Hitman World of Assassination - Signature Edition Review (Switch 2)

Hitman! A rebooted and re-suited assassination spectacular that I once got in a spot of bother over (never reveal that you're gonna kill Sean Bean in a computer game on social media, lest people mistake it for a threat), has finally — and without the need for cloud streaming technology — made it to a Nintendo Switch console.

This Hitman World of Assassination - Signature Edition release features all of the content that's previously been released for a trilogy of games that just gets better as it goes along. So yeah, there's an absolute ton of game to get stuck into here, no worries on that front. There was a lot of scope for the maestros over at IO Interactive to screw up somewhere along the line here, too, with so many moving parts, gadgets, mechanics, overlapping narrative aspects and audaciously big set pieces folded into a trio of huge adventures. This was a big old task they set themselves.

And so, we are some lucky beneficiaries, as the result of all that hard work is dynamite from start to finish, with any potential screw-ups neatly avoided. The vibe is exactly where it needs to be for this trilogy, and exactly where it needs to be to wash the Absolution aftertaste from our mouths (not to mention those godawful movies). This is the good Hitman. The premium grade stuff. And it's a perfectly judged vibe that's melded with the dev's best work yet when it comes to mission/level design across all three games.

So let's start way back with the original Hitman reboot and work forward to Hitman 3's epic, globe-trotting finale, shall we? The first thing to note, and one of the best things about how IO has approached these games since release, is that this 'World of Assassination' Signature Edition sees all of the games brought in line in terms of their controls and their visual/audio aspects. So you get a more seamless adventure, but it's also given them a sort of timeless quality (as far as games go in this regard), with the now 2016 first outing looking and playing as fresh as ever.

This first chunk of reboot had the unenviable task of giving Hitman fans something approaching the halcyon days of the good old save-scumming, trial-and-error, work-it-out-for-yourself Hitmans of yore. Never mind all the forced action sequences and linear crap of Absolution, us real hitmen want to die repeatedly, to throw ourselves time and time again against the sharp (and sometimes explode-y) edges of the great big puzzleboxes disguised as levels that we've got to run amok in here.

I distinctly remember being astounded the first time I saw the Paris 'Showstopper' mission from this game, the first actual real-time sortie that the suited and rebooted Agent 47 is sent on. It's a mission title with meaning for what IO has set out to do, and although the number of NPCs and the sheer amount of detail is much more commonplace nowadays, at the time it was one of the most audacious things I'd seen. What a spectacle, and what a treat to be able to freely walk around, examine and question, plot and plan in environs this spectacular.

It reminded me, in its pre-release demo form, of Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes in how it gave you everything you needed to know about the depth and intricacy of the full game (and luckily Hitman doesn't turn into half the mess MGSV did), whilst also being incredibly generous in that you could play it for days (weeks) thanks to how well-designed it was. It was showing off, basically.

From the dazzling opulence of this first scenario, we're then taken on a world tour that introduces us to a new kind of Hitman game, with online aspects and live service elements (the good kind) woven into the fabric of the campaign. Levels have been designed to be replayed and rediscovered, and even added to in new ways (elusive targets FTW) almost infinitely. Never just deadpan or serious, always cheeky, mischievous and full of ways to push and pull at the boundaries of level design. The old slapstick comedy has returned, the creativity, playfulness and time put aside for messing...it's all just as important as garroting some fool in a dank corridor, mate. Being a hitman has layers, and a lot of those layers involve dressing up silly and being a fool.

From Paris to Sapienza, Bangkok to Hawke's Bay, this is a sequence of sandbox missions that only ever gets bigger and — in most ways — better as it goes along. With controls and graphics now pretty much standardised across all three games, we then move seamlessly into the action of a sequel which, at the time of release at least, sort of felt a bit like DLC.

Of course, it was all part of a grander plan, and taken as part of the full trilogy contained in this version, it's an issue that's nullified. But if reviews were slightly cooler on this one at launch, I reckon it was mostly because it was so overbearingly familiar to what had come before. Not an issue of any sort if you're into what's on offer, of course.

What this sequel does give us is a whole bunch more amazing locations to mess around in. Standouts include the amazing F1-come-tech-show extravagance of Miami and a jaw-dropping recreation of a slice of Mumbai. Although it certainly doesn't proffer anything entirely new or surprising, it plays every bit as good, and gives us all the experimentation and laughs I could ask for. It's the sort of game, like all three really, that feels like you might never see it all, never actually 100% do everything you can.

With 2, however, it has to be said, any chance that the actual story that's spread across all three games would actually be a gripping one, fade away quite significantly. What's here narratively is really just a hodgepodge of bland secret agent tropes, with a little side of sci-fi nonsense. It's perhaps good, then, that I rarely have any clue why I'm killing who I'm killing, and I really don't care, as I prefer to just get lost in the act of roleplaying a very, very silly killer indeed.

Hitman 3, the most recent part of the package, is easily my favourite part of the lot. There are a string of excellent missions here; from the opening Knives Out-styled cracker in a posh mansion full of liars, to a Berlin bunker-cum-nightclub that's jam-packed to the rafters with incidents and accidents waiting to happen, and the opulence — again just straight up showing off, really — of an Argentinian vineyard level that had me bowing to the video game gods. My goodness, my friends, you are in for a treat if you've yet to play any of these games. What a package.

It's also an incredibly exciting prospect to be able to take all these grand missions, elusive targets, challenges and escalation contracts on-the-go with a portable system that's actually capable of playing them. I mean, it is capable, right?

Well, the good news is that the game has arrived on Switch 2 in decent form overall, it's certainly very playable and looking the business. In handheld mode, we've got what seems to be 720p with an unlocked frame rate, whereas in docked the resolution is upped to 1080p. The frame rate though, as it is unlocked, can be a bit of a relentless issue - there's no getting around it.

In docked mode you can really feel the dips down to the 30s, and in handheld — whilst not as bad — it's definitely there. Hopefully we'll see a patch or two, but at launch the performance is playable, fine in most places, but with some stutters that cannot be ignored. I would have expected 60fps solid in docked here, so it's going to depend on how you cope with dips on this front.

In terms of image quality, it all looks good, whilst not up to the shininess of its fanciest variants running on more powerful hardware, obviously. There are some jaggies and the image can look a little blurred at times as the resolution fluctuates. It's such a shame about the frame rate issues, as in every other way this is an impressive port. It may not look as nice as a super-PC equivalent, but it's still up there.

Another, and potentially bigger issue, though, depending on how online you are, is that the game seems to save your progress for online and offline activities separately. This means that if you are going portable without a connection to the internet for a time, you won't carry over your progress to your online save file, and vice versa. Oh dear. Let's hope this can be remedied with a patch, too.

Overall, then, a fantastic, almost endlessly playable collection of Hitman games have made the jump to Switch 2 with all content intact. But! It's not without its issues at launch. We need a patch or some sort of fix for the frame rate drops as soon as possible and the online/offline save problem really needs to be remedied somehow. We'll add a note here if such an update should materialise.