Hitman: World of Assassination is the game that just keeps on giving. From its trilogy of main games, to the steady stream of (now repeating) Elusive Targets, and inventive additions like the Freelancer mode, there’s a ton of sneakily stoic action to be had here. All of that is now available to play in PSVR 2.
This is far from the first effort at translating Hitman: World of Assassination into VR, after an original PSVR exclusive port, PC VR counterpart, and last year’s restyled Meta Quest port. There’s naturally some crossover and common ground with those previous versions, but this should be by far and away the most advanced and complete rendition of Hitman in VR.
Compared to the PSVR version, which was limited to using DualShock 4 for controls, you now have separate hands, and compared to the PC VR version, you can now use both of those hands for actions, including dual wielding guns and manual reloading. Compared to the Quest version, Hitman on PSVR 2 looks to retain the art direction and as much fidelity of the flatscreen game as possible. In essence, it’s the best of all worlds.
Having not tried any of the previous VR adaptations, and sinking into this game again for a few hours, it’s almost a little surprising just how well Hitman makes the jump into VR with PSVR 2. To be fair, this is generally quite a slow and considered game series, with a few key moments of high action when you choose to strike, so the pacing works rather well for VR, while there’s a decent amount of interactivity and creative use of objects within the world already, even if it’s shy of a bespoke VR game like Half-Life: Alyx. No, you can’t grab that random watering can or a single volume from a stack of books, but there’s plenty of hammers, busts, briefcases and knives lying around for you.
One of the real highlights of the World of Assassination trilogy was just how busy the levels were. The main areas were quite regularly flooded with crowds of bystanders, whether it’s the guests at the Paris fashion show in the original mission of the original game, the eager motorsports fans in Hitman 2, or the busy party at the cloud-piercing skyscraper in Hitman 3. Of course, they’re not far off being mannequins with minimal AI and interactivity, and seeing them at eye-level does reveal a little more just how plain and static they really are. Things get more complex as you have staff that are on their particular patrol routes and routines, and then you have the targets who meander around the stages with their own agendas, which you have to figure out and pick apart to successfully take down with minimal fuss.
Right from the off, Hitman feels very natural in PSVR 2. We’re at that stage now where developers are confident enough to pull off smooth locomotion in VR, and VR gamers have found their sea legs in the current platforms. Still, the game runs you first through the basics of VR actions, from movement, to throttling, disguises, to throwing, and blasting away with guns.
Knocking out an unsuspecting person has that Original Series Star Trek feel to it, before you can then yank all their clothes off them like they’re a velcro-laden strippergram, and then drag them behind you to whatever large chest or locker you can find nearby.
You can also knock them out from a distance with thrown items. This is by far and away the best feeling part of the game, to me. There’s such a generous auto-aim that you can just flick your wrist and that wrench, apple or drinks can you’re holding will find its way straight to your target’s noggin. You can, however, take a little more care, holding the opposite trigger to display a throwing arc that your haphazard throw will then automatically follow.
Guns are less generous. Small firearms like pistols handle decently, and the manual reload is on a par with other VR games – press a button to ping out the spent magazine, grab a fresh clip from your Kangaroo-like ammo pouch, put it in place and then pull back the pin to cock it – and there’s a frantic feeling when trying to do this under pressure. Dual wielding is also fun, potentially with hammer in one hand and pistol in the other.
Where it really falls apart for me is with the two-handed weapons. Hitman might be filled with playful sandboxes, but even as you mess around within these environments, Agent 47 is cold, calculated and utterly precise. Two-handed weapons in VR are pretty rubbish for that, with none of the real-world heft and weight, giving them this weird floaty feeling. You get to be an expert marksman in games by pressing a button to steady a sniper scope’s wobble, but here I’m trying to steady my aim by touching fingers together, and even then the scope’s looking way off in the wrong direction and impossible to track fast targets. It’s partly a skill issue, to be sure, but games like this are power fantasies that do a lot of the stuff for you.
As always there’s certain compromises made when adapting a flat screen game for VR. In Hitman’s case, all of the cutscenes switch you to a big cinema screen view, as is pretty common, but there’s also some in-game moments that switch views or do simple fades. Whenever you vault or stash a body in a cupboard, the game quickly fades to black to transition and get the action done as quickly as possible, meanwhile, blending in at a bar shifts to a third person camera view. They’re fine, but a little jarring, and other games have kept things like vaulting more interactive.
Even climbing – something that VR games are pretty much perfect for – has been stripped away from you. Walk up to a ladder or a drain pipe and instead of going hand over fist, you’re bumped out to a lower view and stare up at Agent 47 posterior as it shimmies away from you. Or towards you. You can do that too.
After a few hours play, exploring hazily remembered levels I played half a decade ago, Hitman in PSVR 2 feels right on the cusp of VR greatness. I’m sure that many of the quirks fade into the background as you get used to them, and Hitman is a game that’s excellently suited to a VR adaptation, from its pacing and the broad interactivity of the world, to the multi-faceted environments that are often jam-packed with people.
