Hitman Freelancer – Review

The rebranding of Hitman 3 as Hitman: World of Assassination coincided with the inclusion of Freelancer Mode, which gives players a chance to assume a different part in Agent 47’s backstory. Players join a roguelike mode where freedom is the core premise, effectively starting a fresh game.

We’ve known for a long what this method of play would look like from teasers. Some gamers were even invited to take part in a Closed Technical Test, where they provided comments that helped IO Interactive make improvements. What are the benefits of the new Freelancer Mode, and is it worthwhile to try out? What is it?

In Freelancer mode, players take on the role of a freelancer and take on several campaigns aimed at bringing down various criminal Syndicates. The primary goal is to expose every member of the Syndicate and then finish things off in a Showdown with the Syndicate’s boss. In this mode, you can buy weapons and freelancer tools using the currency, Merces, that you earn for completing missions.

Freelancer Mode also wipes the slate clean, if I left that part out. You can no longer go on missions armed with anything you choose. You’ll need to either scavenge for them as you kill enemies on the levels or spend your hard-earned Merces on them from the game’s new Suppliers, who will gladly hand up some beautiful firearms like Sniper Rifles, Pistols, and SMGs in exchange.

The way players interact with Hitman is fundamentally altered by this method alone. You need to accomplish missions successfully to gain Merces, and then you can buy the rest of the equipment you need. There is, however, a further qualification that must be made. If the operation ends in failure, whether the target escapes or is killed, you will lose the items you brought and some of your Merces.

Hitman: World of Assassination has a deceptively straightforward task structure at first, but it quickly becomes a test of the player’s ability to balance risk and reward. Players can choose from a wide range of missions with varying objectives in each campaign. Naturally, you’ll want to pick assignments that work with the stuff you have on hand or that you can buy with your Merces.

When playing, you won’t be left entirely exposed. There will be numerous containers depicted on each map, each of which can hold a different collection of objects. Noisemakers, some poisons, and even weapons of varied rarities are all available to you. You might even be able to unearth some hard-to-find weapons.

You can take one of three different Freelancer Tools with you on your next assignment if you complete all of the campaign’s missions. As a reward for defeating the Syndicate’s commander and completing the campaign, you will receive a random weapon that will remain at your disposal indefinitely (until you lose it by failing a mission, of course).

What I didn’t say before is that this could lead to one of the game’s severe punishments. The Freelancer Tools you have acquired will be deleted in the event that you do not win the campaign. Also, you will be reset to the beginning of the game and lose any progress you made in the other campaigns.

This failure state can be reached in one of two ways. The first is when your Showdown mission ends in failure and either you or the target dies. The second is when a mission is failed during High Alert. Each mission failure puts the Syndicate on High Alert, increasing the number of guards and dangers in your path and making it much more difficult to reach your intended target.

Nonetheless, a High Alert task may appear even if you succeed at the previous mission. Each subsequent campaign will increase the difficulty of its previous stages. You’ll start getting better Merces payouts to make up for this, though.

Let’s pretend you still aren’t satisfied after reading this, along with the additional objectives that appear anytime you select a mission. The Freelancer Mode’s Prestige Objectives offer a worthy challenge in this regard, letting you choose between three tasks that each have a sizable payoff if you complete them successfully. While it is not necessary to complete these side missions, it is rewarding to do so and watch the money roll in so you can purchase more powerful weaponry.

This is done so that your Freelancer mode Mastery can increase. Extending your safehouse and adding more rooms and furnishings becomes possible as you level up. This will allow you to provide 47 with a permanent residence. I won’t sugarcoat it: watching 47 take in the sights of his lovely home while engaged in other pursuits, such as fishing or gardening, is the highlight of playing Freelancer.

Every time you complete a task and return to your safehouse, you’ll find new hidden weaponry there for you to utilise. If you fail your current mission and lose all your weapons and Freelancer equipment, you will still have access to guns, fibre wires, and even homemade explosives/poisons indefinitely.

The safehouse itself is an exciting place to investigate. Indeed, when 47 engages in these pursuits, a profound sense of isolation washes over you. While Diana Burnwood is there with him, you will only be able to hear her voice when she briefs you on the assignment. Other from that, 47 will spend all of his time by himself, enjoying his comfortable house. His brother’s involvement in a conspiracy or organisation is no longer an option. This time, the focus is on Assassination Specialist 47 and his personal background in the field.

You may imagine, based on what I’ve said thus far, that I think this mode is a great way to further develop the World of Assassination. Freelancer Mode has a lot of problems, though, and they’re enough to put off even the game’s most seasoned veterans. At times, I find myself wondering if this form of play was ever put through any sort of playtesting before it was made available to the public.

To ease into things, let’s tackle the simple stuff first. From framedrops and stutters in areas where the game never struggled for me before (looking at you, Chonqing) to NPCs gaining the ability to walk through the air and summoning enforcers as soon as they are killed like it’s Cyberpunk 2077 all over again, this game mode is plagued by bugs affecting performance and even the game’s stability in general.

I was playing the game normally in Chonqing when, for no apparent reason, the scooters in the parking lot beside the arcade started catching fire and killing everyone in it, including me. I wish I had recorded that moment. One of the areas in the safehouse that can be redecorated contains a point that completely softlocks you from doing anything at all, forcing you to restart the entire scenario.

The spawn locations aren’t even a topic of conversation. Upon starting a task in Freelancer mode, the spawn location is chosen at random. They can be the very first spawn place, where you begin your task just as you would in a vanilla run of the game, or they can be a spawning point where you are surrounded by a lot of enforcers, where you will have to fight off heavy opposition before you can even begin executing your assignment.

I’ll give the mode the benefit of the doubt and say that this is a problem that exists in the original game as well. Yet, in vanilla mode, players might spawn wearing a mask to hide their true identities and play freely without fear of reprisal. In Freelancer, your options for dealing with security guards are limited to waiting for them to leave, taking cover if you are surrounded by guards, and bringing heavy armament with you, or being hauled out of the building due to trespassing. I can say with confidence that some Hitman fans would rather avoid that altogether.

I should have mentioned earlier that after completing the initial group of Syndicates in Freelancer, you will get access to Hardcore Mode. God forbid you play Freelancer in Hardcore Mode. Because to the extremely challenging nature of the maps in this mode, it is here that the game’s various faults and problems become most obvious (using NPC AI from the vanilla Hitman Master difficulty).

The sub-missions in a Hardcore mission are required in addition to the Prestige Objective you select. Also, you will no longer be able to see couriers or lootable boxes on the map, making it significantly more difficult to locate these resources unless you learn to recognise their unique noises.

The most frustrating aspect of this whole situation is undoubtedly the appearance of Prestige Goals that run counter to your primary mission’s stated goals. The most egregious of them was a mission in which I had to kill six guards and the target using Perfect Shooter (never miss your shots/only headshots), but my choice of Prestige Objective was between Melee Kills, Silent Assassin (no firearms), and Open Safe (explosion) in a stage with no safe.

The mission’s location in Whittleton Creek, a region rich in Melee weapon supplies, worked out well for me. There’s no way I could have completed this mission without your help. This is probably also the right moment to say that I collaborated on this review with my pal and fellow Hitman fan, Legon Avannor. You likely saw him in Perish. Both you and I have played through Hardcore Mode and felt the same excruciating suffering. However, props to him for being able to endure the mode through completion. It’s not like I have to go without my own set of highlights.

To be honest, the rewards for completing the missions are the same as in the regular mode, so the extra suffering is for nothing. However, unlike in Freelancer mode, clearing stages in Hardcore does not get you any additional weaponry. Did I mention that if you fail a mission in Hardcore mode, it goes on High Alert and you have to do the entire mission over again from the beginning?

The second screenshot up there is probably the best example of how many problems there are with Hitman Freelancer Mode. Take note of how, in Instinct mode, two outlines indicate that no enforcers are in the area, while the minimap reveals not only that there are many more NPCs close 47, but also that they are all enforcers with the exception of one guy who is a civilian regardless.

IO Interactive’s explanation that they abolished the penalty in Freelancer mode to make the game “accessible for players who suffer blackouts” doesn’t hold water with me. The fact that many dedicated players would have to resort to Alt+F4ing the game to obtain one chance at completing each campaign done in this mode is likely the reason why no penalty was imposed in the first place; doing so would make gamers very angry.

While that may be the case, all of these problems, defects, and malfunctions still affect the regular mode. Because of the enforcers, the random spawn points, the terrible NPC and objective placement (where you might get an objective spawned right next to you or at the other end of the map inside a hostile area full of enforcers), and everything else I’ve mentioned so far, you’ll probably lose your weapons and freelancer tools more often than you’d like.

Hitman Freelancer Mode has a fantastic idea, but it has been poorly implemented. It wasn’t the worst assassination experience I’ve had (hello, Colorado! ), but it certainly wasn’t the best, either. This is even stranger because they held a Closed Technical Test and trumpeted their intention to include player feedback gleaned from Hitman’s data and metrics.

So, why is this game mode incomplete and unpolished? IO Interactive fixed a few issues, including the inability to view which Missions contained a safe and the inability to change your Prestige Goal so… Just what is going on here?

Everyone who owns Hitman: World of Assassination may get the Freelancer Mode update right now for no additional cost. Hence, I can’t criticise the mode too much. After all, it achieves its goal of providing a great deal of freedom for Hitman players coupled with a new long-term goal that doesn’t stray too far from the original game’s spirit. This seems like the right direction for Hitman to go in, although it does require a lot more attention in the future.

Not to mention, I had a certain amount of fun using Freelancer. Occasionally I found myself enjoying this mode more than any of Hitman’s other primary game modes. Since it’s cost-free, you can give it a shot without much risk. After this, I’m going to head back to my fortified hideout and do some fishing.