When you open the door today on the Advent RPS Calendar, you realize it’s locked and you’ll need to get your keycard from somewhere. Plus, you won’t be allowed through unless you’re dressed as a waiter, and even then you’ll be run over by a frantic security guard who won’t be too pleased to find poison in your pocket.
Best to leave this to a professional. Its Hitman 3!
Matthew Castle: This makes it three for three, where Hitman and the RPS birth calendar are related. Very predictable. That’s three times we’ve put the same old beanie under the Christmas tree – I’m surprised you didn’t see that remarkable bald head shape under the wrapping paper the first day. (And no, I didn’t leave the price tag – that barcode was part of him.)
But the repeated appearance of Agent 47 makes sense if you consider the ‘World Of Assassination’ trilogy less than a series of individual games and more of a project in development. You can call seasons two and three expansion packs for 2016’s Hitman, but what other expansion pack pulls the previous levels causing the levels to kick and scream (or, more appropriately, limp and disappear). restored) to its newly improved technical standards? This is the biggest draw of the new Hitman for me: that each new outing is an excuse to revisit those older, brilliant levels with updated visual gloss and behavioral tweaks.
And besides, every adventure has some flavor of its own. Part one is deep, part two is wide, and part three is… weird? It has sandboxes filled with murder potential, but hides them behind oddly twisted structures. A level that locks a target in a murder mystery. Another pits you against a team of anonymous thugs that you have to sniff out in rage. You’re then playing your opponent’s facilities against each other or assisting the AI helpers – the latter of which a trip to Argentina’s vineyards could end with a moment of swoon on the dance floor.
These beats may not be what you play Hitman for; this is a series celebrated for its representation and experimentation, not its heroic characters. But leaving aside an overly cinematic highlight at the end of the campaign, these locations showcase the best of both worlds. Poisoning a horde of Illuminati types in Mendoza is pure James Bond – something anyone can enjoy – but once you’ve followed the choreographed steps you’re still free to grind grape. Remember: not everyone knows How for Hitman, and this feels like a good attempt to tempt people into the light.
Not to mention the simple joy of embarking on another world tour with the best environmental artists in the business. Hitman may be a stealthy game that isn’t technically necessary, but there’s also a part of me that wants to downgrade quietly so as not to break the perfect world. Who wouldn’t want tickets to all the skyscrapers in Dubai or the rooftops of Chongqing? After almost two years at home, I don’t want to feel bad for wanting to stick my head behind the curtains. My home office doesn’t even have curtains. When the sun hits the right angle, it becomes a real problem. I can’t even see what I’m typing right now. I hope I spelled Chongqing correctly.
And all of this before Hitman 3 kicks off again in 2022. New levels, new modes, not to mention VR. Well, now you too will be able to experience first hand what it feels like to pour an expired can of Spaghetti Sauce into the skull of some heretic. Agent 47’s place on next year’s calendar is practically guaranteed.
Alice Bee: I couldn’t get past this without expanding on the level of murder mystery Matthew mentioned. Dartmoor is Agatha Christie’s perfect man, an exotic posh manor full of weird chic people who all hate each other – and one of them has ready were killed! That’s the kind of level you can only get in a Hitman game.
Your job is to go in, destroy your target (the descendant’s matriarch) and get some information, and there are obviously a number of ways you can do this. Dressing up as a servant and shoving her into an open grave is a particularly grim pleasure. But the most obvious path, if maximum effort, is to substitute the detective there to solve the murder and solve it for yourself. You have to interview suspects and put the clues together, find hidden passages and read secret letters, find out what the housekeeper did… suddenly Hitman 3 becomes a mysterious pattern with its tongue so firmly embedded in its cheek that surgical intervention is required to remove it. It’s totally interesting.
Katharine: I won’t lie. I never got past the first level in Hitman 3 because I spent so much time staring at it The floor is so shiny. Okay, that was a lie. But I didn’t play too many Hitman 3 this year, because it’s so hot, I really can’t wait for it ray tracing and VR updates coming early next year. Hitman 3 is already one of the best-looking games of 2021, but add ray tracing into the mix? Now that’s the real beauty of an elite murder simulation right there and I can’t wait to play it again in 2022.
