During the barrage of third party games we got during the reveal of the Nintendo Switch 2, there were a few reveals where my reaction was simply, "Oh, that’s cool, but I’ve already played it elsewhere, so I’m not too bothered." I love Street Fighter 6, Elden Ring, and Final Fantasy 7 Remake, but when I have a PS5 or PC copy already, I don’t feel a huge draw to getting it again on Switch 2. But when IO Interactive showed up with Hitman, something clicked in me.
The Hitman: World of Assassination trilogy is one of the greatest games of all time in my eyes. Not only that, but it kept the stealth genre alive after Thief, Splinter Cell, and Metal Gear Solid were unceremoniously dumped by their publishers during the early 2010s. Even from the first game in the trilogy, it’s been something special, and its two sequels were just as excellent, with few duds (sorry, Marrakesh) across its 22 maps.
It's a hit, man
The core of Hitman is its suite of open sandbox missions, where you’re thrust into a location and you have a number of targets to kill. That's it. From there you’re free to do what you want. You could use a number of disguises to get close to your target and take them out at the right time; or beeline to take them out and try to boost out of there. Or you can follow one of IO’s Mission Stories, which act almost as a tutorial and give you a way to get near to the target – usually in some silly way, like Agent 47 pretending to be a drummer and inexplicably being incredible at it, or pretending to be a detective sent to investigate a death at a family manor.
But after that’s over with, Hitman has an almost Fortnite-level of things you can do. There are escalations, which are specific challenges that pick up in difficulty each time (round one will be to kill them; round 3 may be to kill them specifically with an axe while dressed as a flamingo, for example). Then there are player-made contracts which allow you to create your own rules and set up any NPC as a target. And the best of all is Freelancer mode, which turns the game into a roguelite and is one of the most moreish game modes ever made.
That level-based format is perfect for a handheld: picking the game up for a 30-minute run where you go in, take out a target, and then put it down again feels right at home for the Switch 2. That is, until you’re reminded of Hitman’s biggest flaws that have been present since the trilogy kicked off in 2016.
Should we have connected?
When Hitman: World of Assassination launched in 2016, it was an episodic affair where, over the course of the year, new levels would drop (this was just after the peak of Telltale games, after all). But along with the weird format was an always-online requirement, as the game would track your progress across each level, which in turn lets you use each level's specific unlocks. So if you were to play Hitman without a connection, you still have access to all of the missions, but none of your unlockables will be available, as the game tracks online and offline progress separately.
This makes the appeal of Hitman's Switch 2 debut moot. That pick-up-and-play formula is so great and fits a handheld perfectly, but when the game’s arbitrary always-online requirement means you can’t play it on the train or a flight, that perfect fit gets extremely loose. Always-online is a bummer regardless, especially in a single-player only game, but at least it makes sense when you factor in the likes of cross save… except there isn’t any.
The only ports I was truly interested in from that Switch 2 launch games list were Cyberpunk 2077 and Fortnite because I knew I would be able to continue what I’ve been doing on other platforms for years. In a game like Hitman, where a lot of the fun is doing individual challenges, maxing out your mastery of each map to get items you can then take anywhere, the prospect of having to do all that again makes that Switch 2 version a real bummer.
The Switch 2 is probably my favorite way to play Hitman, but it's also the version that brings out its glaring issues the most. The always-online requirement and lack of cross-progression that have plagued it since the beginning are especially bad on a platform you can take anywhere and a new platform for the game almost 10 years later. That’s the big issue with Hitman: World of Assassination on Switch 2 – it could be the perfect version of the game.
We've avoided detection to round up the best stealth games to play after Hitman
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