played through World of Assassination

hitman's been something ive been intrigued by for quite a while now, so much so World of Assassination is on my high priority . it sounded really cool, like that game i imagined as a kid but never existed(except it did just not to this scale lol), and as a mobile gamer for most of my childhood. kinda like metal gear in a way, except being an assassin instead of a super spy. this comparison between metal gear comes up again later. ive only played the first one, though, from 1987.

so the gameplay is honestly... it's a bit disappointing honestly. i had this image built up of a super sim where you can do literally anything and itll go. like for instance i imagined i could talk to a service person and ask him to come to my room, then pummel him to death and take his clothes and impersonate him. talking to npcs- wait, for the record i know i could talk to people if i do the "canon" route of completing shit but i didnt wanna do that cuz id then be compelled to do that and i didnt want that when i could choose a morbillion other ways. okay, with that cleared up, continuing. talking to npcs is a feature i figured they'd have the way the game is advertised as a morbillion ways to do shit. like i could get super close with my target and assimilate into his personal room attendant through dialogue alone, and then murder him with no one in sight. that would have been really cool.

so idk, i feel like a lot is missing from the "sim" aspect. if some dude walks into a room and you walk out wearing his clothes(esp if the dude got different hair) and he doesnt come back out, i feel like thge whole map should go into lockdown, if they were seen entering that room. its like... the game just kinda... forgets, like i killed some dudes and left em in the open, they bring out the body bag and all that, but afterwards the deed is forgotten.

if i were running a compound with very important people closeby and found a body, you know what id do? id line up every single person and ask for an alibi! id lock the entire compound down, too. imagine how cool it would be if you had to give an alibi based on your disguise, or you could try and avoid this lineup thingy and if you get found thereafter you're arrested immediately if you dont have an even better alibi. idk, im just spitballing but the world/ simulation leaves a lot to be desired. i i figured it would be much more dynamic. id assume more things get added in h2 and h3, though.

another thing is that most missions give you a silenced pistol and if you're quick enough you can kill the targets without any "fun stuff". i know replayability and sandbox is the name of the game but usually i dont roll that way, so i just do what i see and sometimes the quickest option is a silent shot from da bushes

what is here though is fantastic. it's such a rush sneaking around locations across the globe, disguising yourself, tracking target's patterns and picking off their inner circle before finally you're alone in a room with them, commit the deed, and then exit like nothing happened. it's really fucking badass to exit a scene when everyon'es like "oh my god wtf wtf", especially if you're inches away from being spotted. i killed that jordan cross dude with a pistol in the music booth and left the scene, was really fucking awesome. oh and killing that dude who was there for heart transplant after i knocked out a surgeon in plain daylight, stole his clothes and went around, acting as lead surgeon and then draining his blood out with the machine. oh and that one time where i fucking destroyed that super virus and then afterwards the head scientist lady came down without guards and i fucking murdered her in the hallway and shoved her in a locker, and proceeded to kill the main dude after watching him golf for 30 minutes straight. just a blast to play through.

the story is very reminiscent of metal gear 1987, in the way that it takes itself incredibly seriously but the plot sounds like something a kid would make up when needing to make a super cool assassin story with their toys and stuff. its not the deepest, or the most substantial but its pretty cool and charming in the same way mg1's story was. im excited to see where it goes in h2.


in a closing note that i kept thinking about over my time with this game, i was talking to my mom recently about games and stuff, the kinda "schedule" i have for myself, like playing p2 or xenoblade at such and such time, and she responded with something that really stuck with me. she was like "oh i thought gaming was all about spontaneity, that seems like a chore." and idk man i see her point. i promised id play mg2 before the week ends but i have no desire honestly after i started the hitman trilogy , often feels like people are stalking my playing tab when in reality no one pays attention to it that closely, and if i forced myself to play it thats kinda is a chore. kinda easy to lose track of the fact its a hobby especially on this site, even further when you write reviews. often found myself trying to think of a review well playing and thats just not something i really want. i should just play what i want in da moment.

overall i really liked this game and was glad i got the trilogy for 20 bucks. ill definitely be checking h2 out asap but idk if the burnout will strike before i can finish h3. i might bump to a 9 idk

check out this song

Disclaimer: I played this through Hitman: World of Assassination, but you probably will be too as the original isn't available digitally anymore, and WoA is the same but better.

I was genuinely really surprised what I got here with Hitman, I expected a downgrade from the more old-school style im-sim-esque gameplay with a modern hand-holdy aspect to it, but what I ended up with was a love letter to those older types of game that tries and succeeds well enough to form a middle-ground between the two.

To start off, the game only guides you around if you, yourself actively choose to do the scripted kills, called the "Mission Stories" these can range from again, the scripted kills to just being your entry/disguise, and a lot of the time these are introduced to you by just eavesdropping on conversations other NPCs are having.
If I had to give one criticism about the aforementioned system though, it's that these are often available, and some (AFAIK) are for the most part meant to be accessed through just selecting them in the pause menu and it'll tell you them right off the bat, It would have been a lot nicer if you couldn't do this, but your ability to find them was far easier, either placing them closer to the entry point or highlighting them in your "Hitman Vision"

Another system I very much enjoyed was the mastery system, allowing you more unlocks to approach the area in a different way, let it be to help you get inside faster or start with a disguise, or give you some gear to get you around trickier areas, or just some tools to help you get to the next "Mission Story" it encourages having the game show you the ropes for a level, and you can either do more of the scripted stuff on a replay, or with your newfound tools, try experimenting by just doing whatever, just finding a good opportunity and taking out the target with a clean strike and zipping out of there, it's really good for encouraging replay value in a way that doesn't feel forced.

To add onto the replay value, there's challenges rewarding you for doing all sorts of things in a level, difficulties that make things a little more challenging by doubling down on guards and cameras, punishing more bloody kills by losing your disguises, and you've only got one save, there's also particular challenges rewarding you for doing things like beating it with only killing your target and not disguising ever, and also not being spotted ever, there's a lot to do for every single mission and it does a good job of getting you to learn the ropes while you're not experimenting.

And as a little extra note, the game is jam packed with a bunch of easter eggs or little references that pump the game full of some soul, you can tell that they had a lot of fun developing these games just the same as they did with the originals.

Onto the criticisms though.

As mentioned before, the "Mission story" system could do with more focus on discovering them rather than just hitting a button to be lead to the objective markers.

The story is absolutely dull, nothing is really happening, or at the very least nothing feels like it's happening, because it's just a bunch of cutscenes that don't impact the missions at all, other than a scene on the second to last mission, and it gets a bit dull only assassinating targets who have done bad, come on, it's a HITMAN game, I'd expect to at least start off with a few morally grey missions of just corporate sabotage, taking out suits by sneaking through office buildings.

There's this system called "Elusive targets" which is absolutely terrible, limited time targets that are gone forever (or at least a while) if you mess them up, The game has a lot of replay value as is and making them all permanent, including their rewards, wouldn't be a problem, I don't see any appeal for this.

Some of the levels in the middle of the game are a bit boring, particular the one set in Morocco and especially the one set in Colorado.
The one set in Morocco has a bad problem with just kind of squeezing you in tight locations with you having to navigate an overpopulated clusterfuck to try and find a way through, probably just having to jump to a "Mission Story" and it becomes really difficult to take some of the disguises, particularly the guy putting up flyers, because you have to follow him around for AGES before he's in a decent spot, which you're only getting away with due to bad NPC placement, which gets spotted soon after, not that it matters when you're gone (another criticism, why don't NPCs that you steal the outfit of get upset and compromise your outfit for everyone they're related with once they're woken up?)
The Colorado one is just stuffing you in this open hell-hole where you have to take out FOUR targets, 2 of them aren't too hard, the mission stories they have are easy enough to set up, and the third just stumbled upon my distraction I had accidentally set up when I was taking care of two guys I needed to KO and get past, so I just killed him and stuffed his body in a bush, but the fourth one? what a fucking pain in the ass, and I was doing the "Mission Story"
So first, you have to go listen to the guy's conversation about the Interpol badge, then you have to wait for the planets to align to steal it from him, because before you KO him, you have to wait for the guy just across from him to walk away, make sure the target and their entourage isn't coming, wait for his buddy to turn around, throw a weapon at his buddy, immediately choke the guy with the badge, snag it, and book it immediately, that's the hard part done.

Now you have to get to the target and talk to her to meet you at a specific location, but if you were using "The Point Man" disguise, you're just not allowed anywhere near the house, so you have to wait for her to finish whatever she's doing there or go back and get the "Militia Elite" disguise, once you talk to her you tell her to meet you by a lake, you go through this drawn out conversation, she does this annoying trope that a lot of mission stories have, where eventually they just say "Ok You beat the mission story, all guards fuck off" and then sit around for like 20s before returning to the giant group of people effectively failing the mission story.

Normally that isn't a problem, but I had accidentally landed it with some guy across the lake looking right at us, so I had to wait until he turned around, which just so happened to be right as she finished talking, Thankfully I still had the prompt to push her in the water, but now her guards that were nowhere near me are... hunting me down? And only her guards, I guess when she's not in that scene she's scripted to have her guards react to any kill event like a "push" so you can't cheese it by just having the guards look the other way, but it's way too greedy, she's flagged for this the MOMENT she finishes her scripted "stand by the edge of the water animation"
Thankfully I had a save, so I just timed it right before she finishes the animation and finished the mission easily.

Continuing from the AI though, my final criticism is that the AI just kind of has a lot of issues, a lot of the civilians are effectively props that sometimes react to gunfire (and even then not enough) but it's no big deal, it's really taxing to render in a hundred civilians.
My problem is more the weaknesses of the guard AI, my major complaints involve just how they handle distractions and pathing, it's really easy to cheese dealing with guards, as if you throw something, and they don't watch you throw it, whoever was closest to the object thrown will walk straight to it, no matter what.
I abused this on the final mission to snag a disguise from one of the Yakuza, the target was walking with her 2 bodyguards, I threw a shovel in the room on the left, all 3 were alerted, one guard walked in, I immediately knocked him out and stole his disguise and the other 2 just didn't care that he never returned.
Then when I kind of fucked up the "Mission Story" by pushing the target off a ledge in front of her security, I just hung off the ledge and they just couldn't figure out how to deal with that, they just pathed into the room and just stared at walls, didn't try to go shoot through the window to get me, or to stand next to the ledge and shoot down at me, just stared at a wall and at best just compromised my disguise, which I could easily replace.

And one last nitpick on the AI, the way the AI just stops and says "GET OUT OF MY FACE" if you stand close to them for too long, it's pointless and annoying, so often it'll happen just because you're waiting for them to go through dialogue, or waiting for an NPC to pass by, and it just wastes time because they stare right at you, spend 7 seconds saying "go away" and then turn back around, and it'll interrupt their dialogue and sets them back like, a sentence or two, it never really did anything major but my lord was it annoying every time it happened, which was a lot.

I really recommend Hitman: WoA with my experience so far of the first game's levels though, it's a comfortable in-between of old games like Thief, mixed with some sense of direction and levels that actually look like places of modern era, I enjoyed my time with it and it's one of the few games that makes me want to go back and replay the levels once I'm done going through them one at a time.

Though you can't get this game anymore, it seems, I'll share with you all my feelings about this game anyway as I did really enjoy it!

I remember this game being released and they wanted to create it in a "Live Service" kind of way where you bought the game and there'd be a subscription for each and every season, however, only one season was done for this game! Beyond that, they did make some fun side missions and challenges too, but I'll get into that later.

You play as Agent 47, of course, doing training to see if he's eligible to join this group to carry out missions that will be handed to him via his handler. The first few missions are to make certain you get the hold of the mechanics and such until you go for your final test mission where you take everything you've learnt and then apply it to the simulation where you need to assassinate someone being protected by the Russian army and after that, the real missions start.

As typical in the early Hitman games, you have a target and they must be eliminated, but as the missions get more complex you have to do things like destroy someone's project or arrange for their death to be accidental. Something like that.

The missions can be fairly short, depending on how you approach a situation and how you sneak up on your target to dispatch them the best way! There's only a certain number of levels, however, why I love is the ability to track opportunities, especially with my memory and attention span being so terrible it really helps. The more opportunities you do, the more your mastery of a stage goes up and as you achieve a new level of mastery, you unlock something to make the mission more interesting like a new starting location, the ability to bring in a selection of weapons into designated locations or even whole new weapons! Some of the best I found were the concealable baton so you can knock people out quickly and it's never found when you get frisked. Unlike what I remember of some of the earlier games, you don't unlock new weapons and thing just by picking it up and carrying it out, but through this mastery system, which I like because it can be fun seeing different ways for the targets to be killed. Especially as often these are people who angered the wrong people be being a nasty or dangerous individual.

After the main game there's a selection of side missions and such that came in the form of DLC and the original idea of this game was to be a live service and be updated with seasons one after another, but we only got the first season with this one. I've yet to give the other two a go as I have been going mad trying to get all the achievements on this, however, I may lose interest. We'll see.

The story itself is interesting and has some links to 47s past, however, I don't want to give you spoilers and want you to find that out for yourself! ;)