Screenshot: IO Interactive / Kotaku
Hitman 3 made me care more about its plot than crafting the perfect murder. The narrative, which I usually see as a flimsy excuse to play dress-up and cause globe-spanning mayhem, bleeds into the structure of its levels and creates some unexpected moments of emotion and vulnerability. Its dark story plays with the lie at the heart of
Hitman’s gameplay: Agent 47 can easily slip into the life of a waiter, or a musician, or a model, but who is he really, and who, if anyone, does he want to be?
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Hitman has always been a weird blend of humor and darkness, a series where an end-of-mission score lures you toward perfection while the game itself lets you bumble around doing whatever you want. It’s hilarious and satisfying to drown a target in a toilet after they get sick off food you poisoned, or watch their body fly into the air after they strike an exploding golf ball you planted. But that stands alongside the fact that, as Agent 47, you play as a cruel, dishonest man who will kill whoever he’s told to further the interests of the powerful, shadowy figures who call the shots.