The game is a third person stealth game, like the others in the series, and once again, the player takes on control of Agent 47, who must travel the world, completing missions as he works towards his ultimate targets.

As always, the storyline is absorbing, as are the diverse locations (see below for details), and there is plenty of action, adventure, betrayal and extremes of loyalty to keep you engaged and invested in getting Agent 47 to the bottom of who is behind the mysterious contracts he keeps receiving.

The missions are engaging and you have a huge choice of methods of murder, from posing as a waiter and serving your target some poisoned wine, or luring them into out of the way area so you can do your thing. Replaying levels allows you to try different modes and methods, which is both satisfying rewarding but also fun to see just how lethal Agent 47 can be with something as mundane as a piece of fruit!

This boosts your experience and gains you valuable rewards, as well as increasing your overall play time, so there is literally nothing to lose by doing so. Agent 47, in this game, has a camera tool that helps him to spy on people in other rooms, hack into places where he is not meant to be and generally offer him a handy helping hand whenever he needs it.

Passcodes must be entered manually, in this game, rather than having it happen automatically as in other games, and the access codes to everything tend to be hidden somewhere nearby, so Agent 47 must carefully and thoroughly examine the surroundings – and do it without losing his stealthiness!

Some Extra Details

The visuals are amazing especially as regarding the light engine which works at optimum throughout the game, producing glorious sunrises and sunsets, but also authentic neon streetlighting, disco strobes and more. Scenes that would compelling and attractive anyway are somehow rendered even more so!

As far as modes of play are concerned, multiplayer mode is completely gone from this incarnation, Sniper Assassin is now single-player only, and Ghost Mode is now itself a ghost, having vanished entirely.

However, players can import maps, levels and progress into this game from its predecessor. For those ongoing fans of the series, there are plenty of nods to the other games in the series, with predecessors to people previously assassinated popping up as NPCs and provided fascinating snippets of gossip to eavesdrop upon as you stealth your way through the gatherings of the rich and famous – and usually villainously vile!

Any game with a basic premise about killing people could go dark, or it could go cheesy – and Hitman 3 has picked the latter option, making it a satisfyingly gory kill-fest that nevertheless never tips over into uncontrollable homicidal rage thanks to the quirky moments that provide a strong undercurrent of dark humour.

The sprawling sandbox setting gives you lots of latitude to wander off exploring and having mini-adventures and side quests, before getting back on track and hunting down your current target. Take your bald bar-coded assassin through mini-games like Elusive Target in which you get one chance to take out the target: you miss and they’re gone forever, get them and you get a nifty reward.

Escalations add degrees of challenge to the hitman making missions more challenging and more fun. In Contracts you design a hit yourself, and after you’ve completed it, it goes live for other players to try out. You will need a permanent online connection to play the game. You can play offline, but your progress and rewards will not be retained.