Game Reviews

Hitman: Sniper - A game about shooting people in the face

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Hitman: Sniper - A game about shooting people in the face
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Hitman: Sniper is a game about shooting people in the face. And blowing them up with explosive gas cannisters, electrocuting them with dangling wires, and luring them to their doom with car alarms.

But mainly it's all about shooting. It tries to capture some of the body-hiding, sneaky silliness of the main Hitman series, but since you're always stood in the same spot, and you've only got a sniper rifle at your disposal, it never quite manages it.

Gallery of death

At its heart the game is an expansive gallery shooter. You're Agent 47, stood at a vantage point overlooking a complex of houses. You've got missions to complete, all of which involve picking off a specific target.

Along with that you've got other objectives to pad out the game. You might need to score a certain number of points without getting detected, score a moving headshot, or use one of the traps that the game allows you to set.

The controls are pretty simple. You tap on the screen to look down your scope, pinch to zoom while you're aiming, and then tap in the reticle to fire. You can set up a fire button if you'd prefer, and you probably will after about the seventh accidental shot.

There's a reload button that starts a little swipey QTE that lets you stuff bullets in your gun that little bit faster, and you unlock perks that let you slow down time or give you a better idea of where the guards and targets in the level are.

The traps and tricks in the level are probably the most interesting part of the game. You can lure guards by setting off car alarms, knock them off mountainsides by turning on giant fans, and shoot them just right so they fall into a jacuzzi.

But essentially these are different outcomes of the same action. You're still looking down your scope, popping out a shot, and taking things from there.

Shoot to fill

Not that there's anything wrong with that, and as gallery shooters go this is a highly polished and engaging one. It just feels like maybe it could have done a little more, and taken its more Hitman-y ideas that little bit further.

You'll still enjoy the time you spend taking pot-shots at identikit goons, and some of the more elaborate challenges will take you a while to complete, but at the end of the day you're still just zooming in and shooting things over and over and over.

Hitman: Sniper - A game about shooting people in the face

Hitman: Sniper is a solid, good looking gallery shooter, but the little sparks of genius here can't help but make you wonder what could have been
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Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.