And so it all comes down to this. One final episode to close out the first season of Hitman. After the highly impressive Colorado mission from the last episode, I looked forward to seeing how epic this season finale would be.
This mission brings Agent 47 to Hokkaido, Japan, at the hyper-exclusive Gama hospital and resort. How exclusive is Gama? So exclusive that it’s impossible for 47 to bring any weapons or tools inside. You won’t even be able to smuggle any weapons until you complete the mission. I assumed that the objectives will be more complicated this time around since it’s the Season Finale, but this time your only job is to assassinate two targets: Erich Soders an ICA mole, and Yuki Yamazaki, a lawyer working for criminal organization Providence which Soders is connected to.
Gama hospital resort is an enclosed area with very little open spaces. It’s tough to isolate a target, because even the bathrooms are always occupied (more on that later). There are areas for guests, barracks for guards, and the hospital itself which is full of many technical advancements thanks to its funds. It’s not the most beautiful level, but it wasn’t designed that way. You start waking up in your hotel room with a robe that will act as your keycard to enter and exit. This plays a part in how you will access different rooms in the resort since every guest gets their own robe. Not being able to bring weapons or tools does make for a significant increase in difficulty, but it’s easy to find weapons like a hefty bust in a room or gun if you take out a guard.
Even with the opportunities, it’s still tough to take out your targets. One of the opportunities was a comedic one. I found someone wrapped in facial bandages after he underwent plastic surgery to look like Helmut Kruger. If you don’t remember, Kruger was a model in the Paris mission who bears a striking resemblance to Agent 47, which he could disguise himself as. The obvious option would be to follow this guy into the bathroom when no one is around to knock him out and take his robe. Unfortunately, there was always ONE GUY in the bathroom that would ruin this, so what else could I do but to knock him out before my victim walked in? This lead me to the plastic surgeon who unwrapped my bandages and cried because he did such a good job, so of course I knocked him out too and took his uniform.
Eric Soders is undergoing a heart transplant surgery which will last three days, the problem is that he needs a right-sided heart due to his rare condition that reverses his internal organs. This leaves 47 with many ways to kill his target indirectly. The route I took was to find the special heart, crush it, and throw it in the trash. It wasn’t as simple as that, but I’ll keep some secrets out of this review.
Killing Yamazaki took many trials and errors. I had to climb my way into another hotel room to find her some cigarettes and also take one of her guards’ uniforms. I got into her room (that had an obscene number of guards) and put cigarettes in there for her to go outside and smoke. Problem is, she took me as suspicious so I concluded that I had to climb to another hotel balcony and shoot her from afar.
When the mission ends, the cutscene that plays provides a subtle but enticing cliffhanger hinting at the events that will unfold in Season 2.
Final Reaction
In a nutshell, I wasn’t disappointed or necessarily satisfied with the Season Finale of Hitman. It was one of the better ones out of the season thanks to its unique design and clever opportunities, but it didn’t offer that “bang” I was expecting out of a season finale. Thankfully it has more high points than lows and is definitely worth a purchase to complete your Season 1 collection.
Rating: 3.5/5 Atoms
But how is the season overall?
When I first heard Hitman was going to be episodic, I thought it was a joke. Games can only be released episodically if they’re story based, right? I didn’t think for one second that IO Interactive and Square Enix could pull it off, but they did. Not every mission in the game was perfect, absolutely not. It was tough to review each one individually because of how similar they were in gameplay. Even then, the smoothest and roughest levels come together well in this package. Here’s a list of my reviews for each previous episode:
Episode 1: The Showstopper
Episode 2: World of Tomorrow
Episode 3: A Gilded Cage
Episode 4: Club 27
Episode 5: Freedom Fighters
There is also content beyond the episodes, as Elusive Targets can come up any time providing a hefty challenge as you only have one chance to kill them.
If you were as skeptical as I was on the episodic nature of the new Hitman, then the full season will be released to retail on January 31, 2017, or you can download the full package now. It was tough for me to recommend the full package when only the first episode was available, but it’s definitely more worth it with them all together. If you like this game, playing each individual episode of Season 2 could be more enticing.
Rating: 4/5 Atoms
from Nerd Reactor
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