The World of Assassination Tierlist

I've been putting off making these videos in sterilists feel like such a click betty thing to do but it also seems like a really good way to share my bad takes on each Mission so here I am don't expect a list itself to be at all carefully thought out I'll say my opinion and use mostly gut feel to feel the tears different things stand out to me in different missions so sometimes this might be more about the map and sometimes the mission itself while map layouts are important to me sometimes the setting might be the more interesting thing I have certain biases to watch the different games and it will probably show I really like the episodic release of Hitman 1 and played each of those missions a ton when they came out whereas when Hitman 2 came out I just rushed through it burned out on it and never got into the missions the same way then in Hitman 3 I maxed out Mastery in each Mission before moving on to the next one and got much more of the game that way but by then the gameplay obviously wasn't as fresh and exciting as it was in 2016. also I'm only going to include what I consider to be actual formation so no Sniper Assassin seasonal content or special assignments you can consider all that stuff to be in the don't give a crap tier below all other tiers so let's get started and let me know how much my opinions suck Bangkok going alphabetically first up is Bangkok and Club 27. I get the feeling that it's a fairly unpopular map but it does a few things that I really like first of all even if the hotel is fairly big it gives the map a really strong Focus which I much prefer over having like four or five Loosely connected zones or rather I have nothing against Maps having lots of zones but I think having the mission objectives be contained in one or maybe two areas makes for a much more cohesive mission secondly the story is pretty much perfect for Hitman a rockstar killed his girlfriend and got away with it now the girlfriend's parents seek Justice someone for some reason wants somebody dead it's a very simple and self-contained setup the atmosphere is also very nice and relaxed the song the band is recording is actually pretty good and sets the mood and while I usually don't like strong post-processing color filters the sunset orange was a good look for Bangkok and Isaiah was because in the 2016 Game of the Year update IO decided to change the lighting and the map immediately lost a big part of its identity as per other downsides besides the lighting change I think Ken Morgan is one of the worst Targets in the trilogy his Bass Loop is really uninteresting and getting him to leave it is tedious and requires too much effort for me to ever want to bother with even as a character he feels pointless his biggest contribution to the story is getting thrown out the window shortened Studio having only two entrances is mostly fine with me since I think it's all right that some areas are harder to reach than others but it must be said that that one Enforcer at the top of the stairs really sucks you know the one he doesn't even make you change your plans in any meaningful way just waste your time if you happen to be there at the wrong time but yeah I like Bangkok well enough its biggest downfall is that it's very similar to Paris but Paris does the same thing much better good map to start the list with us it's one of the most middle of the road all right missions in the trilogy the source out of all the bonus missions the source is probably the one I've gotten the least out of the atmosphere is nice enough but the mission itself just doesn't do anything for me for some reason the bonus missions only have one starting location each and in the source both the start and the exit are about as far away from the actual Mission area as possible which might be a small thing but it really doesn't help with the replayability overall I feel like it could have been saved by some downsizing have a starting location closer to the exhibition add a new exit to the Garden area and cut out one of the targets it could make for a fine smaller scale Mission similar to the icon or the final test but as it is it just feels padded so towards the bottom of the list it goes Berlin Berlin is hands down my favorite Mission from Hitman 3. the gimmick of choosing your target is great the CD Club location is great the weight unravels during the first playthrough is great even the way it ties in the main story is somewhat great I said I liked missions with a tight focus and Berlin kinda puts a Twist on that the club itself would be a decent Focus Point as is but the cool thing is that you don't even have to enter it if you want to focus on the exteriors or the bike or hang out the gimmick adds a stupid amount of replay value and makes a mission stand out from the rest it's such a good fit for Hitman it's also really awesome how the twist is presented on the first playthrough where the targets aren't marked and you have no starting gear that stuff would be extremely annoying to deal with every time but fortunately Hitman 3 IO figured out a way to make the first playthrough more impactful and memorable without sacrificing the replay value by making the more special features tied to the initial starting location as for the club itself as a setting I think it's exactly what the series needed at this point the trilogy had a serious lack of darker or I don't know trashy settings and Berlin added some of that it was starting to feel like 47's pay grade had gotten too high and biker clubs and hillbilly weddings were beneath him I guess the last thing to say about Berlin is that the story works better than expected I never gave a crap about the main story and I'm sure there's some big important plot reason for the ICA ambushing 47 but it doesn't matter to me the setup works just fine even without full context to up to your map easily Carpathian Mountains this obviously belongs in the bottom tier but that's because the bottom tier isn't for terrible Maps but for special mentions it's pointless trying to directly compare the train to the normal sandbox levels and that's what I like about it modern Hitman has basically perfected the concept of a huge sandbox level but those do get repetitive and I can get behind anything that tries to deviate from the form it's a real shame that people have come to expect every map to be massive and if that expectation isn't met the map is deemed awful and limited and a waste of a location at this point I'm glad the trilogy is done because I think there are now more than enough of these giant maps and I think it's high time for the series to take a break and let some new ideas emerge Hitman contract is my favorite game in the series and one reason why is because it has some really cool and unique missions mixed in just think of the escape in Asylum aftermath or the multiple AI factions in deadly cargo or slaying a dragon which is the best sniper mission in the series modern Hitman doesn't have variety like that and whenever there is an attempt to add some people seem to universally hate it but yeah even if I like what this map is adding to the game as a whole the train really is excessively linear I also wish it didn't have the rating system and embrace the action inside of Hitman like Requiem from blood money or Redemption at gondrano from Hitman 2. which on an unrelated note is easily my favorite final mission in the series and one of the best missions from Hitman 2. even though it's mostly a shootout it's one of those missions that took a risk by not following the usual formula and made it to work Carpathian Mountains was never going to live up to that due to its linearity but by not having the rating system enabled it could have at least been in the running seems like IO just didn't have the courage to disable the ratings even though they didn't serve the mission at all Chongqing as far as the visuals and atmosphere go the streets are some of my favorite areas in the trilogy like Berlin I think Chongqing added that darker mood that I like and that was missing and the music also adds to that I don't feel strongly about most of the music in these games but chonching was one of the highlights gameplay Wise It's a fairly average map except the drum camera gimmick holds it back and makes the ICA facility needlessly annoying to Traverse it's like IO added to camera as an item and just head to shoehorn it somewhere where it didn't belong so it wouldn't seem completely pointless they already had a perfectly good door gimmick in Hokkaido and that didn't require equipping items and zooming in on locks it doesn't even make any sense that you have to hack the locks when the dongles you need are supposed to work as keys to begin with remove that dumb mechanic and the map will probably go up a tier other than the visuals the biggest strength of Chongqing is actually the writing I really really do not like the story of world of assassination it's too personal with 47 meeting his long-lost brother but also two grand with the whole Illuminati Party Island stuff and neither side of the story works for me and ever since the twist in Colorado happened I've been unable to force myself to pay attention to it but Chongqing makes it work 47 is about to reveal the existence of the ICA to the world alright I don't have to know the details that led to that who the constant is or who the partners are or who's working for who I still understand what the stakes are and that's enough the ending is also well handled making the main story a bit with all the explosions only mandatory on the first playthrough was a really good move finally I must mention the woman in the rain looking for her friend like I said I don't like 47's personal stuff in the story and I don't think 47 is a very interesting character but that moment was wonderfully executed it's a completely inconsequential conversation but somehow it may be the best character building moment in the trilogy 47 is supposed to be this master of blending in so you expect him to be able to have a simple chat with another person but this is the first time it's actually shown where the 47 was showing actual empathy or acting is irrelevant it adds to the character either way she agreed to meet you in the middle of the night in the rain no one does that if they don't care I guess that's true that's true oh I feel like over asking her out now she's probably ruining her shoes in this weather just so we can get drinks maybe you can pick up the town that's a good idea conclusion it's all right Colorado Colorado is by a hefty margin my least favorite map in the trilogy but to its credit it is now a lot better than it used to be since IO added the option to use exits other than the tornado shelter after the first playthrough huge Improvement but sadly the rest of the map still kinda sucks the big interesting twist is supposed to be that the entire map is a hostile area but I think even on my first playthrough it took me less than a minute to get into a disguise that gave me access to 70 of the map it's cool that doing a suit only run is an actual challenge but compared to the classic games the area really doesn't feel all that hostile the thing is in Hitman 2 and contracts you only had an imprecise indicator to let you know if you're about to be spotted and it's made for some really tense moments one of the most Hitman defining moments for me is intubate torpedo where you have to disguise yourself as a soldier to get past other soldiers in very narrow corridors the indicator goes nuts as you pass them and they might give you suspicious looks and all you can do about it is keep walking there's almost nothing to hide behind you can't run because that's more suspicious you don't even want to turn around and check if they're following you because that might be suspicious I'm actually still not 100 sure if you are more likely to get recognized from the front but I choose to believe you are because that makes the game more suspenseful the classic system simply adds way more attention compared to the current system where you always know who's spotting you who even can spot you and how close to being spotted you are I'm not saying one system is better than the other they just offer different levels of information transparency and serve different purposes Mark of the Ninja is a great stealth game because it gives you a ton of information and makes you feel powerful but alien isolation is great because it does the opposite and makes you feel weak modern Hitman leans heavily in the mark of the Ninja's Direction which unfortunately means that hostile areas like Colorado fall flat and don't feel threatening the enemy is always trapped in the room with you rather than the other way around a lack of tension aside the map itself is almost completely flat making it boring to navigate the targets are uninteresting and there are too many of them making replays exhausting and Visually the location is dull even the different disguises look similar given how the detection mechanics don't support the premise of a hostile area and the area itself has limited exploration options I don't think this one ever had much of a chance the vector also known as the better Colorado mission I actually really like this one figuring out who the targets are based on the clues is fun about as many times as there are challenges for it but the best part is setting off explosions to make the targets flee and improvising a plan from there it's like a highly replayable minigame it's obviously pointless comparing the vector to normal missions so it'll go into special mentions but I will compare it to the other sniper stuff it absolutely wipes the floors with the grindy Sniper Assassin map so much so that I'm surprised that those came out after vector but the older mission is like Saint Petersburg Stakeout or slaying a dragon are still much better because their actual normal missions where sniping just happens to be a very good option but you are never forced to do it back to vector unfortunately in an update someone decided to add a pointless tree right between the sniper's nest and the main target so if you want to go for a quick accident kill you have to do it blindly there was no need to prevent such a kill and the tree doesn't even do that it only makes it more annoying it's not enough to spoil the mission but yet another entry in the list of things IO has changed over the years for the wars for no apparent reason Dartmoor well focused around the manner only one Target and a secondary objective that can be completed in a couple of ways and the murder mystery set up with a fitting amount of characters all good things and I don't have much bad to say about the map layout either except maybe that the climbing routes outside the building are somewhat convoluted and that overall weldingford manner which Dartmoor is clearly paying homage to has a more interesting layout compared to bellingford Manor the Mansion surroundings feel a little Bland in a building first manner you had a stable a candle a wine cellar and Tall hedge maze while in Dartmoor all you get is a small burial site and a lifeless Garden building fort is also much more atmospheric as is often the case with contracts missions and the storyline about British Lords going on a hunt is much more interesting than dartmoore's murder mystery and that mystery is very much at the center of the mission which is unfortunate since Diana so gracefully spoils the whole thing my approach to solving it for the first time was to gather all the evidence and interrogate everyone then take a good look at everything I've gathered at once and Diana's non-stop talking was merely annoying during most of the investigation but when I found a certain key piece of evidence she immediately announced who the killer was before I had even given any thought to it myself the idea behind the investigation was promising but the execution didn't live up to the concept the gimmick may be a flop and building for manner may be the better Mission but I still rank guard more pretty high because having a strong Focus point is important to me and I appreciate the map having a smaller scale with a secondary objective that isn't too intrusive Dubai Dubai is a weird one because on one hand it might have one of the best put together layouts with its large building with tons of verticality and interconnected spots but on the other hand it feels a bit seen had it been a Hitman 2016 Mission I'd put it straight into the top tier but since it's a Hitman 3 mission and thus about 5 years late to the party it ends up being just another great mission that sadly doesn't bring in anything new it's a textbook example of what a modern hit animation is like and IO wrote that textbook so it's hard to be too critical if bangkok's biggest flaw was being a worse Paris Dubai's floor is being a late Paris Haven island and New York I can't talk about Haven without also talking about New York given how I first experienced his Hitman 2 DLC maps by the time I was done with Hitman 2's main story I was completely burnt out on the game it wasn't different enough from Hitman 2016 to feel fresh and the maps releasing at the same time caused me to grow tired of the whole thing faster then after a few months the New York Bank Mission was released and actually felt a bit different completely indoors tightly contained only one Target and a secondary objective with options it also had some stuff I wasn't too into like the target being very isolated in a floor that orderly doesn't even have a bathroom in it they're not being a more chaotic option involving the robbers and the secondary objective getting old a little too fast but overall it felt like a new addition to the series and I had a good time with it then a few more months later Haven island came out and the contrast to the bank couldn't have been bigger as in it brought in nothing new as just shown in Dubai's case not every map has to reinvent the wheel to be good but Haven felt like a repeat of missions that weren't top-notch to begin with the layout and objectives reminded me too much of Santa Fortuna and Mumbai which we'll get to later and Visually it Blended together with the better tropical looking locations of Miami and Sapienza I actually struggled to complete the mission even once because it bored me so much eventually I did force myself to grind to Mastery level 20 to see if there was something to it that I wasn't seeing and I still got nothing out of it maybe some of the targets are more likable than most but that's about it the most original thing Haven had going for it was that there was kind of a storm Rising during the mission but what a letdown that was the storm always starts after two of the three targets are dead so it doesn't feel natural and the effects of it are just sad a tiny bit of wind and a blue filter does not make a storm and even the NPCs seem to realize that as their behavior does not change one bit I may be overriding New York and underrating Haven but as far as my experiences go they really are Polar Opposites Hawkes Bay Hawks Bay obviously it's a special mention just like Carpathian Mountains it gets a lot of hate just because it's not stupidly big yet it's actually a decent mission for what it's worth the way the NPCs show up only after you've infiltrated to building is a pretty cool twist that pushes you into a corner and at least on the first playthrough it's an interesting surprise normally I prefer targets whose Loops are fairly short but easily manipulatable like Caruso and zapienza but because Hawks Bay isn't meant to be another massive sandbox that you replay infinitely it's a good place for a Target who doesn't really have a loop but just a routine with a start and an end what I don't like about hawks Bay is that it's trying too much to be a tutorial which is unnecessary because a good tutorial already existed it also doesn't help that the scripted exit doesn't work properly in its current state and even when the exit does work it's pretty weak sneaking through the beach is neat but the scripted section with the guards by the boat isn't Fun after the first playthrough if a car ride outside the house had been an alternative exit Point that's well guarded and maybe requires a key while the boat just requires getting across the beach that could have been awesome Hokkaido Hokkaido is pretty close to being the perfect map the way it's interconnected and fairly small with little to no waste of space and a good variety of areas makes it very enjoyable to navigate and the door gimmick is a perfect fit for Hitman having disguised as double as Keys feels intuitive makes the map feel more unique and gives it a strong identity as for the targets soldiers is just about the ideal secondary objective as there are multiple elaborate kilometers to explore but also some very simple and fast ones that prevent the mission from getting tedious after multiple playthroughs yamasaki is the weaker of targets since her Loop is on the longer side and it always starts from the elevator it's easy to get stuck waiting for her to get to where she is needed the only major criticism I have of Hokkaido is that Loadout slots are locked behind Mastery level 20. not having any gear is a good challenge for the first playthrough but means that getting to level 20 and making the map as good as it can be can be a frustrating grind given how Maps like Miami Berlin and Chongqing have limitations only on the first playthrough and how Colorado was retroactively changed I hope Hokkaido eventually receives an update to bring it more in line with the other Maps still it's one of the best maps in the series pacing zero Payson 0 could rank pretty high in the list but it really is more deserving of a special mention than anything else in general I love the idea of reusing odd locations in New emissions but even more so when they do something creative that would likely be too risky to try in a main mission like the infection mechanic in patient zero if the infection could have started spreading in different ways depending on your actions on preventing the spread altogether had been harder the mission could have been even better but as it is it's still my favorite of the bonus missions and I applaud IO for taking a chance and adding such a unique gimmick freeform training tutorials in classic Hitman games were always pretty terrible to the point where they would do more harm than good by giving new players the wrong impression of how the mission should be approached a linear tutorial that effectively just goes through the controls doesn't help much when the rest of the missions are open at the puzzles and freeform training is the only tutorial I can think of that does a good job teaching the correct mindset I've seen several people give up on blood money because they've been misled by the tutorial into thinking it's a linear action game and have no idea how to even get started on the first real mission free from training does the opposite and it makes damn sure you understand that the game is about freedom of approach and replayability it's a normal Mission it's on the limited side especially since it for some reason doesn't have a Loadout or a rating screen but it is maybe the best tutorial I've seen in any game and for that it deserves a special mention the final test compared to freeform training the final test is a lot closer to a typical Mission and basically just works as a tutorial on Mission stories and again not being able to bring in a custom Loadout feels like such an obvious missed opportunity I like small missions and the final test is a decent one but after free from training it feels redundant as a tutorial and compared to normal missions It suffers from having too much focus on Mission stories and the general feel of being a tutorial it's nice that there's a smaller scale Mission before Paris but I don't think it needed to be another tutorial of scale I really really dislike the setting of Isle of scale the whole Illuminati product line didn't work for me at all and scale was all about rubbing it in your face with the secret Castle on an island and the super rich talking about escaping the planet it's the sort of thing that would be amusing coming from a random conspiracy not in another mission but listening to the dialogue actually in the level just makes me cringe and considering how weird the mission setup itself is it's kind of astonishing that the targets are still so forgettable not a single thing about them has stuck to my mind except that they are very similar to one another the map itself doesn't appeal to me either even if there technically are many different areas they all just feel like Castle to me and I cannot wrap my mind around what leads wear it also doesn't help that while indoors it's hard to keep track of where you are in relation to any landmarks and while climbing around the exteriors all look alike I'm sure there are plenty of ways to Traverse scale but I've not been able to learn them at least 47's increased climbing speed in Hitman 3 makes the map a bit more tolerable maybe I just lack a sense of direction and have a poor taste in writing but Isle of scale is one of my least favorite maps in the trilogy Marrakesh I consider Marrakesh to be the second weakest map from Hitman 2016. definitely better than Colorado but also definitely worse than Bangkok the issue is the map layout that has each of the key areas in the opposite corners of the map meaning that you can only approach them in limited number of ways and moving between them is uninteresting and time consuming the key areas themselves aren't great either while I like the mood in the consulate building the layout could use another path between floors the main staircase is being covered by Frisk checks and an enforcer means that I always choose the completely unguarded stairs in the back when going up it's not that it's too much trouble to use the stairs in the back but it does make the map feel more limited when one option is clearly so much better than the other the school has a few more ways around it but calling it an interesting area would be a stretch then there's the large poorly utilized area between the main fortresses with many overlapping music tracks large crowds and shouting Merchants the atmosphere is just too noisy and unpleasant in a way I can respect how distinct it feels and how it captures the feel of a busy Market but at the same time I don't want to be there the map is not pleasant to look at either but since the games of the year update added an ugly and generic orange filter on top of everything I could go on about how that update was a visual downgrade but the awful Lighting in this game is a whole other topic an American Bangkok where I think the biggest victims of the update but even with the original lighting Marrakesh would belong in the bottom half of the list a house built on sand a house built inside pretty much fixes the biggest issues of a gilded gauge and is easily the better of the Maracas missions the cafe and its surroundings are more interesting than either the school or the consulate and the nighttime atmosphere makes the market area much more pleasant to be in like all bonus missions I think it could use more starting locations but that's really the biggest criticism I have based on my somewhat limited time with it it's nothing spectacular but a quality Mission with a nice and compact scale that makes a good use of an existing map the kind of bonus mission that trilogy could use more of also one thing I like about both America's missions is that the hits themselves are a good fit for Hitman in a gilded cage a greedy construction company wants to prevent a coup to protect their own contracts and in a house build on Sand the same company wants to stop internal documents from being leaked the crew Arc is maybe a bit over the top but overall the setups work and give a decent justification for revisiting the same city which I think is unnecessary but appreciated nonetheless Mendoza it took me a while to warm up to Mendoza as it feels fairly standard compared to Maps like Berlin or jonjin but as a standard map it's a good one the areas feel distinct from one another but still connect in a cohesive way that makes the map enjoyable to explore and that's typically what you want from a Hitman map the setting also feels like a good fit for a final animation of the game an exclusive party for the reaching powerful where people talk about conspiracies feels like the Isle of scale but without being excessively dumb other than being kind of standard I don't have much to criticize except maybe the targets and reasons for the assassinations being very forgettable but to me that's been a common problem ever since Hitman 2. it's a fine Mission but it doesn't stand out from the rest Miami Miami is hands down my favorite Mission from Hitman 2. like I said I like compact missions and while Miami as a whole is Big the focus of it is largely on the kronstadt building the map is effectively split into two halves by the racetrack one having all the heavily populated race related stuff like the pizza stands and the other having the kronstadt building and some sparsely populated Exteriors there's a lot to do in the race set of the map mostly involving different ways to deal with Sierra but after you're done with all that you can in a way turn Sierra into a secondary objective by quickly shooting at the car and complete the mission without even leaving the kronstar building Sierra is a lot like sodas in Hokkaido as you get both the complex Mission story kills but also the option to skip all of it if you feel like it Miami manages to be a large and elaborate map with Rich with opportunities and crowds while also being a tightly focused map that's easy to come back to you for a quick playthrough it's got the best of both worlds and does both things well while also being aesthetically pleasing so to me Miami is clearly a top tier map Mumbai at first I was really impressed by Mumbai because of the sheer size and complexity of it and the different ways the targets could interact with one another and the Second Assassin But as time went on I started to notice that Mumbai is one of the missions that I'm least likely to ever go back to while each of the areas the targets are in are more interesting than the ones in Marrakesh they're still the problem of the targets being spread really far apart it also doesn't help that locating the Maelstrom gets tedious on later playthroughs and I hope Mumbai gets an update to bring it more in line with the Berlin I think it would massively help mumbai's replayability if there was an option to see the Maelstrom from the start but what I think would help even more is if you could just choose two of the three targets to kill and let the third one be optional the different parts of the map feel elaborate enough for it and you would get a choice in which ones to explore during any given playthrough always having to go for all three effectively forces you to either go through the entire massive map or go for a scripted Mission story that isn't that interesting after doing it once in a way moonpa is an incredible map but overall I just find it too exhausting to replay Paris there may be some bias here since Paris was the first map to come out and was the one to set the very high initial standards for the rest of the trilogy but I still think it's without any doubt a top tier map the really awesome thing about it is that despite being one of the bigger Maps it manages to both have the mission utilize most of the space and still feel compact the reason behind it is that instead of being wide and spread out the palace has four stories that are reasonably sized and have lots of ways to move between them no matter where you are on the map and where you want to get to you almost always have multiple fast and safe options to choose from some could say that it makes the mission too easy but I don't see it that way at all you can always make an easy and open-ended Mission more difficult by adding your own challenges but you can't turn a restrictive Mission into an open-ended one Paris has the same good qualities as a new life from blood money does and I consider that to be the best mission in the series they're both densely packed with opportunities easy and fasting Traverse and as a result extremely replayable even by Hitman standards also the starting location balance is exceptionally good in Paris maybe partially because the map itself is so easy good amount of the location start in the suit including the auction which I think is a really nice way to start while already infiltrated but without the disguise it's also the only starting location that gives any sort of free access to the top floor and even then only a small part of it another small restriction I like is that none of the starting locations give you a disguise that allows openly carrying weapons it doesn't make a huge difference to the gameplay but it does make the guard disguises feel a bit more prestigious much like the other early missions the story setup is nice and self-contained and the targets aren't tied to the larger storyline personally I didn't think paris's misx plot had as much character to it as something like Club 27 but it was still a very good fit for Hitman regarding the targets I must say I really like how each one only has one person following them and they're not just generic bodyguards gallia's guard isn't a guard at all and the simple fact that I remember that Victor's bodyguard's name is Kurt already shows that he's more of a character than the generic guards there really isn't much to dislike about Paris I guess everyone in the Attic being an enforcer doesn't make much sense nor just a more recently added Outdoors Enforcer the music is maybe a bit too loud any negatives I can think of are just nitpicks Santa Fortuna much like Mumbai Santa Fortuna has three targets spread wide across the map and much like Mumbai its detrimental to the mission to me Santa Fortuna is the most average and least memorable mission in Hitman 2. while all the other ones try to have some little gimmick to them be it a unique Target like in Miami or an atypical layout like in Wilton Creek or an extravagant setting like Isle of scale Center Fortuna really doesn't have much going on there is a bunch of somewhat self-contained biomes which makes me think that Santa Fortuna would be a good venue for some bonus missions but sadly the closest thing we got was a repurposed elusive Target maybe the main mission could have been only about Rico and Jorge leaving room for a bonus mission about Andrea I don't know if that could have worked but either way as it is the mission is just a big plate full of bland I like to think that being forgettable is worse than being bad so now I'll contradict Myself by ranking Center for tuna above Isle of scale even if I'm more likely to remember Isle of scale when talking about Hitman 2 I'm more likely to actually replay Santa Fortuna Sapienza if I was doing this strictly by location rather than by Mission which I know is very confusing to Immunology so sorry about that Sapienza would be in its own separate tier above everything else I'm a big fan of reusing maps in different ways and having multiple missions that utilize remixed versions of maps and it's a huge shame that there are so few of those in the trilogy Sapienza however has three alternative versions on top of the main mission which is why I rank it so highly among video game levels in general in that regard the only thing I can think of that Rivals it is Metal Gear Solid 5 ground zeros which has six missions on top of the main mission and makes excellent use of the military compound as for the World of Tomorrow variant of Sapienza it's again one of those well-focused missions that I like even if the map is Big most of the important events take place at the Caruso Mansion where you also get to play around with one of the most fun Targets in the trilogy Silvio Caruso his core Loop is very short just going between the study and the golf course but the ways you can manipulate him make him a standout Target making him move by activating the observatory Ring The Dinner Bell or just making him Panic are all quick and easy to do from many parts of the map and that opens the map up for Creative experimentation and he's not just a fun Target from a gameplay perspective but also one of the more memorable characters in one of the more intriguing story setups the backstory about a stockholder wanting to end Caruso's work for ethical reasons is up there with Club 27 when it comes to good self-contained Hitman stories and Caruso is an interesting character with his neurotic personality and mother issues this is excellent my mother's recipe got it right in the end destroying the virus is clearly something of a repetitive low point for the mission but since you can deal with it in a few different simple ways I don't think it's that big of an issue and I think IO also realizes it's the weakest part of the mission since I know they know about a glitch that allows you to jump off a ledge in the lab slightly speeding up the process and I also know they have no intention of fixing that glitch even though they've fixed similar things in the past but on that small anecdote I'll just place the Pienza in the top tier the icon and the landslide the first two sapiens of bonus missions are best compared to one another as they both have a single Target and are heavy unscripted kills animation stories the icon was the first bonus mission to come out and its smaller scope was pretty underwhelming at the time but it has since grown on me specifically because it's small you don't need a whole village for a mission with a single Target and that's one of the reasons why the icon works better than landslide in Landslide the target's Loop is pretty long and the kill opportunities are far apart and often come with a lot of dialogue meaning that you often end up waiting for things to happen rather than actively doing something in these missions with only one objective you can't even plan very far ahead while you wait so the icon's smaller area is an advantage I'm not a huge fan of either of the targets as characters but Bosco in the icon at least makes an effort to stand out being a cartoony [ __ ] is not much of an improvement over being an evil cartoon villain but we have far fewer though so I'll consider it a win the gimmick of having a moderately bulletproof outfit is also a small plus even if it makes little difference in practice on Final note about Landslide I can't ignore some of the weird design oversights the upper half has why does 47 have the key to his Hideout but not the apartment building itself is anyone ever going to bother using the car exit when getting the key to it is such a hassle maybe the mission would have been better had it just stuck to the beach area both these missions are similar to the final test and of those small scale one-target missions I'd say the icon is the best one the author the author is perhaps my favorite of the bonus missions at least if we stick to the more standard ones nice smoothie atmosphere good use of space and areas that the other missions didn't Focus much on and being able to disguise as either of the targets is a Twist that I think would probably be weakly forgotten in a larger Mission but works to add flavor in a smaller one a little thing I especially like is that the targets are set to meet at midnight and you can either wait for the right time or shoot the church bell to trigger it early it's right up there with the observatory and The Dinner Bell in World of Tomorrow as one of the best ways to manipulate Targets in the trilogy I'm just a big fan of distractions that are unique have immediate effects and can be easily triggered from a lot of areas I may be overrating this a bit but I do think it's a prime example of a quality bonus mission that doesn't rely on major gimmicks this is what I wish the trilogy had more of whittleton Creek I really like how much Wilton Creek's layout stands out from all the other Maps the handful of small buildings with identical layouts on a grid feels very different from the more sprawling maps and all the houses still stand apart from one another overall it's a nice map to explore because there's a fair bit to discover but each area is small and contained so it's easy to take in without getting lost but it feels like IO struggled to make good use of the layout and a big part of the mission ends up being about looking for clues in random places for the secondary objective I can tell that they tried to avoid making the clues as restrictive as the virus in zapienza by having multiple ways to get each of the required Clues but ultimately I don't think it worked needing three different Clues Each of which can be acquired in three different ways initially sounds like a fair amount but after only a few playthroughs it's easy to start defaulting to the ones that are quick and easy to get and it becomes a chore in theory you could try to add variety by getting the other Clues but in practice that just feels like a worse way to complete the same chore and the chores don't end with the clues because out of the six exit locations only two are accessible without an extra item or disguise and those two are right next to one another I feel like making exiting the area a big part of the mission could maybe be interesting but the only times that has even somewhat worked have been in missions where on the first playthrough you have to do something special it just doesn't work when your options are to either spend 15 seconds thinking of a way to unlock an exit or to run for 15 seconds to another exit that's already unlocked finally whittleton Creek is one of the worst offenders when it comes to Diana not shutting up I probably find the handlers repeating the same lines on every playthrough more annoying than most people but surely I'm not alone in thinking that Diana elaborating on every clue every time is excessive in the end riddleton is a better map on paper than it is in practice maybe if the clues hadn't been so restrictive this could have been Hitman 2's standout map Ambrose Island since Ambrose Island came out much more recently than the rest of the missions it's probably the map I'm least familiar with but based on the limited time I've put into it I get the feeling that had it come out in 2016 it could be up there with Paris Sapienza and Hokkaido unfortunately it came out about six years too late and by then the world of assassination formula was very much running out of juice and Ambrose couldn't change that much like Dubai I can recognize that it's a well put together Mission but this far into the series that alone isn't enough to make it stand out an unexpectedly good part of the mission is dealing with the satellite control unit which feels like IO wanting to have another go at the Sapienza virus and it worked compared to the virus there are more worthwhile approaches including getting two access keys from the Target and arrangement it's a good option but I wish the henchman was not so close to the control unit so skipping the area entirely was viable while there are a couple of ways to avoid going into the cave they still require going to the ruins above which I think are the weakest part of the map it's not a large area but the way it consists of narrow similar looking corridors and has no good landmarks still makes it annoying to navigate beyond that I'm Bros pretty much checks all the boxes for a good map plenty of ways to Traverse the map well-balanced disguises none of which give you access everywhere good set of starting locations none of which start you as a guard which I like plenty of exits even if some require a pointless extra step of using the GPS tracker and some interesting ways to manipulate the targets it's another textbook example of a good Hitman map which can be either a good or a bad thing at this point a good map is always a good map but after three games it is a little unexciting and at least I'd personally prefer something a little less familiar and that's that to both of you who watch the whole thing thank you and to the rest of you who Skip to the end to see the complete list thank you but not as much I'll try to not waste this much effort on low quality clickbait in the future and maybe do something a little more substantial a Payday 2 review thing is something I'd like to make before the world ends as I think it's massively underrated as a stealth game

Channel: TheKotti

Views: 127,869

Keywords: hitman, world of assassination, tierlist, tier list, hitman 3, hitman 2016, hitman 2, ranking

Id: fPHReUwOTK0

Length: 44min 33sec (2673 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 22 2023