With the exception of three levels, the games are still too formulaic. Paint-by-the-numbers predictibility every time. Once, you had to be very careful about what you used and where. Now, with all of the overpowered mechanics and items at your disposal, you can breeze through any level with ease. It usually goes something like this:

• Pack a lockpick and some lethal or non-lethal poison
  
• Find the loud mouthed NPC who is loudly blurting out a way to easily eradicate the target. They're never hard to find (or hear)
  
• Take their clothes
  
• Put their naked body in the conveniently placed garbage bin / linen basket / wooden box nearby
  
• Find target
  
• Kill target using blurted out method
  
• Pretend to yourself that the next level will be different

There was one mission, 'Death In The Family' (England) where I thought I was in for a treat. It had 'Beldingford Manor' vibes all over it. Nah. You can just walk by the gate, walk up every conveniently placed climbable surface leading to the house, reach the house, climb the building, and within a few minutes of the first playthrough the target is right there and dead soon after. 90% of the level is invalidated unless you want to do it all again to unlock all the things. The primary goal should always be how you get to your target, but for some reason the game never makes that a challenge.

The problem with a lot of this IMMMoo comes down to two things; predictibility and casual gamers. The latter doesn't really need to be touched on, it's why most games are streamlined like this now. The old method of designing levels around timers was far more satisfying than the levels now designed around you being present in area X, Y or Z. When you know where someone is going to be 100% of the time (because they won't appear or trigger a routine until you appear), it gets very stale. The world isn't living, breathing or moving forward. There's no sense of urgency. It's just a string of set pieces that trigger when you enter a door way so that you see everything. Because god forbid you miss something the first time around as the game encourages you to do each mission over and over.

If you take the polish away from the turd (the excessive crowds, the constant objective reminders, the shiny visuals, the scripted set pieces) then it's much easier to see how basic the level design is for each mission. For example - imagine the India mission without the crowds. What's left? What amazing memory does that level leave you with that you'll think back on in another 10 - 15 years? With Hitman 1, 2 and 3, they had to do more with less. Now most levels are made to look busy because 1,000 NPCs are walking in circles.

What gets me is how the unlocks, after 6 years, still revolve around earning them through certain mission requirements (AKA playing the same thing over and over). It's not enough to find the weapons in a level, or to get a 'Silent Assassin' rating, you must complete a level a billion times doing arbritrary shit until you get what you're after. And then... most things you unlock aren't unlocks at all, they're just reskins. Lockpick Mark I vs Mark II vs Mark III - there is no difference apart from the lockpick model. They don't work more quickly or have any other advantage. How many god damn 1911 reskins were there? At one point they filled up my entire sidearm screen.

Then there are the plethora of audio devices, proximity mines etc that are also the same. And if they're not the same, they're invalidated by the fact that throwing a brick / pole / crowbar / screwdriver (etc) is a far more robust and useful method of distracting enemies. IO should be so fucking ashamed of their entire weapon and item offering.

Now the best part - the online requirement. Every mission, without FAIL, I would get 'connecting' issues. The game just pauses, I'm thrown out of whatever I was doing and I get to stare at a 'connecting' box for 30 - 60 seconds. These guys are fucking geniuses to keep this online requirement after all this time, despite the fact it's the #1 complained about issue in almost every review.

In 2006 if you asked me to imagine what the Hitman of 2022 looked like, it would not be this. Certainly not after 3 new games in the series. I feel it needs a little more than Bateson and a bald headed protagonist to be 'Hitman'. Still can't dual wield, still no first person view, NPCs still won't fight back, you still can't modify weapons, still can't look through keyholes 'because it isn't realistic' (x-ray vision is, though?), AI is still fucking blind, dumb, loud and useless etc etc etc. At this point we should have all of these features and more.

It's good they're working on a 007 game, these classic Hitman + Absolution mish mashes are a waste of time and hardly ever evolve. They might actually make something really good when they're not trying to appease two audiences that are the polar opposite of one another.