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Hitman

The Bloodlines 2 voice cast features actors from Cyberpunk 2077, Hitman, Vermintide, and Game of Thrones

by admin October 5, 2025

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 – Voice Cast Reveal – YouTube

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When the original Bloodlines throws John DiMaggio at you right there in the tutorial you know you’re in for some quality voice-acting. The whole cast was stacked with actors familiars from games and TV like Grey DeLisle, Steve Blum, Fred Tatasciore, Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, Dee Bradley Baker—the list goes on.

Bloodlines 2 may not have Bender from Futurama in it, but the recent voice cast reveal does highlight a few familiar voices. Like Jane Perry, who you may know as Diana from the Hitman series, Selene from Returnal, or Rogue from Cyberpunk 2077, playing the refined Lou Graham.

Or Bethan Dixon Bate, who I spent dozens of hours with across the Vermintide games where she plays Sienna, and who also played Vlaakith in Baldur’s Gate 3 and Princeps Orla Gemnon in the Warhammer TV animation Kill Lupercal. She’s Mrs. Amelia Thorn in Bloodlines 2, running a cafe called Wake the Dead whose sign warns customers DO NOT ASK FOR PUMPKIN SPICE.

If you played The Chinese Room’s previous horror game Still Wakes the Deep you’ll have heard Alec Newman as its protagonist Cameron “Caz” McLeary, though he was also Adam Smasher in both Cyberpunk 2077 and the anime spin-off Edgerunners, and Paul Atreides in the TV version of Dune. He’s Gideon Hall in Bloodlines 2.

One more I was surprised to see: Richard Brake, who you may know for TV and film credits like the Night King in Game of Thrones and Joe Chill in Batman Begins—he was also Corporal Dean Portman in the Doom movie—playing the Nosferatu Willem Axel. (That’s the guy wearing a bomb vest.)

The other thing this trailer shows off is lip-syncing that looks better than what we’ve seen in previous promotional material for Bloodlines 2. The characters still emote in a much more subdued way than they did in the first game, but that seems like a deliberate decision to keep things low-key, at least in the scenes shown here.

Whether it’s actually any fun to play remains to be seen. We’ll find out when Bloodlines 2 launches on October 21.

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October 5, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Hitman Maker Breaks Silence On Publishing One Of 2025’s Worst Games

by admin September 4, 2025

MindsEye is one of the worst-reviewed games of the year, and IO Interactive published it. In fact, it was the Hitman maker’s first outside publishing deal ever. How did things go so wrong? The studio’s CEO was finally asked to weigh in on the topic and he makes it sound like he doesn’t know either.

“The initial talks we had with those guys were to support them,” Hakan Abrak, who’s been in charge of IO for nearly a decade, told IGN recently. “We thought they had some great ideas and a great world in the background that they were building, and hopefully they’ll get the opportunity to show more of that in the future. And we just wanted to help them distribute the game.”

MindsEye had a sound pitch. Developer Build A Rocket Boy, led by ex-Grand Theft Auto producer Leslie Benzies, was making a user-generated-content-based metaverse called Everything, but pivoted to getting a smaller, single-player shooter out the door first. Following an ex-black ops guy with a brain implant that’s turning his world upside down, MindsEye sounded like an old-school action-adventure campaign with some modern AAA gloss.

What it ended up being instead was a confusing and boring mess. It’s one of the lowest-rated games of 2025 on Metacritic and has only 2,000 user reviews on Steam, around 70 percent of which are negative. As far as first-time publishing experiences go, it probably couldn’t have been any worse.

“Well, that was definitely tough, right?” Abrak told IGN. “It was a tough reception. It wasn’t what they hoped for, and also what we didn’t hope for at IOI Partners. They’re working hard on turning that around to regain the trust of the gamers out there, and they have tons of potential and content they’re working on. So hopefully they’ll succeed with that in the future.”

While Build A Rocket Boy has made promises, it’s also been undergoing post-launch layoffs and playing weird blame games. IGN reported that Benzies took the opportunity on a rare video call with staff in July to accuse internal and outside actors of trying to sabotage MindsEye. The studio announced an updated roadmap later that month that includes more fixes to the game and its upcoming Hitman crossover mission.

Worth noting is that at no point does Abrak talk about the partnership like it’s still ongoing. He talks about “we” at IO Interactive and “those guys” and “them” at Build A Rocket Boy. Even with the upcoming content you get the distinct feeling the Hitman team is ready to wash its hands of the entire thing and focus exclusively on its upcoming 007 James Bond game moving forward.

Does IO plan to publish any other outside games after this? Abrak said, “That remains to be seen.”

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September 4, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

007 First Light’s first proper footage reveals a posh blockbuster with bubbles of Hitman

by admin September 4, 2025

Hitman hitmakers Io Interactive have just screened some extensive footage of their James Bond adaptation, 007: First Light, during Sony’s latest State of Play livestream. As you might expect, it looks and sounds a lot like Hitman, but the whole “James Bond” thing is a definite pace-changer. Catch the whole video below, plus a hasty, opinionated summary from me.

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Sony and Io’s Jamesplay blowout spans a couple of First Light missions, the first being a multiple-agent undercover affair during an exclusive chess tournament held in Slovakia, which begins with our hero kicking his heels in a carpark while disguised as a chauffeur. All seams peaceful. But then our hero remembers that he’s Bond, James Bond, and has better things to do than fulfil his allotted role in a painstakingly organised MI6 operation.

The subsequent 20 minutes or so can be divided into five courses. First, a dash of infiltration that readily channels Agent 47, with Bond using environmental distractions to bamboozle security staff and steal their IDs. Always a fan of bouncers who are hopelessly baffled by leaky hosepipes.

Then, there’s a dollop of social stealth, with Bond hustling a bartender for clues about a weirdo bellhop. Then, it’s time for an Xbox 360-ass car chase with a femme fatale in the passenger seat. Next, James must blow up one million red gas tanks while cover-shooting through a crowded airfield to an escaping transport plane. Then, he must do a crafty QTE hack on the plane’s attitude controls, so as to wrongfoot the on-board defenders and ultimately, turn the plane into a meteor shower.

If it were me, I’d still be in that carpark playing Tetris on my Q-phone. But I am not Bond, James Bond. Io’s version of the character is as smug, quippy and basically unbearable as you’d expect from a Bond actor pre-Daniel Craig. I rate him seven Rogers out of Connery so far.

The other Jamesplay excerpt from Sony’s sprawling Bondcast sees the handsome cad infiltrating a gala in Kensington, London. It may be down to the State of Play presentation, but this one feels much more like a Hitman World of Assassination mission, with Bond navigating the crowd, eavesdropping for interaction opportunities, pickpocketing the help, and generally keeping it on the down-low.

Io and Sony polish everything off with an edited section showing off the game’s various supporting systems. Certain actions earn you Instinct, which can be spent to bluff your way out of confrontations, lure guards into takedowns, and slow time for headshots.

You also get gadgets, of course, such as a laser with which to drop chandeliers on those foolish enough to enjoy their crystal glow, and smoke grenades for when you can’t be arsed to hide properly. Lethal force appears to depend on Bond being granted “License to Kill” by his handlers – you can’t just murder somebody with a pair of scissors whenever you fancy, for you are Bond, James Bond, not some barcode-wearing hooligan.

All in all, I think this looks entertaining. It’s either a Hitman game that has gracefully yielded to Bond’s appetite for getaway shoot-outs, or a Bond game that has studied long and well under Agent 47’s tutelage – take your pick. It’s out March 27th 2026.

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September 4, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

007: First Light is so much more than Hitman – with its ‘breathing’ structure, it looks like the ultimate composite video game

by admin September 3, 2025

When IO Interactive first announced it was uptaking work on what was then known as ‘Project 007’, the internet collectively cheered. There was one practically unanimous reaction: this is a match made in heaven.

I agree – it really is. Except it isn’t. Except it is. Such is the strange, fluid nature of the Bond franchise. In some ways it lines up perfectly with Hitman’s sublime espionage and seductively beautiful-yet-nihilistic ‘World of Assassination’. And yet Agent 007 is a totally different sort of character to Agent 47. The way Hitman feels in your hands is so specific, and in my opinion no matter how perfect a fit IOI was in other ways, I was nervous about that being replicated for Bond.

So I always felt that IO’s take on Bond would live or die by the studio’s ability to turn that difference into a strength rather than a weakness. After seeing a chunk of hands-off 007: First Light gameplay at IO Interactive’s Copenhagen headquarters, I’m convinced that the mad lads have done it. Mission accomplished. The best of Hitman is carried through – but without compromising the key pillars required for Bond to be Bond.

Image credit: IO Interactive / MGM

Central to this is Bond himself. Casting plays a role in this, with the announcement of Patrick Gibson as gaming’s official 007 a crucial piece of the picture – but much of it is mechanical. Agent 47 moves deliberately and with a stiff, almost mechanical nature. He’s literally a programmed contract killer, and so it makes sense that he is a little robotic. This also lines up well with Hitman’s mechanics, where that highly telegraphed movement plays into making sure everything is clear – if an action is safe to perform, if you’re in sight or stealth, and so on. But that isn’t Bond.

007 is impulsive, fluid. He needs to move not with stiff deliberation, but with a silky instinct. IO has addressed this in the core movement – Bond is much slicker than 47 even doing something as simple as picking up an item off a table – but also in mechanics. If you’re stealthing, when spotted 47’s only option is to get violent or leg it. As Bond, if you’ve enough Instinct, a limited resource, you can vocally bluff your way out of a situation. Bond can’t toss coins, but he can confidently throw his voice to attract a guard. If he runs out of ammo in a gunfight, a last-ditch thing he can do is throw his gun at the head of his would-be assailant. If the situation is hectic and he needs to pick up a rifle on the ground, he’ll stylishly kickflip it into his hands.

There’s quite a lot mechanically going on here, and that’s because in many ways First Light feels like what I’m going to call a composite game – a great big mingling of mechanics, ideas, and systems. When IO Interactive co-founder and First Light director Hakan Abrak explains the game, one gets a sense of how these mechanics get divided up, creating a game that is less structurally fluid than Hitman’s wide-open Rube Goldberg machine environments, but no less flowing.

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Deep Breath

“It breathes,” says Abrak of First Light.

That two word explanation is evocative enough alone, I think, without quoting his fuller explanation. Picture your midriff as you breathe. You inhale, and your body tightens. I subconsciously do this when a photo is taken, to look slimmer. When First Light inhales, it mechanically narrows.

You might be in an exposition-heavy walk-and-talk, Moneypenny in Bond’s ear as a beautiful environment unfolds before you. You might be in a narrow, prescribed gunfight where you can choose if you want to be a little bit left or right, high or low, but ultimately you’re in that gunfight. It might also be an extremely tightly-scripted stealth sequence. Internally, IO Interactive refers to these sections – the ‘inhale’ – as ‘guided’. Here First Light indeed begins to resemble many action-adventure jaunts I’ve played before, from Uncharted right back to some older Bond games like EA’s Everything or Nothing.

Now imagine the exhale. Everything slackens, the muscles relax, and if you’re anything like me, you’re a little more comfortable in your skin. IO Interactive calls these bits of Bond ‘core’, and it’s here where the Hitman heritage proudly flexes. You’re placed into open situations with an objective, but how you accomplish it is up to you.

Some of these areas might be vanishingly small compared to a Hitman level. In the publicly-available early-game mission shown in the State of Play, we see Bond arrive at a beautiful building home to some lavish gathering of the great and the good. He needs to get inside. The entrance to the building is itself a mini Hitman level. There’s a few different options for how to gain entry, but how exactly you approach that situation is up to you. Once inside, the game inhales again, directing you along a stricter path to keep the story moving.

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Even in this small example the differences and similarities to Hitman are laid bare. Bond is a little more constrained than 47. Bond isn’t going to injure civilian security guards for no reason, for instance. Bond also isn’t going to do crazy, stupid things. Walk close to a ledge that can be vaulted to reach an open window while a guard is watching, for instance, and the game straight up won’t let you do it. The ‘vault’ UI element appears, but is carefully crossed out. In Hitman, you could press the button and let all hell break loose as the guards go into overdrive. Indeed, Hitman is the sort of game where an accidental input – a shot fired by mistake, a door opened by a miscue – can ruin your run, by design. For Bond, everything is a little more contained. You can vault that wall – but you’ll need to create a distraction first.

The same is true for killing. In what I think is a tremendously clever use of the Bond iconography, you can’t just open fire willy-nilly. When Bond is in a situation where enemies are clearly out to kill him, a flashy UI element unfolds on screen declaring: [LICENSE TO KILL]. At this point, Bond is weapons-free. This is a key differentiator from Hitman, too – in a grand party, you can’t just get an assault rifle and spray the room – that isn’t how he does things.

There’s still an immense room for creativity, however – it’s just a different kind of creativity with less potential for unwarranted collateral. Say you need to get into a hidden area – Bond isn’t donning disguises (at least, not like 47 – there will be story-specific dress-up here and there), so you need alternatives. In some ways this is familiar to Hitman – in a mirroring of that game’s Paris, you might choose to pose as a member of a camera crew. For that you’ll need to socially charm the presenter with dialogue options to convince her you are indeed her replacement camera operator, and you’ll also need to track down a camera in the venue to use – which can be done in one of at least three ways. To even learn of this opportunity you’ll need to catch ambient dialogue, overhearing while circling the area that a TV producer is missing their cameraman. Alternatively, you could just sneak in – or you could pickpocket a pass from another guest, if you’re slick enough. On and on it goes, the game state shifting depending on your objectives and the path you take to them.

Image credit: IO Interactive / MGM

All of this suggests a game that is segueing from state to state. If you alert enemies in stealth but then quickly take out all of those alerted, a UI element will confirm that it’s [SITUATION CONTROLLED] – again a subtle difference to Hitman, where such situations could snowball easily and it sometimes was even not instantly clear if you were safe or not. Some of that Hitman paranoia and panic appears to be gone – but it’s replaced with swagger, because that’s who Bond is. That signalling is also there to tell you that you’ve seamlessly moved from one game state to another, in a sense.

In terms of controlling such situations, Bond has more flashy options than 47. He’s got a range of Q gadgets to distract – smoke bombs, knock-out darts, and so on. He can use his pure brass neck to convince a suspicious guard he’s meant to be there (though Hitman’s ‘enforcer’ style guards are back, and always see through Bond’s bluff). If things resolve to combat without that license to kill being activated, it’s fisticuffs in a tactile and frenetic combat system that’s full of using enemies’ momentum against them – flinging them this way and that, countering, parrying – it animates with enormously satisfying physicality and has shades of things like Batman Arkham and Mad Max. It’s a far cry from 47’s QTE-driven, over-in-seconds hand-to-hand.

Do you see the composite forming? Hitman’s stealth and open endedness in places, yes. But then there’s that counter-heavy combat, Uncharted-style spectacle, and tight-but-scrappy looking third-person shooting. Oh, and drifty, arcade-looking driving. Even in those segments that resemble Hitman, it differs: Bond can chat to people more, and there’s dialogue options and branching conversations where you can talk your way through situations with 007’s famous charm rather than have to sneak or subvert.

Going 360

I do hate marketing bluster. But occasionally some piece of phrasing cuts through – and for Bond, IOI has a term that is buzzier than a watch with a built-in circular saw. “We want to make a 360-degree Bond experience,” Abrak says in just one of many instances when I hear that geometry-based phrase. Yes, it’s marketing nonsense – but it does speak to a truth about James Bond.

In GoldenEye 007, Bond is basically the Doom Guy. There’s the odd gadget or bit of hacking here or there – but he’s mowing down wave after wave of soviet soldiers or terrorists. By Everything or Nothing, the developers had folded in things like car chases and maybe even the occasional spying sequence – but it was more or less all-action. IO wants to take a more holistic view of the character, and look at Bond from all angles rather than just action – thus 360-degree.

Image credit: IO Interactive / MGM

What is Bond? He’s charming, he’s creative. IOI wants its game to reflect all of that, which is why you’re as likely to find yourself in a ‘social space’ as in a linear shootout. Equally, those social spaces take a different form to Hitman – more constrained in some ways, but more open in others, such as with his ability to talk to key NPCs. Much of this is stuff that 47 would never do to this extent, if at all – and so I’m wary to describe this game as simply ‘Hitman with more action’, and am more wary still of anyone who might dilute it down to that. It’s more.

There’s another buzzy phrase I rather enjoyed on this studio visit – and this was one that felt less like a planned marketing term and more a quirk of phrase (and more something actively used in the studio). I heard people from all major branches of production – narrative, gameplay, audio – describe the desire to “put it on the sticks” – where “it” is the sensation of being Bond. Bond is one of the coolest characters in all of media – and so of course IOI’s desire is that players be in control of him when he’s performing his most impressive feats.

I’m all for this, though in something like this the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The grandest remaining hurdle that Agent 007 needs to pass is: to be playable. All of this is IOI talking the talk, showing us stuff that looks fabulous. Certainly, World of Assassination suggests it can walk the walk, too. But I hear the mantra that this satisfying action is ‘on the sticks’ and it gnaws at me that… I haven’t touched said sticks.

I’ve been doing this job for long enough to know that shooting can look slick and scrappy in video but then feel awful in practice – you need to feel it. The flow of a ‘social space’ can look great in a slickly-edited video but feel weird in-game. All of this remains to be tested. I need to, as IO reps put it, get ‘on the sticks’. But if IO Interactive’s walk channels Bond’s smirking swagger and is as strong as their talk, I could see this being an all-timer. As a Bond fan, I’m keeping everything crossed – and am more optimistic than ever.

This preview is based on a visit to IO Interactive’s HQ in Copenhagen. IOI provided travel and accommodation.

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September 3, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Hitman on iOS, martial arts survival and other new indie games worth checking out

by admin August 30, 2025

Welcome to our latest recap of what’s going on in the indie game space. One very well-known indie found its way to iOS devices this week, though there are other new releases worth highlighting and plenty of other upcoming games to tell you about.

First, though, there was a (paywalled) story in Game File this week that caught my eye. It’s about how Google’s AI Overviews feature offers up false video game tips. That’s a problem the developers of a game called Trash Goblin — a cosy shopkeeping game in which you chip away at junk to unearth trinkets you can restore and sell — have been dealing with.

AI Overviews offered incorrect information about the game to some players, as well as the crew at Spilt Milk Studios when they tested the responses. For instance, AI Overviews suggested that a player could damage a trinket when they were removing debris from it, which is not true. It also in some cases delivered the correct information, but pointed the user to an incorrect source. In addition, AI Overviews offered information about another game entirely. This is obviously not ideal for players or the team behind Trash Goblin.

We’ve seen many cases in which AI Overviews get information blatantly wrong. Like other large language models (LLMs), it guesses what the next word or words should be in its responses based on its training data. LLMs are about generating sequences of text; they’re not designed to deliver facts (one reason why there’s a disclaimer on AI Overviews that reads “AI responses may include mistakes”). They often just make stuff up.

If you’re looking for help with a game, you’re far better off finding a community of players you can chat to. You might be able to find a clear, helpful guide to the game in question on an actual video game website, written by a professional video game guide writer. If, that is, you can evade AI Overviews to get to those websites in the first place (thankfully, it’s easy to turn off AI Overviews for your Google searches).

New releases

IO Interactive is independent, which means Hitman World of Assassination fits within our remit here. This week, the bundle of three core Hitman games from the last decade arrived on iPhone (iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, as well as the iPhone 16 lineup) and iPad. Supported iPad models are iPad Pro and iPad Air (M1 chip or later), as well as the A17 Pro iPad mini.

Hitman World of Assassination is a sandbox stealth game in which you’re given a mission (usually taking out a target) and it’s up to you how to carry that out. Getting to know the layout of each level so you can plan your approach and escape is key. Understanding the route and actions of the NPCs will stand you in good stead too.

The iPhone and iPad versions have touch controls with context-sensitive buttons. You can, of course, opt to use a third-party controller instead. IOI says it tapped into Apple’s MetalFX tech to help ensure the iOS port looks good.

Hitman World of Assassination costs $70 on iOS. That’s fairly steep, but IOI says the game offers over 100 hours of gameplay. Alternatively, you can play the first location for free, and buy any of the 24 levels individually for $3 each.

In addition, the game is coming to Apple Silicon Macs later this year. IOI will also bring the roguelite Freelancer mode to the iPhone and iPad versions down the line with a free update.

Another game landed on new platforms this week as Alawar’s Karate Survivor hit PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch for $6. As the title suggests, this is a survivor-style martial arts beat-’em-up.

You’ll be able to use the environment to your advantage by picking up items to use as melee or projectile weapons, kicking objects toward goons and swinging locker and microwave doors into bad guys’ mushes. You can unlock hundreds of different moves and there are permanent upgrades as well.

First-person action-adventure Davy x Jones has set sail in early access on Steam. Until September 4, you can snap it up for $6.66. After that time, it will cost $10. However, the price will increase ahead of the game’s full release on PC and consoles, which is slated for late 2026.

In this early version, you’ll have access to the main gameplay and combat systems (including legendary weapons), several islands, an array of enemies and some cinematic executions — hopefully involving a kraken. You’ll take command of a half-ship, half-whale vessel called Abby as you attempt to escape the underworld and seek revenge as the legendary pirate.

Regular readers of this roundup will know that I’m a sucker for a game with a great title. Prop Haunt, which riffs on the prop hunt modes in many other games, is definitely one of those (as is another one I’ll mention later on).

This is a spooky 1 vs. 4 multiplayer horror title from Silent Forest Games that just hit Steam early access for $15. The ghost players possess objects and it’s up to the investigator to find and stop them. The ghosties can teleport, blend into their surroundings and so on, while the investigator has cameras and other gizmos at their disposal

Currently, there are four playable ghosts with different haunting styles, two maps and support for public and private lobbies. More maps, ghost powers, investigator tools and procedural prop generation are in the works.

Upcoming

Bye Sweet Carole had flown below my radar until the release date trailer popped up but, goodness, does it look gorgeous. The team at Little Sewing Machine took a hand-drawn approach to the art of this narrative-horror game, which mimics the look of classic animated films. Even the song in the trailer aligns with the type of showtune you’d hear in Disney movies.

You’ll take on the role of Lana Benton, a young girl who sets out to find out the truth about her best friend Carole’s disappearance from an orphanage. It sounds (and looks!) pretty promising. Publisher Maximum Entertainment is bringing Bye Sweet Carole to PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S and PC on October 9.

Rita is an interesting-looking puzzle game from SporkTank (aka solo developer Martin Stradling). You play as a chick that uses letters found in the environment to solve word puzzles, including crosswords, in order to progress. For instance, you might need to fill in a crossword answer for “stairs” in order to spawn a staircase (perhaps there’s a bit of a Baba is You influence here?). There are some platforming elements too.

You’ll follow Rita throughout her journey from exploring as a young chick to becoming a grandparent. It all seems quite lovely. Rita is coming to Steam early next year. A demo will be available on September 18.

Co-op survival game Lost Skies is set to exit Steam early access on September 17. Set on an archipelago of sky islands, you can explore this world with up to five buddies and try to learn exactly what led to this fractured civilization. You have a grappling hook, wingsuits and gliders to help you traverse these landforms and a customizable and upgradeable skyship that you’ll use for both transportation and combat. Players can also create their own islands, which they can share with the community.

I never got around to checking out the demo for Lost Skies, even though I’ve had it installed on my PC for months. Still, this one from Bossa Studios and publisher Humble Games has me intrigued enough to perhaps try out the full game.

Another game I’ve had my eye on for a hot minute is Bloodthief, which will debut on Steam on September 22. This is a Ghostrunner-inspired medieval parkour-slasher game from first-time game creator Blargis (Jake Bedard), who has been sharing development updates on YouTube over the last couple of years.

In Bloodthief, you play as an agile vampire and use the blood of your enemies to enhance your speed, abilities and survival. For example, attacks help boost your momentum. I’m definitely looking forward to watching some speedruns of this because I’m fairly sure that, as with the Ghostrunner games, I’m going to be absolutely terrible at this.

While you’re waiting (im)patiently for the full release of Hades 2, you might like to check out a similar flavor of isometric roguelite action — albeit with the addition of co-op. In Sworn, you’ll set out to save Camelot from a corrupted Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table with the help of up to three other players.

Sworn has been in early access since last year, and you won’t have to wait much longer for the full game. It’ll be available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch and Steam on September 25.

Let’s wrap things up for this week with another game that has a fantastic title. The Hero is too Powerful so let’s Pleeeease Settle this Peacefully! is the latest project from Night Stroll Studio (solo developer Trevor Thompson). It’s an RPG in the vein of early Zelda games in which you play as a hero who has exactly one attack.

However, you can level up this attack to the point that it’s obscenely powerful. There’s also the option of talking your way out of sticky situations. This comedy adventure, which has maybe my favorite title of any game this side of I’m Going to Die if I Don’t Eat Sushi!, is slated to hit Steam later this year.

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August 30, 2025 0 comments

Agent 47 peers through window blinders at his target.

Game Reviews

Hitman World Of Assassination Review: Stealth At Its Best

by admin August 29, 2025

My favorite moment in the nearly 100 hours I’ve spent with Hitman World of Assassination arrived right around the 80-hour mark. I had been on a terrible streak in Freelancer, the game’s roguelike mode. Sloppy in my stealth and assassination skills, I’d taken out my target, but was seen doing it–and I still needed to extract. Freelancer mode sometimes requires messiness, a willingness to just get the job done by any means necessary. That’s hard for someone prone to perfectionism such as myself. And I had been too messy this time. Now the guards are after me, popping off shots as I race down the corridors of a fancy hotel in Thailand. I duck into an empty bedroom to hide. The doors burst open; the guards have followed me. I move around the corner, just out of sight.

A lone guard wanders into the room, my gun’s sights following his head as he moves. If he sees me, I’ll need to pull the trigger with haste and precision. There’s obviously no bullet-time mechanic in Hitman, but the rush of adrenaline, of needing to stay alive so as to not ruin my streak of successful kills and keep the excellent equipment I’ve found on this run, make every second feel like an eternity. My gun continues to trace this guard’s head. I realize that if I pull the trigger, I’ll also need to contend with the three guards in the adjacent room. I imagine what that will look like. Several contingency plans run through my head as I consider the myriad ways I can escape this situation, and just how ugly things might get if I need to do so with guns blazing.

The guard leaves the room. They didn’t see me. I see the rest of the guards leave my immediate area on the map and breathe a sigh of relief. I have time now to wait for the alarms to go quiet. But my disguise as a hotel worker has been compromised. I sneak into the adjacent room and grab the one guard who has yet to leave, knock him out, and steal his clothes. I tuck his body out of sight and mosey onto the extraction point as I watch folks drag some of the poor bastards who got in my way out in body bags. I extract. There were a million ways this all could’ve gone down, but on this particular run, this was the story that the various elements of the emergent sandbox that is Hitman told. I return to my residence, load up another job and prepare as best I can, though I have no idea how the next one will turn out.

Hitman World of Assassination is an epic package of three single-player campaigns, a variety of challenges both developer- and user-made strewn across several maps in its Contracts mode, and a riveting roguelike experience called Freelancer that aims to simulate the ultimate fantasy of assuming the role of the world’s most deadly assassin, with the worst members of society right in his crosshairs.

The WoA update followed the release of 2021’s Hitman 3. The three recent and excellent campaigns from 2016 onwards are well-preserved, improved even, with tweaks made to the gameplay formula over the years. It makes for an excellent source of nearly endless stealth challenges using Hitman’s elegantly violent interplay of sneaking, subterfuge, stalking, stabbing, suffocating, and shooting. The violence sometimes takes on a comical role (one mission had me throwing butcher knives into the skulls of guards while wearing a friggin’ rabbit mask), but aside from some gentle sci-fi elements, the fiction is grounded in a dark reality that mirrors our own. It’s a world of brutal corporate powers, state actors with ill intentions, and secret societies aiming to construct a global order that secures the places of the rich and powerful while leaving the rest of us to be ignored or, in some cases, much worse. Agent 47 finds himself, along with his handler Diana, in a position to deal back some justice. A single assassination won’t itself change the world, but a continued pattern that strikes fear into the hearts of those who otherwise would never know it? Delivering that is your role as this mysterious, red-tye-wearing man with a barcode tattoo on the back of his head.

Deadly wetwork

Hitman’s stealth is incredibly satisfying, though its mechanics are slightly less sophisticated than what you’d find in something like Splinter Cell or Metal Gear Solid V. Your footsteps, for example, won’t give you away nearly as much as they would for a Sam Fisher. But much as I enjoy the challenge of a more realistic stealth sim, realism is not always a prerequisite for a good time. (Metal Gear Solid, after all, didn’t have enemies hearing your footsteps until Snake Eater.) Besides, Hitman itself isn’t short on the challenge of remaining unseen, or, in Agent 47’s case, only being seen while wearing someone else’s clothes. The game otherwise contains many stealth trappings you’ve seen in other games: lockers and boxes to hide in, tall grass to duck under, the chore of hiding unconscious or dead bodies. In my 100 or so hours with the game, resources like tall grass don’t feel as easy to exploit as they do in, say, an Assassin’s Creed or Horizon game, but there’s still a familiar pattern here with their inclusion.

I dove into World of Assassination by starting with the campaigns, Hitman (2016), Hitman 2, and Hitman 3. Hitman’s campaigns can make for a solid introduction, but the story-based mission structure can detract from the more-unscripted, stealth sandbox that beats at the heart of this game. On normal difficulties, each mission will prompt you with a suggestion to follow a narrative thread that, while often containing some very well-written and amusing story material, can feel a little on rails. These scenarios, often, rely on you changing outfits to disguise yourself, so you’re not so much sneaking around corners as you are committing a serious case of identity theft. Furthermore, when in an alerted state, Agent 47 can die rather quickly, so straying from that path can feel intimidating. The narrative moments are often well written and amusing, so it’s a good time, just not the kind of shadowy wetwork I tend to gravitate to.

It can be hard to get out of a bad situation. Hitman’s environments, typically, are well populated, often packed with civilians who are quick to run to a guard if they catch you doing something weird, or even if they spot you walking around with a butcher knife. The places you’re infiltrating are unassuming locations for the most part: a dance club, an upscale hospital, a fashion show. And you always have a target, typically one who has a nefarious agenda. Even the game’s roguelike Freelancer mode, which reuses maps from the story-based campaigns, gives you targets who follow a routine. And the more challenging missions of that mode require you to pick your target out of a group of wandering suspects, looking for tells based on intel you’re given at the start. So your job involves more than just getting into some well-guarded area without drawing attention to yourself; you also need to find the right opportunity to take action after studying the behavior of your targets and determining the most efficient, or most hilarious, means of killing them. You’re going to need to adhere to some kind of structure for yourself, a routine of how you engage with enemies, how you manage your inventory, how you enter and leave rooms, and when you choose to open fire as opposed to running away. Improvisation is often only as good as the discipline you practice leading up to moments of uncertainty.

That, to me, is key to what makes Hitman and many other stealth games work: It’s the joy of adhering to form, of approaching situations cautiously, with awareness, so that you’re prepared to respond to anything with a degree of competency and strategy, always aiming to get the situation under your control as opposed to just reacting to incoming action like you typically do in a standard shooter. Sure, Hitman’s gunplay is smooth enough that you can get into some John Wick-esque situations, but you’re bordering on a fail state when you do (though it’s also extremely easy to line up shots if you can force guards into a choke point where they can’t easily flank you).

Always having that central objective, your target(s), helps direct the stealth gameplay into something meaningful. You’re not just sneaking for the thrill of breaking into some place you’re not supposed to be: You have a purpose, and that purpose isn’t a static thing that will never move. Playing Hitman well is about juggling time management, staying hidden, staying focused, and having a willingness to exploit an opportunity that you may not have expected.

And while the main campaigns are satisfying (though I found the nuances of the plot a little hard to follow, especially during Hitman 2), its roguelike mode, Freelancer, is where I’ve spent the majority of my time and will continue to do so. It’s a wildly compulsive forever-game that I still struggle to put down, even after hitting a three-digit hour count.

That said, there are some pain points worth mentioning. To start, Agent 47 is slow. His “sprint” is a jog at best and it feels a little strange sometimes that you can’t just book it to the exit when you’re under fire. Having a faster sprint might really interrupt the flow of the game, so I get not having it, but it still feels off. There’s also a weird issue where if you grab an enemy while climbing the stairs, even if you’re directly behind them, you’ll almost always get spotted by them and thus ruin a Silent Assassin run. Also, needing to use a thrown object to make noise and distract an enemy feels silly, as if Agent 47 couldn’t whistle or knock on a wall. And lastly, you’ll probably make a ton of use of Agent 47’s see-through-walls “Instinct.” Not only am I not a fan of this feature in modern stealth games as I feel it removes a huge part of the challenge of keeping track of your enemies, but it also coats the screen in a dull gray tone that isn’t pleasant to look at. For a feature that gets used so much, it could’ve used something with a bit of a cooler color. Make it blue and a little shimmery or something, I dunno. Anything but the monotone gray.

Hitman World of Assassination

Back-of-the-box quote:
“Because Mario ain’t gonna get it done!”
Developer:
IO Interactive
Type of game:
Third-person stealth action game.
Liked:
Endless variety of stealth challenges, engaging risk/reward experience in Freelancer.

Disliked
Reliance on “Instinct” view mode, sandbox can sometimes be unpredictable.
Release date:
January 2023: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows PCs (played) June 2025: Switch 2 August 2025: iOS (in episodic form)
Played:
100 hours through the three campaigns, Freelancer, and other challenges.

To be fair, some of these omissions, such as sprinting fast or wall–knocking, would make for a very different game if they were present. Not being able to knock on walls or whistle, as you can in other stealth games, means you need to interact with the game’s item sandbox more. And not being able to run means there’s no get-out-of-jail-free card if you screw up. It makes sense when you consider these omissions as intentional parts of the game’s design, but when three guards are hot on your heels popping off shots, it’s hard not to think, “Why the hell can’t I run?” Oh, you also can’t swim, but that’s okay.

The joys of the Freelance lifestyle

Like most roguelikes, or extraction shooters for that matter, Hitman’s Freelancer mode tasks you with heading into hostile territory to get a job done and come out alive. Fail your mission and you lose all the sweet gear you have on you. And Hitman isn’t short on sweet gear.

The overall flow works like this: You’ll choose from a list of potential crime syndicates to go after. Each has a bit of fictional dressing on the side that isn’t explored much beyond an initial description that you’re going after human traffickers or organ harvesters. There’s an undeniable Batman quality to the work you’re doing, and after some successful missions, your handler will remark that your actions will make others “think twice before turning to a life of crime.”

But Agent 47 isn’t Batman and isn’t content to just beat up his targets. No, he kills them. And each syndicate has a series of challenges to take on for each kill. These can range from things like only killing targets or only using silenced weapons to earning the Silent Assassin status for never being seen during your run, and more. Some challenges, like using explosives, shotguns, or other loud things, toss stealth out the window in favor of something a bit more daring. I tend not to do these as much since I prefer a stealthier playstyle, but Hitman can be a surprisingly fun run-and-gun game as well, albeit one that usually exists in short bursts as either you or your enemies are likely to go down pretty quickly. You can also stack some prestige challenges on top, which will ask you to use specific weaponry, never change your suit, or kill a target in a specific way.

Sometimes these tasks step on each other. For example, asking me to get a melee kill but then also asking that I only get headshots on my enemies doesn’t exactly work. Each challenge grants money you can spend to purchase better gear, so it’s a bummer when you fail one, but sometimes you have to fail it if it means getting out alive and not losing your progress. That risk of losing progress by failing the mission, which will see you lose all the gear you have on you, means that you’ll need to be prepared to abandon a challenge if it’s asking too much. That risk and reward, combined with the scarcity of the weapons makes each gun you earn feel valuable, and it plays a significant role in how you prepare for each mission.

A silenced sniper rifle, or even a silenced pistol, for example, is an incredibly useful tool. But maybe you know a certain level so well that, when a mission takes you there, you can leave those good weapons at your hideout for when you really need them on a more challenging assignment. Maybe it’s wise to save them for the more intense “showdowns,” where you have to spend more time studying the suspects to determine if they’re the target.

While the behavior of your standard targets in Freelance mode follows the flow of a Hitman level as it typically pans out, “showdown” missions lead up to a–you guessed it–showdown with a syndicate leader, who will be one of a few different suspects. You’ll learn what they’re wearing, what they’re likely to do during their mission, and what tells will give them away, such as whether they’re prone to allergies, like to smoke, or tend to pace nervously. It’s a fun game of cat and mouse in which you have to figure out who amongst the crowd is your mouse.

Overall, the endless nature of this roguelike mode, packed with its healthy number of maps and a seemingly limitless way they can be used with different targets, weapons, and items, keeps the environments you’ll play over and over again feeling fresh. And the thrill of maintaining momentum on a run, especially as you increase your arsenal, makes for a rewarding game loop that can trap you for hours.

As a veteran of many stealth games, Hitman’s endlessly unpredictable roguelike mode is what appeals to me the most. It’s an experience I can’t easily replicate elsewhere. But there are other challenges that are definitely worth exploring in the World of Assassination package as well, especially as they’ll help you better learn maps and strategies for staying unseen.

Arcade mode, for example, sees you taking on “Elusive Targets,” who, upon failure, can’t be pursued again for several real-world hours. Many of them are only available during certain times as well. These targets might also have specific ways they’ll need to be killed or their levels may come with unique constraints. Contracts mode features both preset and user-made contracts from any of the game’s many levels, often with optional challenges such as the need to use a sniper rifle or explosive device, or to execute someone while wearing a specific disguise.

I haven’t spent nearly as much time on these modes, but they can serve as helpful ways to practice very specific ways of playing, which will teach you skills and techniques that’ll come in handy across any of the game’s modes.

Hitman World of Assassination offers up an exquisite buffet-style set of amusing and challenging stealth challenges with such an abundance as to be virtually endless. The moment-to-moment stealth gameplay is as challenging as it is rewarding. Agent 47 may feel a little stiffer and slower than someone like Venom Snake from MGSV, but once you get used to the pacing of Hitman, it reveals itself as an engaging stealth game that invites mastery over its interlocking and sometimes unpredictable systems. Time spent in this game is about getting better at the game itself, not just unlocking and collecting cool suits. Whether emerging victorious or suffering defeat, playing the role of Agent 47 is a thrilling and challenging experience that can last for countless hours.

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August 29, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Hitman World of Assassination arrives on iPhone and iPad

by admin August 27, 2025

Agent 47, this is Diana, I have some important information for you. Today – that’s 27th August – developer IO Interactive is releasing the full Hitman World of Assassination experience on iPhone and iPad. And, this release includes new touch controls as well as controller support. Have you got all that, 47?

Yes, for any of you Apple-loving lot, you will now be able to participate in a spot of globetrotting with everyone’s favourite barcoded assassin on your mobile devices. Thanks to World of Assassination grouping together Hitman 1, 2 and 3, this means you zip from the Parisian runway to the heady heights of Dubai all from the palm of your hand.

The Hitman team says while every location and mission is available at launch, World of Assassination’s Freelancer mode will subsequently arrive on the iPhone and iPad version on an unspecified date later this year, as part of an update.

The full game retails for £69.99 on iPhone and iPad, though if you prefer you will also be able to try your hand at individual locations for £2.99 each. Compatible devices are as follows: iPhone 16 models; iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max; iPad Pro and iPad Air (M1 chip or later); iPad mini (A17 Pro).

Interested but not sure you want to fully commit to World of Assassination just yet? You can try a little taster before you take the plunge, as the ICA Facility training mission will be available for free, along with the Sebastian Principle Escalation in Dubai.

You can check out a trailer for Hitman World of Assassination for iPhone and iPad below.

HITMAN World of Assassination – iOS Release Trailer. Watch on YouTube

For more on Hitman, check out our Ed’s interview with Hitman 3’s Jane Perry and David Bateson. Here, they talk about playing outsiders, absurd humour, and IO’s future with Bond.

This is a news-in-brief story. This is part of our vision to bring you all the big news as part of a daily live report.

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August 27, 2025 0 comments