Besides some quirks with the AI and annoying gameplay prompts, all’s good with Agent 47
This week, I got a chance to spend time with the Hitman Beta on PC and it’s safe to say they have done a fairly decent job.
Ever since news broke that the game was going digital only with content being released in episodes gamers have been worried with how it’s going to work. The beta acts as a prologue to the game with two missions — a tutorial and a ‘final test’.
The missions can be accessed individually from the menu once you’ve completed them so you can go back any time and replay them multiple times. While the game maintains that freedom to go about a mission in the way you choose, I wasn’t too happy with the fact that the challenges before the mission literally spell out the various ways you can kill your target. There wasn’t much left to do apart from finding the tool and killing the target, I’d rather find it all on the way and piece it together without the prompt from the menu challenge.
Another thing that bothered me was the AI — quite unpredictable. There were times I could walk by them and they wouldn’t notice me while at other times they would maintain line of sight through buildings and at impossible angles. I could literally smack one in the face and run away and there was a decent chance I’d get away. I hope the AI gets a proper fix before launch. What I did like was that running and gunning wasn’t a viable option in the game, something that inevitably happens to most stealth-based games these days so that was definitely a positive to take away from the game.
All in all it feels like a Hitman game for sure, whether the ‘story’ or replayability of the final episodic product delivers, of course, remains to be seen but they seem to have gotten most of the mechanics, the freedom of choosing how to kill your target and the look and feel of the world spot on.
So, things might not be so grim for Agent 47’s latest adventure after all.
