Bald man and master assassin agent 47 is a real Methuselah of the video game scene. For around 20 years, corpses pave its way through the High society of gangsters and agents. Since 2016 there is agent 47 in reboot mode: With “Hitman 3” the World of Assassination trilogy is now completed, the was only partially convincing in its predecessors.

Finale Grande Welcome to the killer circus! Agent 47 is facing a crisis of meaning, he finally wants to find out who he really is. His last two adventures were piecemeal and put him on the trail of a Deep State conspiracy group called Providence, who are pulling the strings behind the scenes. With a couple of companions, the noble killer sets off on the supposedly last journey into his heart of darkness.

Hitman 3 in 100 seconds

For the finale, players shouldn’t expect a milestone in interactive storytelling. Developer IO Interactive digs deep into agent and killer clichés to bring the story to a close. At least something happened this time – with the predecessors you often had the feeling that the empty story snippets were just an excuse for the complex killer missions.

Unfortunately, IO Interactive missed it, theirs to give the legendary killing machine something like a conscience in order to explain or justify its cynical and unscrupulous actions. This turns the game, which is demanding in itself, into a morally questionable pleasure.

One death is not enough The missions are tough. Hacking a server in the skyscraper in Dubai, solving a tricky murder case as a detective in a British country seat, before sitting the hostess on the electric chair or assassinating your way through a whole train to the finale – “Hitman” has rarely been more varied than here. Whether Agent 47 simply shoots through the levels or secretly is up to the players. There are countless possibilities – from reckless strangling to sometimes bizarre methods of killing that spread a touch of black humor.

As always, agent 47 back on his disguise skills and trust his patience. If he kills an opponent, he can change his clothes and thereby unlock paths that were previously closed by the attentive guards. Other possibilities arise through simple listening: Sometimes our killer also learns information from staff, which unlock so-called story missions. Agent 47 must then perform tasks in a certain order, to grab his victim. For example, he must first disguise himself as a test subject, take part in an experiment and then do the target object.

Repeat offenders Players who only focus on the direct route to the target are in less than 10 hours with the seven missions. However, the game concept is designed to keep repeating missions in order to achieve a higher high score. In addition to the story mode, the players can also create their own killer assignments for other players in the mission mode or, in the “sniper assassin” mode, kill the enemies from a distance in a kind of “carrot” baller.

“Hitman 3” played (5 pictures) “Hitman 3” shows an agent 47 in top form: clever, but also quite unscrupulous, the noble killer assassins his way through spectacular locations.

(Image: heise online) It takes countless hours of play until the players have unlocked all the different killing methods, weapons and locations. There is one major shortcoming with this concept: only those who are online can unlock everything. At least players of “Hitman 2” can take over their won objects in the game. “Hitman 3” can also be played in VR on the Playstation.

Interim conclusion A lot of agent clichés, demanding levels and an absurd online compulsion – “Hitman 3” continues where the two immediate predecessors left off. In comparison, the finale of the World of Assassination trilogy finally offers more variety and an exciting story. In contrast, the graphic seems to have stopped in the year 2016 – a few nice lighting effects don’t deceive you beyond the fact that animations and details cannot keep up with current PC and console standards. The fans won’t care about the complex level design and the diverse game options – their killer chess also works well in the third part.

“Hitman 3” will be released on 20. January for Windows, PS4 / 5, Xbox One / Series and costs approx. 60 Euro. USK from 18. For our test, we played through the Windows version.

(dahe )