izigame.me

Extremely well designed but for a niche audience
The fact that only 5% of the players even complete the most basic of achievement tells you this is a title that's simply deeply, deeply misunderstood.
Like many, I bought H47 (Hitman 2016) when it launched, played it 3h, 'finished it' and hated it. A 50$ game with 'only' 5 levels? I even considered it to be a bit of a 'rip off'. Well, I'm glad to say I was COMPLETELY wrong.
At first, you will most likely 'win' each level very easily even on 'hard' difficulty since you can come in, murder everyone with a machine gun and leave. But , if you DO play the game as intended, ie. role playing a stealth assassin, that's when the game 'opens up' and becomes extremely addictive.
"Hitman" is a game that DEMANDS to be played a certain way. You wouldn't waltz in the 'Souls' series expecting to play the game on 'story mode', would you? Well, the same goes for Hitman. It's a game that WANTS to be played in a rogue-like fashion, in increments, repeatedly. And you'll love or hate it for that.
Let's dive in:
- the notion that it's a game where you 'have to learn the patterns' is blatantly false. It's extremely well designed, and allows you total freedom and even changing objectives mid-mission. To achieve this, they build each level as an 'interactive movie'. You can follow one individual for 3 hours in the "Paris" mission and you'll see they go about their own lives, on a HUGE map. Tiny but very real details of their behaviour will help you find some very obscure way to set traps.
- When the 'movie' ends, you will always have 'opportunites' that are only triggered upon exploration regardless of your previous achievement to not have to go the 'loud route'. A lovely detail that allows you to explore at will without getting bored.
- There's probably over 20+ hour of audio content in each level to discover, if you really put your heart into it. The mini side stories, opening up new and interesting way to murder your targets are very neatly designed. They are never pushed on you, and that's why most people will ignore them. For example, on the 'Paris' level, you see the 'mark' having an argument with many people. If you follow each one individually over multiple play-through, you'll find they are trying to get back at him in ways you can leverage to your advantage. The amount of detail is mind-blowing.
- In addition, the game throws in a very "rimworld-like" 'orchestrator' to foil your most obvious assassination attempts. For example, you might be onto the fact that one mark will attempt to check their laptop if you hack the server. So you set a proximity bomb near the laptop, because in the previous run, they would walk in the room alone. This time, they will send their bodyguard ahead and you'll lose points for killing an 'innocent' bystander. Likewise, a character could be walking four or five times over the same electrical plug in one play through, but the minute you sabotage it to 'energize' it, they will change course because the phone rings. Clever!
- The "AI" is far more advanced than most people make it to be. Sure, you can 'separate' a mark from their bodyguard by throwing coins around. But that's not the point of the game. The point of the game is to defeat that 'dumb' AI repeated over hundreds of NPCs present on site. How do you murder someone with a firearm while they are on stage surrounded by a crowd that fills the room? Well, that's the game - finding out.
So, what's the catch? Well, it's in the gameplay. You see, to know these things, you will need to play the same level, over, and over, and over again. To get all the achievements expect 30-40h per level, and that's rushing it. To get all the 'hidden' achievement, slap another 50 on top of that, because the game becomes devilishly hard. And if that's not hard enough for you, you can enter a 'No HUD' mode where you are left to your own devices, no way to track anyone magically, and you can roleplay an assassin as if you would in the 'real world'.
If that sounds exciting, great, this is the game for you. H3 is out now, but even H47 , a title that's almost a decade old, looks sublime compared to modern titles. They really built this thing to last. Sure there's no RTX, but you can super-sample the textures, and on 'ultra', even a 2080/i9900k will pull 77fps average. Very respectable, but this is a demanding title.
Likewise, maybe this sounds dreadfully boring to you. Replaying the same level over and over? What's the fun in that? Well, one could ask the same about playing rimworld, gnomoria or souls. The game is the game. it's what it is. I highly recommend watching videos on Youtube before making a purchase. It worked for me, but only 9 years later, after i 'understood' the mechanics.
Brilliantly designed game, but certainly not for everyone.