This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

To set the scene, I have been playing this series since the beginning, and by beginning I mean the very beginning. We had a PC CD of Hitman 1 and I remember that I actually truly enjoyed the game. It became a game that I loved as a sandbox; could I snipe everyone in the first level including the helicopter? How many people could I take out in the hotel before being caught? I know it is a game that has not aged particularly well, but I feel like that can be said about any of the games before this collection came out. We are of course talking about the Hitman: World of Assassination collection and we are grouping these all into one game.

Why are we not tackling these individually? There are a couple reasons, such as the mechanics being the same throughout all 3 games, all of the games existing in the same hopper once you download the levels, and because if you were to buy it now, you would almost certainly get all of the levels combined instead of just the levels from game 2 or game 1. It might be a loose thread to tie this together and rank them, but I can’t imagine trying to separate these into individual entries, without just discussing the difference in levels, which are almost all personal preferences. I will still tell you which section I think has the best levels out of the three, but this is all going to get coded once on the report.

So, starting from the top.. This week we are discussing Hitman: World of Assassination, where you play as Agent 47 whom is tasked with executing a hit on different clientele. You work closely with your handler Diana who briefs you before each mission as to who your target(s) are and why they are bad news bears. You are then dropped off in a fairly big sandbox level where you plan and then try to put in place the perfect hit. Whether that is following one of the set story missions, or whether you want to do it your own way, there are always lots of opportunities for how to proceed. Will you disguise yourself as a chef or waiter and poison someone’s food, or will you find a sniping position and try to take out your target from afar? Perhaps neither of those are fun for you, and instead you want to create a gas leak in a shed and watch as the target blows themselves up when they go to light a cigarette. The true joy of this game is that there is not only lots of replay-ability for these levels to test out other methods, but also an incentive to do so.

At the end of every level, you will get scored and a list of objectives will get checked off as little exercises you can accomplish during a mission. These side objectives might vary from; gathering intel during the level, to wearing every disguise available, to simply exploring the space fully. Regardless of what you check off, you start to unlock bonuses for doing and more and more in a given mission. Perhaps with enough unlocks you can already start a level in a disguise, or new weapons or gadgets that can be carried through to other missions in the game. None of these additional objectives are required to be completed, and nothing that you unlock is essentially for you to complete the level, game, etc. but they add something to the game that make the game have legs.

I’m not going to lie to you, I don’t think these games are particularly difficult to accomplish your goals. No matter if it was the first time or the 20^th time I have played a level, taking care of the target and escaping the level are really not that difficult from a base level. For one there is never a hard time limit that locks you out of the mission. If you are just walking around and exploring every area, you could do that for 10 in game hours, and the target is still going to be doing their same loop in the level. You might miss some very specific timed events or opportunities for the hit, but in no means will you lose. Also, if you so choose, following one of the story missions to set up the hit, walk you through all the steps you need to do in order to put you in perfect position to make the kill. So with a little bit of patience and know-how of the stealth mechanic you should have no trouble completing those missions on a first or second run through of a level. Now enter those bonus objectives you can check off and the game offers a little more challenge to those that want to take that on. Maybe a challenge is shooting a plane out of the sky with a cannonball, which you would only be able to accomplish if you know the level intimately enough to set up that domino chain ahead of time. And if you don’t care about any of that stuff, you can treat it like a 3^rd person shooter, and try to kill everyone on the map. That tactic probably won’t beat every level in the game, but you can probably make progress doing it that way too. Some of the best fun you will have in this game is when something goes wrong, (you get compromised, a body is found, etc.) and figuring out how you get out of this mess that doesn’t involve just loading a previous saved game to do so. I mean this is Giant Bomb, and I would encourage people checkout Hitsmas with Vinny to just see what he accomplishes.

There is a story to this game, which is more than I can say for about any of the previous Hitman games. You start off working for the ICA, who is essentially being duped into eliminating a very specific group of people that you probably wouldn’t normally go after. Eventually you come across the person who has been organizing these hits, you find out the ICA isn’t as great as you initially thought they were (even though that should be apparent based on the work you do), and eventually plot to overthrow and dismantle the organizations that have done you wrong. That is me, doing a poor summary of 3 games, and the story isn’t going to win some award for best narrative but it certainly allows you to connect the dots between the missions a whole lot better than in previous games. I will fully admit that I didn’t get fully on board until we were partway through Hitman III, but towards the end of the game I was actually looking forward to watching the story cut scenes instead of just wanting to skip to the mission. I do appreciate that despite this being a game where you are a contracted killer, all the people you are going after are terrible people. We could argue that you don’t get to be on the target list by powerful brokers without probably being a terrible person in the first place, but I appreciate that you aren’t tasked with killing someone’s spouse so that they can get a life insurance policy.

Chances are, everyone knows all about this game at this point. If you have been watching Giant Bomb for any amount of time, you have seen dozens of videos of people playing this game so there really isn’t a lot that hasn’t been shown or said about this game, so instead I am going to wade into something controversial. I think that the freelance mode is bad. I started my playthrough with the freelance mode, because it was the most recent thing, and it almost made me want to stop playing the game. Here’s the thing, I was incredibly bored going through it and while I can appreciate it on paper, I think the execution is weak. Now some of my complaints with this mode are expected, since the targets are ‘randomized’ (not really, but let’s pretend) there aren’t going to be cool story kills that allow you to take care of your target after exploring the level, and that is fine, but because of that, most of your kills are fairly basic for each enemy. I know people would say, “you aren’t being creative,” or “there are so many ways to kill if you put the time in,” something to that extent, but for every enemy who has a walk path over a potentially exposed wire, or drinks a drink that can be poisoned, or walks near an edge that can be pushed off, a large majority of them are just on a normal patrol route and will need to be killed via melee (knives, fiber wire, etc.) or shot. And if you are actually trying to make it through the entire freelance campaign, then you have to really limit your risk so that you can make a clean getaway after each hit.

I should explain that the freelance mode, is Hitman taking a more system generated rogue-like game. You select a main target you want to go after, and you will do small missions first before you get to go after the boss of the area. These are missions that will take you through different campaign missions, but your target will be essentially a random person in the map that needs to be taken down. Since these are not story characters originally, you will have to get creative as to how you can kill them without being caught. There are no save states, reloads, and if you die in the mission then you start at the beginning of the freelance mode all over. Complete extra objectives in a mission such as; pacify three guards, poison someone’s drink, or kill the target with a fireaxe, and you will get currency that can then be used at an in level store that sometimes appears to buy gear or weapons. After you kill your targets escape the mission and go on to the next one. One big difference in this mode is that weapons you carry out of the level, go into your cellar (between levels hub) and then you can take those out on the following missions. For the boss levels, you will have to identify your target before you commit the hit, by looking at their appearance for clues as to if they are the person you need to kill. The penalty is minor for killing the wrong target, but obvious an extra body can alert guards and cause you more stress later. Beat enough levels (I think its close to 20) and you can complete freelance mode, which grants you like a golden weapon, and the ability to make freelance mode harder. However, you could technically pay it endlessly if you wanted.

Perhaps I “played it wrong,” but I was able to get through an entire freelance campaign on my first attempt. As I said, I find the hitman games relatively easy if you are patient, but I was also bored to tears playing the game, and I barely did any extra objectives in the freelance mode. After I visited the first few sellers in the early levels, I realized that have currency doesn’t really benefit me. I won’t need to buy a shotgun or a baseball in levels if that isn’t really jiving with my original plan of attack. Also since this is a hitman game, there are plenty of bricks, and knives and rat poison that litter the levels if you know where to look. My goal for each level was the same as it was for the main game. Make the cleanest kill possible and get out without people noticing, and that meant avoiding most bonus objectives. The only interesting levels were the boss levels, because it required more work to identify the target, but those are few and far between. My biggest gripe was that somehow over the course of a single campaign, not only did I get the same level twice (which makes since because there is only a limited pool of levels), but I had to kill the exact same target in those levels. Did I get a bad dice roll, or is there only a small pool of characters for each level that are available to be targets? I am choosing to believe that there is something that I missed that made Freelance a popular mode when it came out, because people’s whose game opinions I trust all loved it, but it never clicked with me. The Hitman game is all about replay ability, but if you max out on a location, or are sick of going after the same targets, I had more fun doing escalations or other “main” game modes then I did with the freelance campaign. On the plus side, I was able to play DLC levels in freelance mode, despite not having bought those DLC levels. If I could make one change to freelance mode, it would be that your notoriety would go up based on previous level performances. If you were spotted, if you left witnesses, etc. etc. it would make enemies in the next level even more alert than normal. I’m sure that is a lot of work, but it could have broken up some of the monotony of playing the Rave level for the third time.

Now don’t get me wrong here, Hitman is a fantastic game and once I got back into playing the campaign I immediately perked up. I see the benefit of just having more Hitman for people who have truly done it all, but I would say for the non-obsessive or more regular player, you have more than enough in the main game + escalations and the freelance mode can be ignored. There is something much more satisfying about the curated level design pointing you to specific targets, where you really feel you have to work at something, then just shooting guard 7 in the head while they walk behind the bathroom. Not anyone would make you choose, but in terms of best levels, I think it is game 1… game 3.. and then game 2. Each game has it’s standout levels, and I would obviously suggest getting them all if you are buying into the series late. My absolute favorite level would be Sapienza if it wasn’t for the “destroy the virus” objective, and Paris has it’s appeals, but I think my favorite level individually comes from the 3^rd game as I really enjoyed hunting the agents for the German Rave. Identifying the agents and devising ways to take them out via accident, or other means was very entertaining. The worst level I think can easily be the train level, but that’s because it is very story specific, if we are talking about main levels it is probably Colorado. Small level, everyone is a guard or soldier, and not as interesting as the other levels to look at or explore. You are telling me that there would really be like 3 different guard levels (costumes) within such a small area?

Is this the greatest game of all time?: No

Where does it rank: Hitman WOA is an amazing game, but you do have to approach it on its level. If you treat the game like a 3rd person shooter, or just play the freelance mode, then the game is going to give a pretty poor showing. However, if you take in the levels, play through the whole campaign, and poke at its sandbox to see all the things you can do, it is truly amazing. I have it as The 8th Greatest Game of All Time out of 168 total games. It sits between Stardew Valley (7th) and Into the Breach (9th)

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for listening

Future games coming up 1) Tinykin 2) Shantae: The Seven Sirens 3) Vampire Survivors