In Hitman Freelancer, developer IO Interactive turns its hit game franchise into a the very first roguelike that has managed to surprise me in a while, delivering a brand new slice of assassination shenanigans having a form of Hitman that feels nearly unlimited.
I'm not necessarily accustomed to being surprised by Hitman. While Hitman 3 released in 2023, it had been a technical upgrade to game concepts laid out in the 2023 Hitman reboot. Learn how to play one of that trilogy and you could play them all, both because the mechanics were so similar but additionally because all of the content from previous games is ported into each successive entry. You could literally go through the identical levels from earlier games with the new features.
In Hitman Freelancer, all of your agency support is slowly removed and you are dropped into different maps in the game with only the items that you have with you. Die and you will lose all of the gear you’re carrying and half of your money. Live, and you will get most – not all – products you brought out with you, losing many of the novelty items but keeping the guns, useful items and the occasional rare melee weapon.
It's harder than Hitman by a long way. You can't save-scum and reload an earlier save after everything has attended shit, and starting big firefights, though fun, often leads to you getting shot or perhaps your target avoiding.
Your contacts, and also the conditions by which you need to kill them, are randomly generated and culminate in a number of boss levels of a sort in which you need to actually identify your targets from a number of clues provided to you. These missions would be the toughest, as well as the most high-stakes. If you fail one of these you fail your entire run. Also they are populated with undercover lookouts who'll warn your targets, and undercover assassins (with a scary high-damage silenced pistol you can get for yourself if you take them out) which will try to pop you when you're with an approach.
Add into this tight gear limits and also the fact you do not know who your targets is going to be, where they are or even where you'll spawn ahead of time and it's total chaos, with you needing to wade in to try and get yourself the right disguise, the right weapon and see how in the world you are going to poison your target when he's stood in the middle of a bank before four armed guards.
It feels like this is actually the best Hitman has ever been, cheap it's slipped in after IO's World of Assassination experiment provides an instant reason behind individuals to come on back and also have another go. It feels like an excellent use of muscle memory – remembering where an exit is, the best place to get your hand on some explosives in a pinch, the nearest destination to hide an appearance – most players have developed through many years of playing this. All the tiny little details that you file away as you have been pulling at threads, finally finding a use.
It's more flexible, too. Killing anyone who isn't your target is still bad, there is however not just a push for Silent Assassin if you don't want to do it, and since death has real weight now, every now and again things can get awkward and you will have to work out what you're likely to use a corridor filled with bodies. These kinds of moments have always been area of the Hitman experience, but now you cannot merely get out of trouble by dying or loading a save. If you make an error here, you're just going to have to accept it. The complications and consequences of the combine to create something sublime.
So hey, have you ever played Hitman or else you haven't trained with a try yet, you're ready to join in. Hitman Freelancer is IO's masterpiece, and it is time to go freelance.
Hitman 3 can be obtained on Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch and PC.
