This Hit is a Miss

Agent 47 continues his globe trotting murder spree, this time in the Moroccan city Marrakesh. Unfortunately, this trip is not as successful as the last two.

Before I get into reviewing the episode, I want to touch on how fantastic the post-episode launch content has been for this game. Sapienza, the location added in the second episode, received a new Escalation Contract each week, and Paris had that same support right after its launch. On top of that, the game has received several user interface changes to improve the experience.

Speaking of additional content, Elusive Targets were finally added to the game. I have talked about my skepticism toward their limited availability in previous reviews, and in some ways those concerns have been heightened. Elusive Targets are only available for a limited amount of real world time and the missions can be played only once. Between this episode and the last, two have been available. Playing these missions, I started to realize that these targets have completely unique behavior and interactions that most players will never see. In the moment, the missions provide a completely unique tension, which I really enjoyed. Yet nothing, besides making them replayable, will change my feelings about the limited availability. That should not detract from the fact that the process of going after the targets are exciting in a way that nothing else in the game is.

Now, onto the actual episode. Marrakesh differs from Paris and Sapienza in that the streets are packed with people and the color palette is mostly brown.The crowds look impressive in screenshots, but in game they deal a large blow to the frame rate. Visually, I understand why Marrakesh looks the way it does, yet that does not take away from the fact that it looks drab and boring, especially compared to the bright and colorful Sapienza location. The Swedish consulate, a large building that one of the targets is located in, offers some diversity but is boring itself. It successfully looks like a generic office building, with generic people roaming about.

This could be forgiven if the mission itself was interesting…but it fails at that too. Paris and Sapienza took me several playthroughs to start to realize the sheer amount of possibilities available. I played each of those missions at least a dozen times, on top of the Escalation Contracts that were made available. After three playthroughs of this mission, I was bored. I stumbled upon several ways to assassinate the two targets, but I did not care enough to try and figure out the steps to get the targets there.

There are a few reasons for this. First off, the actual ways to assassinate the targets are rather uninspired. Some of them are repeats from the previous episodes, and some are just pretty boring. I never stumbled upon something that made my mind swim with possibilities like the other episodes. Secondly, the level feels smaller in scale compared to other two. Paris was just a large mansion, where the targets roamed about, and Sapienza was mainly focused on the manor. None of the space in these levels seemed wasted. There was something to discover that would help with killing the targets. This time, the targets are located across the map in two locations. One is in the Swedish consulate, the other in an abandoned school building. The space between the two feels like it is there merely to separate the targets. Because of this, the locations where the targets are feel like two different, extremely small scale missions. This mission may have left a different impression if it had been the first, but instead it is the game’s first misstep.

The Verdict: 6.0 out of 10

Hitman has been excellent so far, and in some ways keeps getting better. Episode 3 is the game’s biggest failure so far. I have hope that the finished product will be composed of more successes like the past two episodes, and that this episode is the only major blemish. If Episode 4 is like this one, I may start losing that hope.

For more information about what the score means, check out our official review scale.

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Riley Berry is an Associate Writer for MONG who is the loudest silent assassin ever. You can follow him on Twitter.