HITMAN (2016) 3 (2021) Notes

Continuing Agent 47’s story from the 2016 reboot-ish HITMAN, HITMAN (2016) 3 (2021), the all-caps sequel to HITMAN (2016) 2 (2018) from io interactive, is out. It’s still just as endearingly ridiculous as HITMAN (2016), but supposedly puts a cap on this trilogy.

There is a terrific game in HITMAN (2016) 3 (2021), some of the levels have fundamentally new modes of play that are surprising in what was for me just the constant ridiculousness of trying to make Agent 47 act normal as he fulfilled his mission objectives.

HITMAN (2016) 2 (2018) had the good idea of letting you play the 2016 game’s levels inside of the upgraded engine in addition to the new levels. That worked out well. Unfortunately, the third game in the trilogy is only available through the Epic Game Store on Windows and thus far the developers at io interactive have been unable to come up with a solution that lets player’s transfer their purchased game content from Steam. A solution is supposedly in the works, but until then the older games content is locked behind incredibly expensive DLC purchases of $60 for the base HITMAN (2016) 2 (2018) or $100 (!) for the “Gold” version of HITMAN (2016) 2 (2018) that includes all of the extra content from that game.

When a game is ported to another hardware and software platform there is always work involved to make the game work well, but frankly it is infuriating to boot up the latest HITMAN and be immediately with the opportunity to buy access to a game I already own that’s just on a different store on the same hardware platform.

I hope io interactive can fix this situation soon, Hitman (2016) 3 (2021) deserves to be evaluated for what it is, and right now the business deals the companies involved have made are ruining some of the fun.

Hitman (2016) 3 (2021) is available now on the Xbox One and Xbox Series X, Playstation 4 & 5, as well as a streamed version to the Nintendo Switch, and the aforementioned Epic Games Store on Windows. It costs anywhere from $60 to $90 depending on the edition.