Bruce Lee is in Hitman now. Unfortunately, you don’t get to play as him. Fortunately, you do not have to fight him. Oh, don’t look at me like that, Agent 47. You might be the last word in swatting people with Wet Floor signs, but I’ve yet to see you perform a credible one-inch punch. Perhaps you’d get the drop on Bruce Lee if you threw up on him after swallowing an irradiated carbon rod, but I don’t fancy your chances in the context of a proper Bangkok martial arts tournament – like the one depicted in Hitman’s latest Elusive Target mission, the Dragon. Here be trailer.
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Available from today, 25th September, until Thursday 20th November, the free Infiltrator Elusive Target update both marks Bruce Lee’s 85th anniversary and reinvents him as an agent of the ICA. Lee is trying to infiltrate the Concord Union crime syndicate by way of a martial arts tournament at the Himmapan Hotel. His job is to flatten a few faces and uncover the Concord Union’s supreme leader. Your job is to stop people sabotaging the tournament.
I imagine this will be stuff like identifying terrain traps and intercepting people who want to spike Bruce Lee’s trademark pre-fight Mai Tai with 14-day-old cat litter. No, I don’t know whether Bruce Lee really drank Mai Tais, but in my defence, I didn’t know he was a secret agent, either. We’re blundering in the dark!
The Elusive Target accompanies the time-limited release of a Bruce Lee DLC pack that grants permanent access to the Dragon contract, together with Lee’s yellow tracksuit, some kali sticks, a jade dagger, some golden dragon scissors, and some cosmetics for your Freelancer Safehouse. All yours for $4.99, €4.99 or £3.99. I would not pay that much for some scissors, not even if they were all yellow and draconic, but you do you. Now, please savour this roadmap of upcoming Hitmen content.
Image credit: Io Interactive
I’m interested to know how well-received the time-limited nature of these Elusive Targets are. The model makes more sense in Hitman’s universe of shifting allegiances and identities, and doesn’t seem to have roused quite the same opprobrium directed at other developers who remove stuff from their games. I’m also keen to know if there’s the option to simply watch the martial arts tournament in the Dragon. It would be a terrible waste of Lee’s charisma if we had to spend the whole time facing away from the arena, tripping over karate students holding sports bottles full of acid.
Jeet Kune Do legends aside, Io Interactive have just updated the Hitman World of Assassination trilogy on PC with the same VR support previously offered by PSVR2 on console. This allows you to “dual-wield weapons, interact with disguises, and use their environment creatively thanks to intuitive motion controls, full ambidexterity, and room-scale implementation”. It’s compatible with all campaign locations from all three games, together with the Freelancer strategy roguelike mode.
Io’s wider activities include a James Bond game. I’m pretty sure Agent 47 could take James Bond.