Hitman (2016)
Hitman is a 2016 shooter video game made by IO Interactive and Square Enix.
Agent 47 returns in a season structured as a series of episodes, each dropping him into a single, enormous location built for maximum replayability. Paris during a fashion show. A coastal Italian village. Marrakech during civil unrest. Each map is a sandbox puzzle where the target moves through a routine and the player finds the seams. The World of Assassination arc uses a spy-thriller frame but the real pleasure is the systems: the disguise logic, the accident kills, the escalating challenges that ask you to complete a hit with one hand tied behind your back.
Quick answers
What is Hitman about?
Agent 47 returns in a season structured as a series of episodes, each dropping him into a single, enormous location built for maximum replayability. Paris during a fashion show. A coastal Italian village. Marrakech during civil unrest. Each map is a sandbox puzzle where the target moves through a routine and the player finds the seams. The World of Assassination arc uses a spy-thriller frame but the real pleasure is the systems: the disguise logic, the accident kills, the escalating challenges that ask you to complete a hit with one hand tied behind your back.
When was Hitman released?
Hitman was released on 11 March 2016.
Who made Hitman?
Hitman was made by IO Interactive and Square Enix.
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Hitman in our writing
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- Companion guide: Assassins & Hitmen
- Companion guide: Secret Societies
- Companion guide: Shapeshifters
A few thoughts on Hitman
The Day of the Jackal TV series captures the same methodical, surveillance-heavy planning process of a professional working through hostile environments undetected. Polar strips the genre to a similar aesthetic coldness.
Contract killers and bounty hunters who never miss
Hitman is built around a professional who studies a target's routine and finds the one moment it breaks. The Day of the Jackal and Polar follow assassins with that same cold patience, The Punisher: One Last Kill and The Mandalorian and Grogu trade suits for guns-for-hire grit, and Assassination Classroom turns the premise into a sharp, funny school thriller.
Spies working undercover in glamorous, dangerous cities
Agent 47's disguise work turns Hitman into a spy game as much as an action one, and these picks share that same undercover thrill. Mata Hari lived the real version as a WWI-era spy, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan: Ghost War and Agent Kim Reactivated send agents into hostile territory, and Largo Winch runs a parallel game of corporate intrigue across glamorous cities.
Puzzle-box worlds where every target has a routine to exploit
Every Hitman map is a system to read: a target's habits, the guards' patrol lines, the one gap in the routine. Portal and Portal 2 reward that same kind of environmental problem-solving, Red Dead Redemption 2 builds its world from NPCs living out full daily schedules, and Sherlock Holmes turns observation itself into the puzzle.