HITMAN: Episode Six - Hokkaido Hands-on Preview - It's Not over Yet

Episode Six, entitled 'Hokkaido', places Agent 47 in the GAMA Private Hospital and resort, located in Japan. Despite its peaceful Zen gardens and traditional hot leap/spa, this location has all the features that will make your time as Amanuensis 47 just that little bit more challenging. Whatever location that facilitates cut-edge technology is unremarkably accompanied by a lot of musculus and this one is no exception. Be prepared to think on your feet, react quickly and avert cartoon attending to yourself as you get closer to your target.

Now you may be thinking that all of that applies to the other five HITMAN episodes that you've played this flavour, and you lot'd be right. For the most part, Hokkaido gave us a very like feeling to the previous episodes: nosotros were terrified of getting caught simply we had a lot of fun. If yous enjoyed the balance of Flavour One, information technology'due south very likely that you'll also enjoy the finale as it builds on the best parts of the previous episodes and features a few boosted challenges.

As mentioned earlier, Io-Interactive have actually ramped upward the difficulty with this last mission gear up in Hokkaido. And so far, every HITMAN episode this season has allowed you to choose from a small option of gear and weapons before entering the mission. The Hokkaido episode starts y'all off inside the state-of-the-art GAMA Individual Hospital as 1 of their VIP patients. What makes GAMA so unique? KAI - the artificial intelligence that runs information technology. Each patient wears a robe fitted with a radio signal bit that grants them access to their rooms and various areas in the resort. Of course, you lot won't accept access to whatsoever of the truly interesting rooms when you starting time kickoff but given some time, you lot'll find a way to admission those out-of-bounds areas. And then, in light of the situation, players will brainstorm the episode without any weapons or gear.

Furthermore, the finale episode volition likewise feature a mission chosen 'Situs Inversus', which the programmer has advertised as "the culmination of everything players will accept learned in terms of both gameplay and story". Fans of the new episodic format of the series will notice references to previous episodes and will certainly appreciate the opportunities created by them. Due to the time that has passed since the release of the before episodes, these references are a nice touch on that volition refresh players' memories of what has happened over the class of the flavour. They as well provide a fleck of light sense of humor to situations in the game that would otherwise be quite intense and nerve-racking for the role player. In add-on, with regards to the gameplay in Episode Half-dozen, we tin ostend that information technology is slightly more challenging than some of the previous episodes.

Starting without whatsoever weapons or gear may make the actor feel equally though they are starting with a disadvantage; it definitely took u.s.a. some time to suit! Nonetheless, this really proved to polish the skills that nosotros've learned playing HITMAN and encouraged u.s.a. to be far more than inquisitive in the new location. Patiently stalking strangers and ascertaining the perfect time to pounce has never been more important. Knowing the movements and plans of both targets forth with a number of others turned out to be our most precious weapon when we played, and after a few rounds of collecting information nosotros were able to finish the episode with a relatively clean record.

Despite not being able to say much nigh Hokkaido's targets, we really like the characters' stories and are very interested in learning more nearly them once the finale episode is released. Following suit with its predecessors, Episode Vi will besides utilise the Hokkaido location for diverse Elusive Targets, Escalation Contracts and Featured Contracts created by the customs. All weapon and gear unlocks from this episode will also exist available for utilize in previous locations.

There were a lot of negative reactions when Io-Interactive revealed their plans for an episodic Hitman game. Some people believed a Hitman game wouldn't work well as an episodic championship, whereas others were angry merely because they wanted to experience the game equally a whole, without having to wait for content. It didn't assist that Hitman'southward launch was plagued with a diverseness of problems relating to the ever-online aspect of the game - a feature that many people also had an upshot with.

Despite the rocky commencement, Io-Interactive have justified their actions by creating this unique version of Hitman. The add-on of the elusive target missions gives yous something that isn't possible without being always-online (beingness able to complete special missions that can only exist attempted once). Traditional Hitman games allow you to cease levels without thorough exploration and this is something that the latest game avoids, thanks to the episodic format. Each level contains a variety of missions featuring dissimilar targets, giving yous plenty more than to exercise in the sandboxes Io-Interactive place yous in. This Hitman game, more than than any other, teaches players to principal the game's mechanics, and its once you have a true command of Amanuensis 47 that you really start to relish HITMAN for what it is.

With Studio Head Hannes Seifert recently confirming that this title will keep to aggrandize in the hereafter, HITMAN'south journey isn't over even so. You tin can find out more than from the developers themselves in our interview with Creative Director Christian Elverdam.

HITMAN: Episode Six - Hokkaido is available now for $9.99 on PC (Steam), PlayStation 4 and Xbox Ane.