Fun little puzzle game to kill some time with. The first three boards felt mind-numbingly easy most of the time, but if you stick with it, the last four boards add a lot of neat mechanics that're pretty fun to play around. The various missions you can do in each level range in quality with some being a few moves away from the main path while others demand entirely new routes to achieve. The presentation of the game boards is top notch and really fun to look at throughout the entire game and the music is serviceable in setting the mood for each level. I wouldn't bother with the achievements unless you're a sicko that likes seeing numbers go up like me.

The Value of Spin-Off Titles: Understanding Video Games Through Other Games

Spin-off games are always an ambivalent proposition. At worst, they are nothing but a cheap marketing stunt, a simple act of slapping the looks and sounds of an already lucrative IP onto what would otherwise be a completely unrelated experience. In their best instances, however, spin-off titles are not only good games in their own right, but can also offer unique insight into the main series they’re based on that is as valuable as any written or video analysis of these games. Given that almost every mobile game falls into the former category of half-assed corporate branding, it is all the more remarkable how elegantly Hitman GO achieves the latter.

The premise of Hitman GO is that Hitman can naturally be adapted as a turn-based puzzle game because the core experience of the series has always been akin to puzzle solving anyway. The same can actually be stated for most other stealth games. Both genres generally share a principle of pull game design, where the game initially rests in a passive state that can be manipulated by the player character. In both cases, the world usually does not act independently from the player, its elements only change in periodic time loops at most until you interact with them. From this perspective, there really isn’t that much of a difference between figuring out the routes of patrolling guards and, say, the functioning of a control room puzzle. Both behave in an entirely predetermined and predictable manner, which the player is encouraged to carefully observe before making an informed decision about how to influence them to their advantage.

The main differences lie in how you are able to collect the information and how the games react to your mistakes. In stealth games, information gathering is already part of the same hide-and-seek dynamic that characterizes their progression system as a whole. Players are bound to the limited perspective of their character, which can be expanded by all sorts of enhanced movement capabilities or item usage. Abilities, that also often put them at risk of discovery, in which case the game shifts gears to a push dynamic that puts the player at a disadvantage until they manage to escape detection again. All these elements are not present in most puzzle games, but they also aren’t equally relevant to all stealth games, and I think that Hitman GO is right to argue that they are an expandable part of the Hitman series. Though the games have always provided you with a surprisingly large array of lethal options, they also clearly incentivize you to play in a specific, non-confrontational manner. Every good Hitman level has one or several ideal methods of assassinating your targets that make their deaths look like accidents and that require a deep understanding of the level design to work out. A perfect rating further requires you to execute the whole plan without any casualties or getting spotted, like you were never even there in the first place.

All the guns and melee weapons offer less of an equally valid alternative, and more like something to keep players entertained until they have figured out a more optimal method (hence their inherent ability to generate slapstick moments), or as a last resort brute force approach if they can’t. This is why the multiple film adaptations feel like such a grotesque misinterpretation of the games they are supposed to be based on. As if the filmmakers only bothered to engage with the most surface level promotional material of a menacing looking bald guy with dual wielding pistols, the perfect protagonist for any generic action film. Hitman GO instead gets to the core of the experience, by adapting the basic progression structure in its level design.

Each of the five main levels takes the shape of a board game that represents a specific location – usually an expansive mansion –, in which two red targets are placed as figurines to assassinate, one at the halfway mark and one at the end point of the map. The progress of your figure through this overworld is marked by a linear path with fifteen steps, mimicking the actual route of infiltration a player might take in a 3D-environment – entering from the garden across the pool house to the tennis court for the first kill, then sneaking their way through the greenhouse into the main building for the second, for example. Every step takes you to a different sub-screen of the individual puzzles, with a more detailed illustration of the current area, but this time your goal is behind multiple branching paths, patrolling guards and various items. This subdivision also perfectly captures how Hitman levels are never just free-roaming open worlds, but a complex series of subsequent or interlocking stealth challenges with restricted areas within restricted areas. In fact, the developers were even able to directly adapt two levels from the main games into additional boards later on, both of which translate beautifully into the new formular.

The puzzles themselves are as close to stealth gameplay as a turn-based board game can be, save for the aforementioned aspects of information gathering and improvisation under detection. You always have perfect information about the position, movement, and possible interactions of every element on the board, to the point where it is theoretically possible to solve most of the puzzles in your head before you even make your first move. There is absolutely no ambiguity or chance involved in the outcome of every turn: If you move onto a field in sight and proximity of a guard, you lose. Detection is equal to immediate failure. These conditions might feel restrictive for other stealth games like the Metal Gear series, which puts a much higher emphasis on improvisational tactics and emergent gameplay (the turn-based card gameplay of the Acid games definitely offer a more apt interpretation here), but they are a perfect fit for Hitman.

The completely formalized spacial and temporal interactions on the puzzle board actually correspond to the natural tendency for abstraction that differentiates stealth games from the majority of 3D genres. Where most games try to immerse you in a believable world, stealth encourages a more detached analytical perspective that pays attention to the structure behind the appearance. For instance, lighting becomes less of a tool for generating atmosphere and more an indication of save areas. And while the question of light and shadow is not particularly important to Hitman, its disguise system arguably offers an even more radical example for the same principle. It makes you incentivized to see every character not as an individual but merely an anonymous avatar playing a social role, who can be perfectly imitated and replaced at all times. Is there a better way to emulate the point of view of a cold-blooded assassin?

As such, the Hitman series was only ever interested in simulating social situations insofar as they communicate a clear signification. Hitman GO even manages to capture this aspect in its twofold implications. On the one hand, the guards on the board all behave in a specific manner determined by the color of their uniform. Some always rest in the same position until distracted, others turn around every turn or patrol along a linear path. Circumventing these obstacles mainly revolves around questions of move order and timing. On the other hand, there are civilians on the side of the boards, freezed in different tableaux vivants that display snapshots of social configurations: a gardener resting in the shade of a tall hedge; or a man all alone in the backrow of a wedding ceremony, burying his face in his hands.

I would even go as far as saying that Hitman GO was crucial for getting the series back on track after the confused mess that was Absolution. Square Enix Montreal certainly had a deeper understanding of Hitman than IO Interactive at that point. Still, in spite of all my praise for how Hitman GO interprets the games it is based on, one central part of the puzzle is missing. A crucial factor of the perverse appeal of the Hitman series is that you have to perform the process of abstraction yourself. Every new level sure looks like a natural environment at the start, until you peel away its different layers of artificial reality to the point where there is nothing left but a perfect clockwork leading your targets to their ultimate destiny. You almost feel like a sort of sadistic god of fate at the end, enacting a twisted higher judgment on your victims. The final execution is only the last part of this process, and not exactly the most engaging one as it usually involves a lot of waiting for every piece to fall into place. Hitman GO already strips away too many layers of social artifice for you. What is left is a series of good, but not great puzzles that have more to say about one of the best series of my favorite genre than they are able to speak for themselves.

__________________
More puzzle game reviews
Chants of Sennaar
Cocoon
Mole Mania