Hitman

TLDR:
HITMAN (1) is an amazing stealth/assassination game with potentially hundreds (no exaggeration) of hours of replayability thanks to large episode maps sparse with varied content and a plethora of challenges to complete for each map allowing you to discover new ways to kill every time you play.
*Disclaimer: If you fancy yourself a completionist AND are interested in getting HITMAN 2 (the sequel), I would recommend that you buy HITMAN 2 and purchase the legacy pack (AKA this game's content). You can play HITMAN 1 maps in HITMAN 2, but if you choose to make player progress in HITMAN 1, that progress does not carry over into HITMAN 2 (and the LEGACY content progress is the EXACT SAME in 2).
GENRE:
Stealth, assassination, third person, semi-open-world-sized episodic maps
GAMEPLAY:
HITMAN's gameplay is its most attractive feature. You start by choosing a location which is separated chronologically by episodes to build up an overarching narrative. For each location, you play as the world's greatest assassin, Agent 47, and are tasked with killing 2 or 3 select few key antagonists, and occasionally there is a separate mission objective that must be fulfilled before the mission is deemed to be "completed".
There is an amazing amount of freedom to how you choose to complete your missions ranging from what tools you want to start with/have smuggled into the map in secret locations, to following mission stories that basically guide you towards unique assassination encounters with the targets, and even how you want to escape the map to call it a day. Maps are filled to the brim with lethal and non-lethal objects that you can pick up and use to help you achieve your goal by knocking out guards, silencing potential witnesses, or distracting problematic individuals temporarily. Agent 47 also has the option of disguising himself as almost any other generic, and some unique, NPC in the map you play in (and there are some great disguises hidden around to find).
HITMAN is a stealth game at its core, so your overall "score" at the end is based on how stealthily you complete the missions. That means that although you can go in guns blazing and attracting all the attention in the world to you, your score will reflect that appropriately. But if you're up for the challenge in living up to the prestige of being the best hitman in the world, you would find the most fun in being as sneaky as possible by not killing non-targets, hiding all bodies/evidence from sight, avoiding all camera spots, and avoiding all interactions that could blow your cover.
When not doing main story missions, you can take part in escalation contracts which are basically assassinations that occur in the same maps but escalate in difficulty, usually in tiers from 1 to 5. For instance, tier 1 of an escalation might be to kill a specific NPC, but tier 2 might be to kill that specific NPC while disguised as a chef, and tier 3 might be to kill that specific NPC as a chef, but kill another NPC as a waiter. As you can imagine, the highest tiers of escalations can be very demanding, but rewarding when completed.
Aside from those assassinations, you can also take part in playing/creating user-generated assassination contracts. Players can load into one of the main maps and set up mission objectives similar to those described in the escalation contracts and then save those contracts for other players to attempt to emulate and compete on leaderboards for scores.
GRAPHICS:
HITMAN looks great and runs amazingly smoothly even though some maps are populated with hundreds of NPC's standing/walking around at a given time. The maps are very immersive and distinct ranging from a large, busy party gathering at an estate in Paris to a state-of-the-art, technologically-advanced hospital in snowy Hokkaido. The overall presentation is definitely great and there are some breathtaking sights to be found in the various settings.
STORY:
To be honest, the story of HITMAN is not the focal point of the game. It exists, but I didn't really attempt to piece together what was going on in between each mission through the end-of-mission and mission-briefing vignettes. The gist of it is that while you set off initially just killing a few big-wigs, there is a larger organization making moves and organizing itself, so Agent 47 and his handler choose targets in order to disrupt the process. The story does continue into HITMAN 2 though.
STRENGTHS:
-Absurd amount of player agency and choice: you can choose to drown a target while they are throwing up into a toilet, garroting a target with your trusty fiber wire, poisoning a target's drink while they are away, dropping a glass chandelier on a target's head, and many more.
-Fun and strategic system where you need to be disguised as someone in order to be "allowed" to enter various parts of the map, but in turn certain individuals can be suspicious of you while you are in disguise and thus, planning is heavily played into.
-Stealth can be tough, but it is fair. Figuring out how to isolate NPC's and targets in elaborate schemes and eventually landing a kill with nobody figuring out it is very satisfying.
-HITMAN is designed for replayability: each map has challenges to complete and mission stories to uncover. Challenges can range from discovering unique interactions and killing under unique circumstances, to limiting your play style for the mission (e.g. Kill the target with a katana while wearing your suit the entire time (no disguise changes)). Mission stories are followed while in the maps to usually set up the aforementioned unique circumstances such as learning that your target is expecting to appear before a TV camera crew, but the camerawoman's lens is missing, so you help her find a lens in the map but you also rig the camera with a remote explosive to be detonated when the target is near the camera.
WEAKNESSES:
-It doesn't bother me, but the gameplay can be quite cartoony or unrealistic and I guess it can be seen as unimmersive. You can theoretically throw anything that is non-lethal, like a rolled-up newspaper, at an unsuspecting person's head and they will be rendered unconscious. Or for instance, when you make a loud noise by throwing an object, but only one person really goes to investigate allowing you to conveniently isolate people as you want. Admittedly, this is probably just nitpicking for the regular player.
NUMERIC SCORE (if you care):
9.5/10
HITMAN was an absolute joy to play. Great stealth gameplay with tons of replayability thanks to challenges, escalations, and user-generated contracts. Personally, I won't return to it as I am busy replicating progress in the legacy pack for HITMAN 2.
Checkbox reviews are lazy copy & paste bullsh*t. ASCII art reviews tell you nothing. "Let's be honest, I only wrote this review for awards" is a waste of everyone's time. If you are interested in genuine & detailed game reviews, feel free to check out my others here (or don't, I don't tell you what to do).

Non-Target Killed
Non-Target Killed
Non-Target Killed
Non-Target Killed
Non-Target Killed
Gunshot Heard
Non-Target Killed
Non-Target Killed
Arresting
Combat
Hunted
Non-Target Killed
Non-Target Killed
Non-Target Killed
Non-Target Killed
Non-Target Killed
Non-Target Killed
Non-Target Killed
Non-Target Killed
Good work, 47. Now head for an exit.

🔹Positive Aspects:
Map design & Interactions with it.
Magnificent visuals.
Probably the best sandbox game in its genre.
The best stealth mechanics in current-gen stealth games.
🔸Negative Aspects:
Always online DRM.
Terribly timed events that aren’t even playable once the event is over.
▶️Introduction
HITMAN (2016) is the hitman reboot that tries to capture the same magic as Blood Money did back in 2006 and simply drift away from the story over gameplay style of Hitman Absolution. This game had a very weird type of release identical to Telltale games, you basically get a new episode every 2 months. The game was developed and published by IO Interactive A/S.
Release Date: 11th March 2016.
Last known update: 19th October 2018.
🎩Small-talk:
Is this game truly close to the Masterpiece that Blood Money was?
Smalltalk
Many people didn’t appreciate Hitman Absolution which is understandable, the essence of the game was left as an afterthought while focusing on the story. The hitman series was always a gameplay first game and with the reboot, they actually achieve this. Not only they succeed to create a game with the traditional stealth essence but in my opinion HITMAN (2016) is currently the best game in the series.
🎮Gameplay:
The game truly has some extreme depth as far as options to succeed in a mission go.
I was always blown away by Blood Money playing it back in the day on an old FX Nvidia GPU lol. Nonetheless, this game actually feels even better for its timeline.
Stealth mechanics:
The stealth in this game isn’t the traditional idea of “do not let them spot you”, you’re basically just walking around. The only catch is that the security or enemies can actually spot you, the best solution is to actually take someone out and simply use their clothing to suppress your identity. Now you may ask “what do you mean by suppressing”? Well, unlike Hitman Absolution where you can simply press a button to make yourself undetectable by enemies, you now have to hide within groups of people in order to blend it and become undetectable. Basically, your goal is to blend in.
Eliminating should be done in a quiet matter as well: The game is pretty unforgiving if you’re getting detected you can either fight against the horde of highly trained special agents and security or you can use the great stealth mechanics of this game and live to fight another day. Yeah if you so happen to be a potato you can simply hide in lockers or trash-bins, enemies will not automatically know your location, they will first just enter the room and do a typical search for the next couple of minutes. Another good stealth mechanic is that you can actually hide bodies which gives you total control of eliminations. The game is basically amazing as far as stealth goes.
Map design & Interactions:
Hitman has arguable some of the best-designed maps in the Hitman series. The maps are big and have quite a lot of stuff to offer, you can easily hear conversations that will actually throw hints for your actual goal, perhaps a hidden alley in order to get to your target undetected? or maybe the location of his next interview? The maps and people in the game can give you so much its borderline impressive. Another option to finish your target is to just stalk them and observe their routine, targets actually have some sort of movement pattern. There is a chance that you observed your target going to have a drink, in that situation you proceed to grab some poison from the kitchen and pour it into the drink he previously drank from. In other situations, you can simply “break” their pattern. You can actually pour Rat poison in his drink, the result isn’t deadly, the target will get sick and run to the next toilet and in that toilet, Agent-47 will simply finish the job. Alarms are a good distraction as well.
Other aspects:
In my opinion the Tutorial in HITMAN 2016 is one of the best and most memorable tutorials I have ever experienced.
The random events are a nice addition, but they disappear after some days which can be annoying.
At the start of every mission you can enable the option to have some hidden weapons or items within the map, reminds me of the PAYDAY 2 mission setup.
🎭Story:
Be aware, spoilers ahead!

As mentioned this game is more of a gameplay > storyline game, you get a simple cutscene after each episode.
Basically, you start off in the prologue which happens many years before your career began. After all of the jobs and discussions with the ICA, you get Diana as your colleague. You obviously start off doing your usual job eliminating high-value targets like militia, politicians, or scientists. After some time a cutscene with a mysterious bearded man with grey hair that seems to operate in an identical manner collection information as far as the ICA goes.
The story continues in HITMAN 2. This is basically my only complaint as the cutscenes are very few and very mysterious as far as pieces of information go.
🌇Graphics / Audio:
In my opinion HITMAN 2016 is probably the best-looking hitman game in the series, yes even better than HITMAN 2, the lighting just looks a lot better and less muddy.
Graphics:
Even 4 or 5 years later, Hitman 2016 looks amazing.
Audio / Soundtrack:
Voice acting as well as surround sounds are just amazing and accurate, you can easily comprehend various discussions between random NPCs which is extremely important for a game like this one. There isn’t much of a soundtrack but the musical tracks the game offers are very well made.
⚙️Performance:
In Game:
AMD Ryzen 5 3600X (4,5 Ghz ), 32GB Ram, Nvidia RTX 2070 Super:
The game was played with Maxed out settings 1080p with over 100fps.
AMD Ryzen 5 3500U, 16GB Ram,Radeon Vega 8:
The game was played with the Lowest settings 720p with 25~30fps.
Benchmark:
Benchmarks were captured using MSI Afterburner and the built-in HITMAN Benchmark:
AMD Ryzen 5 3600X (4,5 Ghz ), 32GB Ram, Nvidia RTX 2070 Super: (DX12)

Average framerate : 122.2 FPS
Minimum framerate : 79.1 FPS
Maximum framerate : 183.7 FPS
1% low framerate : 75.0 FPS
0.1% low framerate : 56.5 FPS
AMD Ryzen 5 3500U, 16GB Ram,Radeon Vega 8: (DX12)

Average framerate : 42.2 FPS
Minimum framerate : 5.1 FPS
Maximum framerate : 73.7 FPS
1% low framerate : 15.0 FPS
0.1% low framerate : 3.5 FPS
Bugs / Glitches / Crashes:
In 12 hours of eliminating high-value targets as a genetically gifted hitman, I experienced no bugs or game-breaking crashes at all.
⚖️Conclusion:
HITMAN 2016 is still one of the very best stealth games someone can get for this generation of games. The depth in stealth mechanics and polish is out of this world, the map design deserves a big shutout as well. Lastly, the visuals are still impressive combined with the optimization. If you can look past the constant Online stuff you can be sure to have a great time with this great game.
📉Overall rating: Autosave (90-100%)
Date of the Review:29.10.2020
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You dress up, you stalk, you kidnap, you murder.
This game will make all your wildest fantasies come true.

Trying to find out how to buy this game was more of a challenge than the game itself. Other than that, check it out for sure.

---{Gameplay}---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Average at best
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{Graphics}---
☑ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{Audio}---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
---{Audience}---
☐ Kids
☐ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ All
---{PC Requirements}---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☑ Fast
☑ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{Difficulity}---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☐ Significant brain usage
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{Grind}---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isnt necessary to progress
☑ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You‘ll need a second live for grinding
---{Story}---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☑ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It‘ll replace your life
---{Game Time}---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☑ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond
---{Price}---
☐ It’s free!
☑ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{Bugs}---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{?/10}---
☐1
☐2
☐3
☐4
☐5
☐6
☐7
☑8
☐9
☐10

Honestly the best Hitman game in the franchise with Hitman 2 being added content, I dislike the episodic style but once all the episodes are out and you can buy all of them in a bundle it's fine.