Hi everyone.
For the past several weeks, I've been occupying my time with playing Hitman 3 Trilogy on the PC. I've played Hitman 2: Silent Assassin for many years on the PS2, and more recently on PC along with Hitman Contracts. So when I had the chance to get the World of Assassination trilogy on PC, I jumped at it.
Granted, these are the newest games I've played, being stuck in the PS2 era for so long. But anyways, on to the games.
Needless to say, I've had fun. The challenges that you can do are fun, though some of them are tedious (though at least not hard). I did such challenges mostly to unlock weapons and equipment. And what's there is good, though a little (IMO) threadbare in some areas. And you can go globe trotting in various locations, ranging from bright and beautiful, to dark and stylish, in reflection with the game itself.
First off, full disclosure, I do play with cheats, mostly for somewhat aimless fun, somewhat in tribute to the original ultimate assassin and crime fighter, the Shadow. For those who are familiar with The Shadow comics, he was a master assassin, fighting criminals by being a master of stealth, weapons, and evasion. In the radio show, though, he used magic powers to "cloud enemies minds". This, though, was to avoid tedious descriptions of where and how he was finding and exploiting cover (TVs, of course, weren't common until the years following World War II, and there was no Shadow film serial--an early predecessor to TV and streaming show series--either). Agent 47, IMO, is kinda a modern version of the Shadow, though many of you are probably more familiar with the Shadow's most well known homage, Batman.
I do have to say that though not ultra-realistic by any means, the use of weapons and gear in the game is fun. You get a good variety if you unlock enough stuff, though the amount of reskinned weapons in the pistol and sniper rifle categories becomes obvious after a while. Also, by comparison, the automatic rifle, submachine gun, and shotgun categories seem threadbare.
However, since this is a modern PC game, stuff does get released in patches or DLC, or can be unlocked by completing new challenges. The latter tends to happen in the form of elusive target contracts or escalation contracts. Elusive targets can be accessed though the Elusive Targets Arcade mode, which is a semi-permanent and less challenging mode of Elusive targets mode. Normally, such things are if you eliminate them, that's it, and if you fail, that's it, too. In ET Arcade mode, they're a quasi-permanent feature, and if you fail, you can attempt again after a 12 hour lock out for that particular contract.
Escalation contracts are a series of missions that take place at a particular setting, where different terms and conditions get added for each level after the first (hence the term escalation). These include stuff like hiding corpses, no knock outs, using a particular weapon/method to eliminate a target, etc.
That all being said, I just play the regular missions, for which there are various ways to play them. The only way to fail, usually, is if you die during a mission, which, of course, gets aborted when you die. Only one or two missions I can think of in the whole trilogy can be aborted by killing someone who you're not supposed to, and even then you get an achievement for it (IMO, oddly).
Of course, I already use a cheat engine to play the game so I can get immortality, stealth mode (the latter can interfere with some challenges that involve face to face meetings with people, though), infinite ammo, and, occasionally, no reloading for firearms and one shot kills.
Getting on to weapons, I mentioned that some categories seem to be overloaded and others seem to be relatively empty, though what's there isn't bad as far as overall variety. One negative is that, relative to real life, some weapons are unbalanced. SMGs deal less stopping power than pistols (which fire the same caliber of bullets), assault rifles also have equal stopping power to Agent 47's signature Colt M1911-type .45 caliber pistols, and combat/shooting is biased for close quarters action. This doesn't detract from the fun factor, but if you're a stickler for realism, you may be a bit disappointed. Or you can use that as an opportunity to use your imagination, too. But in either case, if you use a Colt .45 semiauto pistol or the machine pistol versions, you're pretty much set for most things.
Shotguns, though, do what shotguns usually do in such games. Get in close, ruin someone's weekend, and get out. There's also sniper rifles. The scout rifles are quick firing, but do limited damage at range and have fixed zoom scopes. More versatile sniper rifles have 3, sometimes 4, zoom levels and are reasonably to very powerful, but tend to feature an animation for hit enemies where if you get a headshot or an upper body hit they get flipped over backwards. This is unrealistic for the lower powered rifles, but can be amusing to watch.
Aside from some weapon re-balancing, the game's pretty good if you want to play it as a stealth oriented shooter, or just a shooter. And when it comes to eliminating your targets, you can get creative within the game, which you get rewarded for, usually though challenges getting achieved. Such things help with mastery points, and the more mastery you earn, the more things you unlock, be it weapons, items, gear, or mission starting locations.
Also, the game is pretty open world, and as I said, you rarely fail unless you die. That means you can do anything from eliminate the targets, to the targets and their entourage/guards, to pretty much living creature on the map. That said, the more non-targets you eliminate, the more your score gets negatively impacted if you want the Silent Assassin rating.
But in all, a fun game. I wish there were more weapon options in some areas, and slightly more realistic, but what's there isn't bad and the game's being continually updated with monthly roadmaps getting released. Hence, fan and community suggestions do get incorporated at times, quite frequently, in fact.
