Hitman Go a puzzle game spinoff of the Hitman series which was a stealth game series developed by IO Interactive. The Hitman games had you playing as Agent 47 who was an assassin who had to use his stealth abilities, disguises and also take out his target without alerting others and Hitman 2 Silent Assassin and some of the more recent Hitman games today where actually pretty good games. Hitman GO takes the Hitman license and it turned into puzzle game with the looks of a board game like Chess. It was originally developed in 2014 by Square Enix for iOS and tablet devices before being released on PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation Vita two years later. On the surface it might be a simple puzzle game with a nice board game like design to it that attempts to translate the gameplay of the Hitman games into a puzzle game aimed mostly at a casual gaming market and it does it decently but at times it suffers from some uneven difficulty spikes and over issues at times.
The game is a turn based puzzle game where the controls of the game are tiled based and on the board you make a move on the board by one space and the enemies then move one space as well. The goal is to reach the exit marker on the map without being taking out by an enemy piece on the board. You can use many of the pieces on the board which can be used to your advantage against enemy pieces such as cans to distract enemies, dual pistols which take out some enemies on spaces from a distance, a sniper rifle which takes out anything on one space, spaces where you can move between trapdoors to evade enemies, a statue that you can take out to squash enemies and block off a path, using different colour disguises to hide among the right coloured enemy and trees that let you hide from an enemy. You can assassinate enemies by moving onto their nodes without them getting the drop on you.
Most of the levels simply require you to make it to the end of the stage without being taking out by the enemy but some missions require you to assassinate a marked target to end it. Many of the levels requires you to think and plan before you make a move, many of the later levels become a bit challenging and throw more enemies and some other challenges as well. There are some levels where there is a Briefcase that you can pick up and also some challenges like Kill all Enemies, avoid killing dogs or go through a stage within a set number of turns add extra challenge forcing you to think more carefully about your next move. After completing a level you are given a medal for completing the level as well as doing other challenges and thankfully you can replay the stage again to complete the other stage's challenges and the more medals you get the other levels will unlock.
For the most part the game is very simple to pick up, the puzzles start out easy enough but later do become challenging as you progress. The controls work well on the PSVita version when I played the game as the D-Pad provides perfect precision with the game's movement on these grid based areas. The performance is smooth and well optimized even on PSVita, the load times are short and the graphics for what the game is aiming for with it's board game look is pretty good and it kind of makes you think that there should be Hitman Board Games like that in real life and the soundtrack for what little there is is pretty good.
It also translates the gameplay style of the Hitman series into a board game perfectly. The Hitman games are always about relaying on stealth tactics, making use of the environment, using disguises and taking out enemies covertly without alerting anyone or getting spotted. You could also go in guns blazing but most of the time it makes missions harder as enemies would then swarm your position which alerts everyone including the target that you are after which then afterwards he would get away resulting in a Mission Failed or cause enemies with assault rifles, sniper rifles and shotguns to gun you down quickly even on easier difficulties. Stealth is a most in a Hitman game and you aren't going to get very far just relaying on brutal aggressive tactics. This is something that Hitman Go manages to translate very well into a board game and it is pretty impressive to see it play in such a form.
The game does have some issues though, some of the levels have a tendency of uneven difficulty at times which results in a fair amount of trial and error. The main issue is that sometimes you can put yourself into impossible situations rather easily, the guys moving around on patrol are the worst offenders of the lot where they can move around and can cut you off forcing to back away and often times for me I ended up being back into spaces resulting in me losing a stage. Some levels have you avoiding snipers and unless you move in time with one of the enemies to block the sniper from shooting you are never going to pass at all, straight up getting murdered the moment you are within sights. Plenty of levels later on especially half way through the game till the end force you to try and lure enemies away from their posts so that you try and get through and because of the grid based movement you can find yourself totally screwed. You can often distract enemies at the wrong easily also and that has also led to my death a few times during my run of the game though. Once you make it past a difficult stage you are then back to an Easy Stage to play and then you are then thrown to another difficult challenge afterwards, it's just that paced at times. Also during my run I did come across a bug where the music bugged out and broke itself into screeches forcing me to mute the system on one of the levels till I finished the level and it fixed itself up. Lastly I noticed that when 47 steps on the dual pistols and dual wielding in both hands in a sideways formation he doesn't hit enemies on all 4 sides of him. Dispute the inconsistent difficulty spikes, the puzzles are addictive and can mostly be fun to solve, thankfully if you ever get stuck on a puzzle you can activate Hint Mode where it literally handholds you and tells you how to progress through a stage. On the mobile versions the hints costed real money to do it but you don't do that on the console version. The Trophies on the PlayStation 4/PSVita versions do encourage you not to use Hints and it does feel rewarding to finally accomplish a challenging level.
For the price they are charging for it in digital stores Hitman Go is honestly hard to fault. Buying it cheap in the PSN Store not only lets you play the PlayStation 4 version but also the PSVita version as well. If you are a causal player who enjoys puzzle games and really like the translation of Hitman into a board game like puzzle game then this is the game for you. The Definitive Edition on the PS4 and PSVita adds more levels which are Paris Opera from Hitman Blood Money and the St. Petersburg Stakeout from Hitman 2 Silent Assassin as well as updated visuals for the platforms. It's a good puzzle game carrying what gamers liked about the Hitman series and even though it has some inconsistent difficulty spikes throughout it's a pretty fun time killer and a mostly simple Platinum Trophy for PlayStation Trophies and also fans of the Hitman franchise.
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Game Score: 7.0/10
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Game Title: Hitman Go
Platform: PlayStation 4/PlayStation Vita
Developer: Square Enix
Genre: Puzzle
Age Rating: PEGI: 7+
Release Date: 2nd March 2016 (Europe)
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The Good Points:
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Impressive Board Game like graphics
Plenty of great and challenging puzzles
Translates the Hitman franchise stealth gameplay into a board game like puzzle game
The Bad Points:
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Minor sound glitches
Some uneven difficulty spikes throughout
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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