new part is the best in the series.

Sometimes the game throws up opportunities that require direct contact with the target. And also sometimes you have to play very non-standard roles for this, which not every killer can cope with.

AI (Artificial Intelligence) was corrected as best they could. At first, especially in the first episode, he was very buggy (for example, he saw the commission of a murder while in another part of the map) and he had obvious weaknesses (for example, it was possible to carry a weapon through a search by simply picking it up nearby after this process). Now AI behaves more strictly and got rid of bugs (at least in the future I did not notice any AI bugs).

“You can’t see anyone from this window”

Locations in the game - one of its most important pluses. The first season offers to visit 6 locations, not counting the training levels: a mansion in paris, small town Sapienza, bazaar Marrakesh, hotel in Bangkok, farm in Colorado and health complex Hokkaido. Each of them has a very good design, structure and all of them are perfectly worked out in detail. Wherever you go, there will be something different and, most importantly, useful.

In my screenshots, you can not see the beauty of the locations. Unfortunately, the optimization on PC has remained at the same mediocre level, if not worse. We have to sacrifice the image for the sake of a higher frame rate.

Easter eggs

In the game there was a place for all sorts of Easter eggs. These can be either obvious references to past projects of the IO interactive studio, or more complex ones that require a certain sequence of actions. For this "miracle", for example, you need to drive out all the "occupiers" of the upper floor of the hotel, and then play the synthesizer there.

Or, for example, you can arrange a disco in Marrakesh

And for the fans, there's this

However, if the mansion is something different for the game and partially not seen in the series, then starting from sapiens locations began to look like a collection of the best levels that were in other parts. In the same wellness complex, you can easily recognize a private treatment center from blood money(even Agent Smith is himself), and one of the ways to kill the target is a direct reference to the legendary level codename 47 "Trading Traditions". And so with all other locations of the game. I'm not saying that it's bad, I personally lack nostalgia for those times. Just could give the levels more personality.

Each location has its own starting costume. Quite an interesting solution that adds some realism to the game. If you are to mingle with the crowd, then obviously not in a funeral suit.

And now I would like to talk about the episodic system. I specifically did not begin to talk about how many ways to kill on locations, about what size they are and how many NPCs are on them. All of this, and a few other things, has a lot to do with how the game came out.

The episodic system personally showed me one important detail: HITMAN (2016)- This is a very budget project. With the release of each new episode, it became more and more visible ...

Let's start with the most important thing - the size of the locations. Paris, Sapienza, Marrakesh- the largest locations in the game. Question: why? Perhaps because they were created even before the release of the game in March, and after that they were only supplemented with details. This is evidenced at least by the fact that the same Sapienza players were shown in the trailer long before the release of the game. But as for the rest, their development apparently began immediately after the release of the first episode. Of course, for each of the episodes, the small size can be explained by the location itself. The same farm, in which most of it is fields, is difficult to score with something interesting, scattering it over a large area. However, this does not change the fact that the developers initially stated that they would make large locations with about 300 NPCs, but the episodic model said otherwise ...

The content on the locations (tests, opportunities, ways to kill targets) is also not happy with the quantity. Again, taking the farm as an example, the developers advertised it as the most difficult level of the game with as many as 4 goals! Of course, with the words “4 targets”, you expect that for each of them there will be as many options for killing (meaning non-standard methods, excluding killing with a weapon) as there are for one target in other locations. As a result, for each victim from these four there are 5-6, or even fewer non-standard methods, and this is just laughter ... With other locations it’s not better ... And although all these methods do not take originality, I would like to see more of them. The richest locations in terms of content are, of course, Paris and Sapienza.

Mission "House on the Sand", which is one of two additional episodes released in July, turned out to be better than the story mission "Golden Cage" at the same location. However, there is even less variation. This suggests that it is not the quantity that is important, but the quality, but I would like more of this quality ...

Tests

The most difficult thing in the game is by no means the search and elimination of the target, but the execution of "secret" tests. In the screenshot above, for example, the challenge is for the player to toss a coin into the fountain three times so that the coins fall "correctly". For this, you will receive gold coins in the preparation menu. And yes, I did. More than a dozen coins were thrown into this fountain ...

By the way, rating Silent Assassin(He is "Noiseless murderer" in our translation) migrated to these same tests, and in two types: the usual one, using disguise, and “only a suit”, where disguise cannot be used.

Now for the smaller things that affect the atmosphere of what is happening and which more clearly show what kind of budget the game had.

NPC voiceover.
Wherever the 47th brings, English-speaking residents will be waiting for him everywhere ... In the 6th episode, the developers, of course, got out, saying through the dialogue of one of the NPCs that there are a lot of people from the west in the complex, but this is not the case with other locations. In Marrakesh, wandering around the bazaar, absolutely everyone speaks English with almost no accent. Moreover, they speak it among themselves. The same situation in Sapienza, Bangkok, Paris.

Lack of a gun license.
There is not a single licensed stem in the new game. All weapons in the game are either invented by the developers and only partially resemble the real prototype, or similar to the real prototype, but called differently. This partly hurts the perception of the game as part of the series. Indeed, in all past games, all weapons were called and looked like in real life. MP5 was MP5, M4 was M4, WA2000 was WA2000. What do we have in HITMAN (2016)? WA2000 became in the game Sieger 300.

In addition, the developers clearly have little imagination in relation to weapons. Most of the barrels that can be opened are the same weapon, only with different properties. And how many explosives in the game that differ only in appearance, mmm ... Just take and insert a quote from "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"… But that’s true, speaking of unlockable gear in general.

“There are definitely no three identical machine guns and sniper rifles here”

Music.
In March, I already mentioned that some non-names write the music for the game and that they completed their mandatory program. Nothing changed! Moreover, the music in almost every location is the same, not reflecting the general atmosphere. Jesper Kyd Where are you when you are needed the most?

That feeling when a specially written song for the game turned out to be better than the soundtrack...

All in all, this is sad... Square Enix they clearly allocated not large funds for the project, and they put the developers within the framework - per month per episode. Perhaps if the game came out as originally planned, releasing new locations as they were ready, while the game would already have Paris and Sapienza minimum (and, believe me, they will be more than enough for long hours), everything would have turned out differently and we would have faced not just “the best Hitman”, and the new benchmark of the series.

And yes, I was not mistaken, this is really the best Hitman. This game took all the best from the previous parts, bringing to mind the camouflage system and increasing the number of ways to kill the target (even the farm surpasses the number of ways at least Absolution). Almost all of the above claims fade against the background of how detailed all the locations are, without exception, how diverse and original some of the methods of killing are, and how the game actually plays.

I am looking forward to next season. And while it is in development, there will still be something to do in the game. Pro "Exacerbations" and "Contracts" I already mentioned again in the March review and I won’t repeat myself (there’s nothing special to talk about), but then the most delicious was not tested - "Elusive Targets". This is a special contract, available for a certain period of time, which allows you to eliminate a special target that has not appeared there before at all the same locations. The trick is that if the player fails the contract, dying or missing the goal, it will be impossible to return and repeat. In addition, the goal itself will have to be searched for on its own, it is not marked either on the map or in the "Instinct". All this adds a kind of excitement to the contract. Some players not only fulfill the contract, but also do it on Silent Assassin, which, as you understand, is difficult to do when you have almost one attempt (you can restart the contract, but as long as you and the target are alive). For the elimination of a certain number of such targets, costumes from previous parts are opened.

This concludes my review.

My rating for the game: "8/10".
According to the Stopgame rating system: "Amazing".

If someone has not seen my review of the first episode,

“This is my subjective opinion and it may be fundamentally different from yours.”

In general, I don’t take words back for the beta there (it’s shit), but it has nothing to do with the new Hitman. IO Interactive does not understand why they made it - the beta, in fact, is a tutorial for the most dummies. The real Hitman 2016 is completely different. Imagine Blood Money, made without compromise with incredible detail and the ability to complete each map in not a dozen, but two dozen ways. And often not obvious. Despite the fact that they are all listed in the "challenges", understanding how to make all this beauty is not as easy as it seems. The fact is that the maps in the new Hitman, judging by Paris, are simply gigantic.

Now I understand why the authors chose the episodic model. This is how they can get rid of Hitman’s trademark “fatigue” - well, you know, when you go through a couple of cards, you get a little fed up and you’re already too lazy for the third, but you still go through it and usually in the easiest way, and then everything starts to dislike. Having made the game in episodes, they seem to say: "Relax, guy - we've worked all the fucking here, take your time, study." And indeed, you start to study and go nuts from the quantity and variety.





A bunch of NPCs with their lives, problems and storylines that develop and they all react very vividly to the presence of the hero. You explore a giant mansion, constantly finding something new - new characters, new weapons, new ways to tweak the nastiness, new ways to eliminate. Even after 6 hours of playing on the map, I managed to find new, unexplored places. And at different times in them you can find completely different episodes.


Moreover, after the first passage, new options open up - new start and departure points, new equipment. For example, you can appear in the dressing room as a stylist, dress up as a model and go to the podium. Once at the start of the story in another part of the map, you see completely different moments, dialogues, and supplement your knowledge of the scenario. You even find other weapons.





Having laid a sniper in the shed, you can arrange a classic murder, after stealing the fireworks remote from the pyrotechnicians and climbing onto the crane towering over the Seine. You can also get out of the map in a huge number of ways - by finding a secret passage in the kitchen or by capturing a helicopter there, for example.
Arranging meat is also great - they kill quickly, but if you act correctly, you can arrange a real action movie.


In general, the new Hitman is a real sandbox that surprises you. Much cooler than Blood Money. But, unfortunately, with jambs.
Three claims:
- Even the main menu slows down - due to synchronization with the server. Hello Just Cause 3. Square-Enix does not change traditions.
— The engine is old, albeit on steroids. It looks, in general, not bad, but it is clear that the PS4 is uncomfortable with it.
- Disgustingly long downloads.
But other than that, I'm really happy with this game. More details, with examples - in the video review.

15 minutes to complete the easiest and "dirty" way. Approximately one and a half hours for a "clean" murder according to all the canons. Five hours to fully study the entire level and prepare the perfect crime. It's all in our review of the first two episodes. Hitman!

After the release of the controversial Absolution, many fans of the silent killer game series buried the franchise in absentia, writing off the developers' desire to experiment as an attempt to "cut the dough". One way or another, the experiment ended with a new, even more ambitious and controversial - focusing the game on an episodic format.

In this article, we will look at the game in detail, and also see if IO Interactive managed to take a step forward, or at least not lose ground in front of other stealth series.

Story and development

As in the classic games about a bald killer with a barcode on the back of his head, some kind of extensive plot in Hitman no. Due to the specifics of his work, the protagonist asks very few questions, just doing the job.

In addition, experience Absolution showed that the 47th in itself does not pull on a plot figure due to his detachment and impartiality. It is very difficult to lead a plot when the main character only knows how to kill without further ado, and besides, he does not have any relatives or any close social ties.

Therefore, after a short prologue, which, by the way, is called "Prologue", in which we are shown the return of the best hired killer and a few short, dry dialogues, we go to Paris to fulfill a contract to kill two people - a Russian oligarch and his wife .

And only when you get to the first full-fledged level, you understand that the plot as a story is still there, but it is presented in a different way.

This is directly related to the setting, which in our case is a fashion show organized by a Russian oligarch. Of course, everything is not so simple, because all the riot of colors, music and metrosexual men is just a screen for a completely different event, hidden from the eyes of French fashionistas.

The levels are executed superbly, and it's just the presentation of the story, which is the result of an incredible study. Exploring it, you constantly find yourself in more and more new places, and all around there are almost living people with their own problems and motives. At first, this is especially noticeable, because the game characters now and then talk to each other about a variety of things, often directly related to the environment.

All in Hitman is interconnected, and each character has a role to play. This applies to both the main characters and the usual "extras", who turned out to be surprisingly alive.

Graphics and technical execution

An important role in obtaining realistic sensations from the study of a vast territory is played by graphics. The guys from IO Interactive have never been considered the creators of visually breakthrough projects, but they always tried to keep the picture on par.

About the same thing happened this time, despite the loud statements about full support for DirectX 12. The game runs on the old engine, which the developers, to the best of their ability, pulled up to an acceptable level.

Looks Hitman is really good: good textures, effects, crowds of people in the frame. However, nothing out of the ordinary that would require the i5-2500K 3.3GHz as the minimum to run.

For example, the same recent Tom Clancy's The Division only requires an i5-2400, but it shows a much better picture. So we have to state a fact: alas, the requirements are too high, and all the "pretty things" are far-fetched without proper optimization and modification of outdated technology.

Hitman gameplay

Since the announcement, the series' fan community has been discussing what the new installment will be like. On the one hand, the developers themselves admitted that they want to return to their roots. On the other hand, they do not consider Absolution is a mistake, borrowing from it some elements of simplification, which you can turn off if you wish, leaving yourself the pleasure of personally exploring every corner of the level.

Thus, until the very release of the game, it was not clear what we still had to play. A closer look shows that when creating the game, the developers primarily relied on experience blood money. From it there are ample opportunities and excellent variability, replay value.

Even now, after eight hours of playing, the certainty that she hid something behind the scenes has not disappeared. Other ways to fulfill the same contract, entire locations - the game skillfully hides all this from the player, without trying to poke him with his nose at the first opportunity: “Look, there is this here!”

For example, one of the characters may accidentally let out in a dialogue with his comrades that your target is not averse to drinking, and then you, having carefully studied other clues, will find out what exactly the victim prefers to drink and at what time he does it. And this is only the most obvious hint at one of the easiest ways to accomplish the task.

Each accidentally overheard dialogue can become the starting point for a whole chain of tricks, the result of which will be a beautiful, elegant and flawless execution of the task.

If earlier, during the same Blood Money, there were an average of 2-3 such methods per level, then in this part IO Interactive made much more options for completing the task. This became possible only thanks to the episodic format, which we will now discuss in detail.

Episode 2 - Sapienza

The second episode of Hitman takes us from pampered Paris to the hot Italian coast, namely, to the area of ​​​​the Roman University of La Sapienza. Here, Agent-47 has a number of tasks.

First, he needs to neutralize a certain Silvio Caruso - a man who is associated with a laboratory in which work is underway to create and commission a deadly virus. In fact, this is not even a laboratory, but a real underground complex right under the campus.

Secondly, you need to get into this very laboratory and steal a strain of the virus and destroy it.

However, getting into the bowels of Sapienza is not easy, because for this you need to go through two large stages. First, the player discovers his character on the street reading a newspaper, and then proceeds to explore the location, which turns out to be quite large. After the first episode, where 47 moves mostly through rooms and corridors, the freedom of movement in Sapienza is very refreshing to the gameplay.

Despite the large open spaces, this first layer of the level impresses with its content. It is full of people, and each person is busy with some business, not always connected with the mission of the bald man. These are ordinary people who are full of a variety of concerns.

Having walked a lot and knocked out a decent amount of guards, the player finds himself in a large mansion, under which there is a secret laboratory. Here the gameplay is already much closer to the level in Paris: narrow corridors and different rooms, richly furnished with furniture and, again, security. At this point, the game lags a little, but later, when the secret complex is revealed to the player, it starts to surprise again.

The laboratory is the final stage. Here the complexity gets out to its logical limit. A lot of protection, several degrees of protection and a cherry on the cake in the form of a passage to the special zone, where the virus is located. To get there, the player will have to by hook or by crook get a hazmat suit. However, leaving it with the virus is also a challenge.

In general, the second episode turned out to be quite successful. Here, the developers showed new items and some other changes. Those who want to complicate the passage will surely enjoy the hefty list of additional tasks, as well as the multi-level "escalation" system, when the game gives out various additional goals, and with each conditional level heaps more and more conditions on the unfortunate bald killer.

Episode 3 - Marrakesh

In the third episode, sunny Italy was replaced by no less sunny Marrakesh - one of the four cities of the exotic country of Morocco. Here, too, not everything is in order, but it is more about the political nature of the murder than about the fight against bio-terrorism.

IO Interactive literally outdid themselves and brought to the mountain, perhaps the best episode of the first season, coming up with a very non-trivial plot. Mass riots began in the city due to the disclosure of financial fraud involving the government and the Swedish banker Klaus Strandberg. He must be eliminated, and at the same time the leader of the conspirators, a general named Reza Zaidan, should be taken to the next world.

The key "trick" of the episode is the atmosphere of the coming riot with many victims. Bald enters the case when the banker is hidden in the Swedish consulate. The building is surrounded by protesters and a massacre could begin at any moment. Our task is to prevent it by any means.

Nevertheless, imagining yourself as Che Guevara and leading people to fight against the oppressive capitalist infection will not work, since any attempt to raise a fuss ends with indispensable fire to kill from the side of law enforcement agencies, because they least of all need rabid provocateurs.

Therefore, despite the very interesting idea, you will have to act the old fashioned way - sneak, look for loopholes, change clothes and by any means achieve the killing of targets. As in other episodes, there are a lot of ways to kill, there are both pre-prepared rulers, and the ability to tritely shoot the right people and escape without too much ingenuity.

Episode 4 - Bangkok

On August 16, the fourth episode for Hitman was released, and in it players will be able to admire the surroundings of Thailand's Bangkok, namely the views from the windows of the Himmaphan Hotel. No politics and global conspiracies, just a typical contract for the execution of the will of revenge.

The plot of the episode revolves around the tragic death of actress Hannah Highmour, who, according to the official version of the police, accidentally fell out of the window of her high-rise apartment. Customers representing Hanna's grieving family are confident that this is not an accident, but a premeditated murder committed by the girl's roommate, rock musician Jordan Cross.

It is necessary to kill not only him, but also the lawyer Ken Morgan, who, according to the version of the customers, did everything necessary to hide the participation of his client in the fate of Highmur.

As noted above, the scene is a large luxury hotel. Therefore, penetration into it will be the first task of the player in the fourth episode. Choosing any of several paths, the player will spend most of the time indoors.

This brings the mission in Bangkok a little closer to the very first assassination in Paris, but the level structure itself is completely different. There is a sense of continuity and connection with past parts.

There are not so many characters in this episode, which is in particular contrast with the abundance of “extras” during the incident in Marrakech. Nevertheless, the difficulties here are related to something else - hiding in a relatively small, but thought out to the smallest detail building is not so easy: security is everywhere and all sorts of troubles like cameras. As a bonus, there are some funny indie rock dialogues and even a couple of specially recorded music tracks.

Episode 5 - Colorado

What exotic places the protagonist has not visited! It seems that he managed to see everything in the world, tracking down a variety of people. But the developers came up with a quite reasonable thought: why, in fact, not return the 47th to a more familiar scenery?

In the fifth episode, the task will take place on the territory of the state of Colorado, USA, and almost in the countryside, away from any gadgets and technology in general. It was here, on a small secluded farm, that four people took refuge: Sean Rose, Penelope Graves, Ezra Berg and Maya Parvati.

All of them have a very interesting biography. Among them are an eco-terrorist specializing in explosives, a Mossad agent playing a double game, and even a smuggler of the Tamil Tigers.

But more importantly, this is the first contract in which you need to eliminate as many as 4 targets. This greatly complicates the matter, especially with a "clean" passage. But besides this, there are still a whole lot of difficulties, so the mission in Colorado can definitely be considered the most difficult.

Firstly, the entire territory of the farm is forbidden. This means that other characters will not tolerate the presence of the player, unless he obtains someone else's clothes.

Secondly, the level itself is built in such a way that it is difficult to hide on it. You constantly have to balance on the edge, trying to hide literally out of the blue. Because of this, the episode even somewhat resembles Absolution, as it constantly encourages the use of firearms.

This episode is also notable for the fact that it advances the main storyline of the game very strongly. If in other places there were only hints and brief negotiations with Diana, then here IO Interactive finally clarifies many moments of the story and gives a lot of information for reflection.

Episode 6 - Hokkaido

It is on this mission that the episodic experiment of IO Interactive ends, in any case, its first "season". The developers decided to remind where it all began, so the return to Japan is perceived with a fair amount of nostalgia.

However, wandering through the streets of Japanese cities and shooting members of the triads, alas, will not work. Bald's goal climbed far from these places - right on the island of Hokkaido, into a well-guarded complex.

Outside, cold winds blow it, and heavy snow makes it impossible to shoot at long distances. The landscape is uneven, so the path has to be chosen with care: vigilant guards are placed at all positions.

The very same building of the complex is also full of unpleasant surprises. At first glance, this is an ordinary hospital with quite adequate architecture. But later it turns out that in fact this is a real multi-level labyrinth, which cannot be fully explored in one passage, since the chance of getting caught by the guards is too high to constantly tempt fate.

Quite expectedly, the developers saved all the plot twists for this particular episode. In it, the player finally comes face to face with another killer, who is somewhat of a protagonist in the episode. It is very unusual to watch the struggle of two sophisticated killers in Hitman, because before the 47th was the one and only.

The ending clearly hints at a sequel, but revealing it means spoiling the impression of the passage. Suffice it to say that the mid-term finale feels cohesive and quite fitting within the series.

Episodic - good or bad?

Speaking about the episodic structure, I would like to note that the developers from IO Interactive have very successfully adopted it. It's strange that this hasn't happened before!

Judge for yourself: the main "chip" of the series has always been the freedom of planning, which was achieved through the initially wide possibilities inherent in each individual level. Of course, everything should be like this ideally, but in reality we observed something similar only in the first two parts and blood money. And even there there were frankly passing stages that could be run in an hour, seeing almost everything that is in them.

And this is not because IO Interactive are lazy slackers, but because their capabilities are limited both by finances and by the production cycle. They cannot afford to develop each level for several months, or even for six months. Therefore, from the very beginning, game designers have to make a difficult choice: which level should be worked out better and which should be worse.

Now they don't have to follow this approach, because they have the opportunity to develop each level separately, as an independent mini-project within the same game. At the same time, they, perfectly understanding the specifics of the episodic format, did not begin to break the price. On Steam, the prologue and the first contract cost 330 rubles, while the full game, including all 7 missions, will cost you 1,100 rubles. More than a loyal price, given the quality that was noted above.

Ticket to the world of contract killings

If all the other episodes are as good in terms of development and variety, then we will definitely have the best part of the series after blood money. This is a deep and complex game that gives the player exactly what he expects.

There are, of course, minor flaws like the very bloated, but by and large useless DRM. Despite the fact that the game is purely single-player, you can only play it with a constant connection to the Internet. This is necessary in order for all sorts of additional functions to work, such as progress statistics and special tests for completing a level with certain conditions.

This is bad because it by no means justifies the obligatory connection, and in general it looks out of place, like the fifth wheel of a cart. After all, if the Internet "flies out" for five to ten seconds, then you will not be able to continue the passage in the "offline". Moreover, you risk losing some of your progress.

Situation with Hitman looks like a demo Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes. There is also a single level, but, thanks to the mechanics and design, the game literally riveted even those who never signed their love for the Japanese stealth series.

However, if you are still an ardent opponent of this distribution model, then no one was going to infringe on your rights. You can wait until all the episodes are out without any problems, and then buy the finished game at the end of this year. And at the moment there is every reason to believe that it will be good.

Name:
Genre: social stealth
Developer: Io-interactive
Publisher: Square Enix
Release date of the first episode: March 11, 2016
Platform: RS /Xboxone /PS4
Game site: http://www.hitman.com/

The new part of the legendary Hitman series stands out from other games in the genre. At least a model of its distribution: the prologue and six chapters of the game were released throughout 2016 with an interval of several months. The approach is controversial: the game seems to be one, but for some reason it was divided into six pieces and they ask for separate money for each. What is it: greed? Impudence? Trying to make money from gullible fans?

Wisdom, friends! Unexpected statement, right? Surprisingly, this distribution model for Hitman fit perfectly. The game was sold in two versions: the starter version, which included the prologue and the first chapter, and the full version, which included all the game's content at once. Even now, the player can only buy the first mission, see what's going on, and if he doesn't like it, never return to the game again. And if you like it, then for little money you can buy the rest of the episodes. Everything is simple.

But God bless them with money: the episodic distribution system has its own rigid game logic. Each level in Hitman can and should be completed about thirty times. We are happy to congratulate the fans of the series: the game has returned to its roots and is more reminiscent of a remake of Hitman: Blood Money than a sequel.

Simply put, Hitman of 2016 has gone as far as possible from the mainstream stealth shooters about contract killings. It is devoid of expensive staged scenes, spectacular combat system and highlights that were in the previous game. After the controversial Absolution, whose task was to return the legendary series and adjust it to modern realities, the new Hitman has come to take back the long-lost title of the king of social stealth.

What does it mean? Each level in Hitman 2016 is a huge arena with dozens of detours and hundreds of inhabitants. The task is to eliminate two targets. In most of the tasks, it does not matter how they need to be eliminated, therefore, the player's hands are untied: the only obstacle is his own imagination.

Everything worked in approximately the same way in Blood Money: there is a huge territory that can be studied for a long time and meticulously. Various clues are scattered around it - NPC dialogues, cleaning logs, memos and other sources of information that will help Agent 47 eliminate his target. You can act elegantly and professionally: poison the target with cyanide or set up an accident. You can carelessly and straightforwardly: stupidly kill with a pistol or a sniper rifle. It's up to the player to decide.

There is no way to consider Hitman as an action game: firstly, the game itself is quite slow - most of the time the player walks slowly, looking around; the character has many options, like changing clothes, climbing ledges and the like, but he does it very slowly and leisurely - he is a professional, after all, and haste is for beginners. Secondly, any encounter in open combat will quickly end with the death of Agent 47, regardless of the chosen difficulty of the game.

The new Hitman is about social stealth, about the need to hide in plain sight, about drawing up a detailed plan of action in order to strike with surgical precision. It's about what Assassin's Creed has been trying to achieve since 2007, but so far without success. The player-controlled character is a piranha in a herring tank: she has nowhere to hurry, she swims at a calm and measured pace until she gets hungry.

There are a lot of opportunities for eliminating targets, there are really several dozen of them at each level, the game even carefully gives some hints in the main menu. For each new kill option, the player is rewarded with experience points, for which he levels up, gets new items and abilities in his arsenal, which allows you to replay and go through the chapter in a completely different way.

By the way, by the possibility of killing, we mean not only the immediate elimination of the target, but also the context itself, the very organization of the execution of the order: an absolutely invaluable experience is to eliminate the target, pretending to be a statue of a plague doctor in her office, for example.

So, dozens of ways to complete the task and became the reason why the episodic distribution model of the game is ideal for the new Hitman. By God, studying the entire level can easily take up to twenty hours of game time, although you can stupidly complete the task in an hour - but what's the point then? ..

However, all the social features were successfully transferred from Absolution to the new part. Players can create kill orders themselves: everything, of course, will do without a pretentious introductory video and well-developed dialogues, but in terms of gameplay, this will be a full-fledged task that can easily turn out to be more difficult and interesting than the one developed by the studio.

By the way, the proposed distribution model plays into the hands of the new Hitman also because now the game can be bought in its entirety at a discount - there is a big winter sale on Steam.

In general, we will not talk more about the game: this is an excellent, smart, well-designed, subtle assassin simulator. There is no action in it, in general, there is nothing that Assassin's Creed or Splinter Cell have taught us to do in recent years. Hitman is a hell of a classic modernized, a remake of Hitman: Blood Money the way we wanted it to be and the way we truly deserved it. We strongly recommend not to pass by!

System requirements

Minimum:

• OS: 64-bit Windows 7
• CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K / AMD Phenom II X4 940
• RAM: 8 GB
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 / AMD Radeon HD 7870
• Storage space: 50 GB

• OS: 64-bit Windows 7/8/8.1/10
• CPU: Intel Core i7-3770 / AMD FX-8350
• RAM: 8 GB
• Video card: NNVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 / AMD Radeon R9 290
• Storage space: 50 GB