Review — Hitman — Marrakesh

Hitman

We sit down and review Hitman — Marrakesh. This is the third episode of Io Interactive’s latest addition to the Hitman franchise. Here’s our review on how they did.

The world is ever expanding for Hitman and here we go with another episode and location to explore and kill many people that we are told to target. That is just how Io Interactive has everything set up in the game and that is just we have to do. All with a nice little story around it all but mostly just for the mechanics. Just in the Hitman way here. None the less, in the mix of all the hullabaloo of E3 Square Enix released the third episode and we are here to play it and let you know how the whole thing is going. Here’s our review of Hitman‘s third episode and location.

Story

Another two targets are out there in the world and up to no good. One of them is a horrible general who rules the area with a strong and oppressive hand and the other happens to be his bank roller. Well, at least he is a nefarious banker who has holed himself away in the Swedish Consulate for “reasons.” This is where we and Agent 47 step in as we need to end their lives and make certain their plans don’t go off without a hitch. Even if we have to target them with new weapons that are still in testing mode…

Hated

So far this has to feel like the smallest location we have had here in the new Hitman game. I am not sure on how the scale is compared to the other locations we have been given but it is easy to get from one side of the map to the other and it doesn’t feel like it would if we were physically there. I was looking forward to getting to see the maps grow as the “season” went on but it seems to have stopped here in Marrakesh. It isn’t as small as the training levels but it sure does feel to be about half the size of the Paris map and it just didn’t feel “right” for me.

It also felt like there were fewer options for truly “out there” kills that we have grown to love in the franchise and this new addition. Yes, shooting a group of evil soldiers with an APC is fun but this one felt extremely more straight forward. I love the variety and need to plan things out in the Hitman franchise but this one seemed to be lacking quite a bit. Maybe I have just become use to things and it all seems mundane here but I was sure that we had more ways to kill in the last two areas than this one.

Loved

While the variety of kills and area seemed to be a lot smaller here, the difficulty of sneaking around certainly was raised to new highs. I lost count on how many times I had to restart or load a save point because I lost track of the guard patterns or just was spotted due to the fast changes in the area. By that I mean that you can be walking around in one costume that belongs and within a few steps be “trespassing” and not know it. It made you have to keep an eye around and constantly think on the fly as it was insanely easy to be spotted. Love the challenge here.

Building from that, one of the issues I had in the previous missions was that it was too easy to start and follow opportunities in the area. In Marrakesh some of them started well inside a restricted area that left us to figure out how to get in and start the ball rolling. All of the other ones so far in Hitman have a way to bypass all of that and start in a “free” zone. The hand holding seems to have been lifted from this point on and I like that. At least if Io Interactive keeps everything flowing the same as we’ve seen here. I love the challenge and this one actually gave it for once.

Overall

Marrakesh has to be the smallest and most un-unique of the Hitman season so far. It lacks the variety of what has been felt so far in the game to me. All of that is easy to overlook though when you see that the challenge of things has been raised and will hopefully keep going up in the future episodes. I hope this episode of Hitman is a sign of things to come and if it is then this is the one that everyone needs to play right now; at least if they are continuing with the positive aspects. If the maps keep shrinking and loosing good kills, then this is a sign of when it all went to crap.

I give Hitman — Marrakesh a 7 Printing Presses on the Printing Press scale.

Hitman was developed by Io Interactive. Hitman was published by Square Enix for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC on May 31^st 2016. A PS4 copy of the game was provided by the publisher for reviewing purposes.