I have always liked stealth video games, indeed, they have always fascinated me, just as those people who manage to finish a game have always fascinated me. without ever triggering an alarm, in speedrun by the way.
On the other hand, I have always had a bit of fear in approaching pure stealth, like the Hitman, a series that I believe the essence of stealth because Agent 47 can take out his target in daylight in front of 400 possible witnesses. Fear of making a bad impression, even with myself, realizing that I am incapable.
And in fact, the review of Hitman 2 I titled it 'review of an incapable', because the editorial staff assigned it to me (fools!), As they assigned me Hitman 3 (as a matter of continuity). I accepted the challenge again, so let's see what you think of the last chapter of the trilogy a non-professional like that.
Hitman 3: Ready to catapult us
The story of Hitman 3 picks up where we left off (and sure), namely with 47 and Diana Burnwood who want to destroy once and for all Providence, the secret society that wanted to make shoes for the Shadow Customer, who however we discovered was a childhood friend of just 47, Lucas Gray.
The only way to put the point is to eliminate the Constant, the absolute leader of the organization, but first a few of his cronies, powerful people, of the upper middle class, must be killed. From here on, the plot unfolds between agents who want to kill other agents, betrayals, double-crosses, triple-crosses and ace takes… no.
Let's face it, the story of Hitman 3 is not that of Death Stranding which needs an interpreter to mentor you otherwise you would just pretend to understand it, it is essential, is right for a title of that type. The narrative structure that IO Interactive used is almost mechanical: great pre-mission briefing, mission, cutscene that drives the story forward. The latter were shot as a thriller, almost noir in some aspects, and they work. You never reach unexplored peaks, but that's okay because Hitman 3 is gameplay, e che gameplay!
So here I am catapulted to Dubai for the first mission. To get in I need a new trinket, there camera, which allows Lucas, remotely, to open some electronic locks and give me the combinations. I'm inside, the sheikh's palace * nonremordoilnome * is gorgeous, indeed, it's a whole city that looks down on the poor people who can't afford this luxury.
Yes, because just like in Hitman 2, the settings are huge, they need a review of the map every two by three to be fully understood, they leave you the curiosity of the explorer. Hitman 3 is not an adventure, yet seeing locations like that, so well made, I often felt like enter every room, walk through every single corridor, go out into the outside areas and get lost. Then you remember that it is not Uncharted and that you have targets to stab, poison, accept, in all senses, in short, eliminate from the face of the earth, and above all you remember that if you enter the server room dressed as a professional assassin they kick you in. instant.
I absolutely must have the dress of the Sheikh's elite guards for two reasons: 1 I move more freely, 2 they are just beautiful. I manage to isolate one, stun it, dress up and I hide the body in a locker. About twenty minutes have passed, I have not yet triggered any alarms, I feel invincible, until a guard who has a white dot on his head (these are the characters who can recognize you even if you are dressed correctly for the area and the situation) is about to become suspicious . Cold blood, I hide from his sight, I take a coin, I toss it, he goes to check, I pass behind him. Yes, I am invincible.
I take a blunt object from a table, they riddle me with blows, no, I'm not invincible, I'm an idiot. I was in a private room, I am not allowed to take what I want. I reload the most recent save, try to make a local mind, I read that there is a story of the nearby mission, ah right, I can use them to have a simpler life. Once activated, these mini achievements allow the player to create an opportunity for assassination, so why not? Why not take advantage of it? I activate it and find that there is a way to reunite the two targets in the same room and lock them in hermetically. I catch the ball, I do everything the game asks me to do and at the key moment, I activate the safety system that traps them. One I kill him by throwing a knife, the other I break his neck. All over, I go off by parachute (a bit like a circular theatrical show).
Will it always be that simple? Oh no, that was the mission of the demo, more or less something I remembered. TO Dartmoor, England, the location is even more splendid, but I don't know anything about that gigantic mansion, much less the labyrinth garden typical of that area. I almost almost I dress up as a gardener, so, by chance, then something happens. I enter the house, but it is better to be a waiter in this situation, therefore the gardener becomes inexorable and becomes a faithful servant. Mmh… but… walking along the east wing (I don't know if it was really the east wing, to tell the truth, I was lost) I notice the butler. Well, I do the upgrade, from simple waiter to butler personal of my goal. Ah, you have a token in your pocket. I take it, I will need it to complete the "secondary" objective. To kill the main target, on the other hand, I follow a story of the mission: a gravedigger has to meet the person, I take his place because from butler to gravedigger is an instant. This takes the target out of the villa, I hide in the branches of the garden, throw a cutlass found around in her head. Panic, there is a dead man, but not the culprit who, in the meantime, he goes away whistling.
Yes, it must be admitted, sometimes the enemy AI has some faint, but in a game so sprawling, it pushes you to unleash all your creativity in killing, which has so many different approaches to the same situation, it may be that sometimes the AI has gaps. I can assure you that, thanks also to a crazy level design, these gaps are very little noticeable, moreover the AI shows signs of failure especially when the player tries to force, to hurry. Hitman 3 shouldn't be played like this, you don't have to hurry, it is necessary to discover new areas, almost like in an RPG, to wait patiently for the right moment to act.
On the other hand, Hitman 3 also has shooting phases if things get bad, but even in this case everything must be contextualized: the shooting of the IO Interactive title is not perfect, Agent 47 seems not very comfortable with a weapon in hand, almost held by something. There is. Hitman 3 is not meant for carnage to the taste of lead, the clashes must be avoided and when it happens it is better to prefer the loading of a save or even the restart of the entire mission.
There are also some variations on the theme, for example, a Berlin I found myself at a rave party, but with no targets to eliminate, the mission was to recognize some undercover agents and kill a certain number of them.
The mission, however, that made me fall in love with Hitman 3 is the one set in Chongqing, China, because there we saw the enormous work of the development team both in terms of gameplay, choices, and attention to detail. In that specific mission, I lost a lot of time, I was no longer a professional killer, I was a tourist, I looked in amazement at the neon signs, the characteristic restaurants in the area, I thought I was the protagonist of a Asian version of Blade Runner.
And how many times have I died, even from one search because, yes, I'm just clueless, I didn't remember having a gun and a screwdriver on me, but I didn't get mad, I have improved from time to time and I also completed that level, not with a very high final score, but the satisfaction of completing a contract on Hitman 3 is inexplicable to those who do not try it first hand.
Maybe you wanted a classic review, but I just didn't manage to write one in which I say that technically we are a cut above many productions of this generation, that the gameplay is satisfying, full of nuances that cannot be listed, must be experienced in the role of Agent 47, longevity perhaps falls short a bit with six main missions (6/8 hours), however this too must be contextualized: Hitman 3 has many paths, an infinite number of opportunities, completing a mission does not mean having really finished it, it is only the first step, because the better we are, the more professional levels we will unlock. These allow us to restart the mission by entering from new areas, with new weapons and new tools; then there are secondary missions, there are challenges to complete, and there are dozens and dozens for each single mission. Longevity is not a problem at all, trust me.
Final comment
Hitman 3 is the Stealth with a capital S, each mission is a small world to explore both for the pleasure of discovery and for the assassination opportunities it can offer, so many, so many that finding them all is a real feat. Hitman 2 was a great game, but the third installment surpasses it without a shadow of a doubt, with a variety of approaches and an out-of-scale scenic and aesthetic beauty for titles of this genre. An uncomplicated plot and some smears in the enemy AI can act as a counterbalance, but these are not very visible gaps and which must be contextualized to understand the least impact on the final quality of the product.
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