HITMAN World of Assassination
IO Interactive · Shooter, Action, Stealth
Overview
Enter the world of the ultimate assassin. HITMAN World of Assassination delivers the definitive stealth action experience, putting you in the shoes of Agent 47, a master assassin. Explore immersive locations, uncover hidden secrets, and eliminate targets with complete freedom of approach.
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Enter the world of the ultimate assassin. HITMAN World of Assassination brings together the best of HITMAN, HITMAN 2 and HITMAN 3 including the main campaign, contracts mode, escalations, elusive target arcades and featured live content.
Suit up for a spy-thriller adventure where all your deadly abilities are put to the test across more than 20 locations.
Your deadliest weapon is creativity. Unlock new gear and up your game on highly replayable missions.
Travel a living, breathing world, filled with intriguing characters and lethal opportunities.
A new way to play on your own terms, that combines rogue-like elements and deep strategic planning with a persistent and infinitely replayable gameplay experience.
From the game's Steam store page.
THE GAMEQ VERDICT9,998 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
Reviewers treat HITMAN World of Assassination as the place to play IO Interactive's whole trilogy, and 90% of the reviews recommend it. Most of the praise goes to the levels. Each map is described as a puzzle box of NPC routines, disguises and accidents waiting to happen, and players replay the same missions for dozens or hundreds of hours to find new ways to finish them. Freelancer, the roguelike mode, is the other big draw, praised mostly by long-time players, though a smaller group finds it too punishing. Good performance on modest PCs, the slapstick (rubber ducks, fish, exploding briefcases) and the amount of content also come up often.
How the game is sold draws more complaints than anything else. Buyers struggle to work out which edition holds which game: reviewers say the cheap "Part One" contains only the first game's missions and that the HITMAN 2 expansion maps cost extra, and owners of the earlier games say they had to pay again. Many reviewers recommend the game and warn about the store in the same breath. Other complaints cover the always-online requirement, which reviewers say keeps unlocks and most modes behind IOI's servers, crashes on AMD graphics cards, and paid DLC sold for a limited time. Opinion is split on the PC VR mode (much better after an update players date to September 2025, still broken for some Quest 3 owners), on the story, and on the run of celebrity targets.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
Levels built for replayingHigh
Level design, sandbox freedom and replay value come up more often than any other subject, and mostly as praise. Players describe each mission as a system to pick apart: guards on patrol routes, targets with daily schedules, overheard conversations that open new routes, and dozens of ways to stage an accident. "Each map is a living, breathing clockwork world," one reviewer writes. Another calls the game "A Rube Goldberg machine crossed with a toybox," and a third the "greatest puzzle game disguised as a stealth game of all time". Reviewers describe clearing a mission once, then going back for different kills, challenges and mastery unlocks, and several report hundreds of hours without running out of things to try. The favourites they name include Sapienza, Miami, Hokkaido, Dubai, Paris, Berlin and Dartmoor. Colorado is the one map that draws repeated complaints.
Freelancer, the roguelike modeHigh
Where reviewers say what they think of Freelancer, the praise clearly outweighs the complaints. Fans describe a loop of random targets across the existing maps, a safehouse to build up and a weapon wall to fill, and several say it gives them a reason to keep coming back after the campaign. One fan writes: "Freelancer mode is (in my opinion) the absolute pinnacle of Hitman." Another admits, "Freelancer is so addicting that it made me quit playing other games just to grind my weapon wall."
Its critics are fewer. They object to losing gear and money after one failed run, to unlucky target spawns, and to bugs that wiped out a finished campaign. "Everything but freelancer is perfect. Freelancer is just too punishing to be fun in the long run," one writes. A reviewer who calls it a good mode still says it has been left alone: "IOI kind of neglects Freelancer." A few also point out that Freelancer only works online.
Three games for the price of oneMedium
Players point out that one purchase (the right one) brings together the three games' campaigns, the escalations, contracts mode, Freelancer and the Elusive Target Arcade, and many describe more content than they could get through. One reviewer calls it "the best deal in gaming since The Orange Box", and another writes "The ONLY game that's actually worth $70". Others think the full price is too high for games several years old ("$70 is stupid for three games that are 4+ yrs old") and advise waiting for a discount. Praise for the value often comes with a warning to buy the right edition, which leads into the most common frustration below.
Looks good and runs wellMedium
Many reviews mention the graphics and how smoothly the game runs: high frame rates on mid-range PCs, playable on old laptops ("Can even run on my horrible lap top."), and good results on Steam Deck. From late February 2026, reviews thanked IOI for a native Mac version: "Thank you IOI for adding native mac support to this game". Against that sit the crash reports covered below and a few smaller complaints: ray tracing that some call poorly optimized, broken HDR and no field-of-view setting.
Slapstick and improvisationMedium
Reviewers enjoy the deadpan comedy: rubber ducks that explode, fish and bananas as weapons, clown suits, and NPC dialogue that plays absurd scenes completely straight. "you can kill people with rubber ducks while wearing a clown costume. need i say more?" is a typical short review. Several longer ones say the plans that fall apart are often the most fun, with 47 improvising his way out in whatever disguise is nearest.
Years of updatesLow
Some reviewers single out how long IOI has kept adding to the game: new escalations, the Elusive Target Arcade, the Mac port, the VR overhaul and cross-progression ("Thank you for finally adding Cross Progression"). "Even after all these years, still gets new content, deserves labor of love award." A few call the updates thin: "their game updates have mostly been lazy escalations or repeat exclusive targets".
Where players are split
The storyMedium
Some players enjoyed the spy plot, and others see it as a thin frame for the missions. Fans single out Diana and 47's partnership, the Dartmoor murder mystery and the ending of HITMAN 3 ("Story is sooo good and the game play will never get old with the many missions"). Criticism ranges from "Story is a bit weak compared to the gameplay." to "The plot in this game is painfully bad". Several long reviews note that the presentation changes across the trilogy: the second game's cutscenes lack animation and lip-sync, which some reviewers put down to a smaller budget after IOI's split from Square Enix, and the third game switches to in-engine scenes. Some of the critics add that the story is not why they play.
PC VRMedium
How reviewers judge VR depends on when they wrote. Reviews from before the update that players date to September 2025 call the PC VR mode broken or disappointing, and some of those older reviews were later edited with good news: "Prior to the major VR patch (released in September 2025), the VR portion was VERY buggy." Comments written after the update lean positive, with players reporting dual-wielding, Freelancer in VR and controls that match the PlayStation VR2 version ("PCVR is now up to par with PSVR2.").
The problems that remained cluster around Meta Quest 3 headsets streaming to a PC: foveated-rendering blur, crashes and a game that would not start ("Still broken for Quest 3 PCVR"). Quest owners disagree among themselves, though: "They actually listened and fixed VR when streaming on Quest 3." Several Part One buyers say the store's VR label led them to buy an edition that would not run in VR.
Celebrity targets and collaborationsMedium
The run of Elusive Targets and packs built around celebrities and film characters (Eminem's Slim Shady, Bruce Lee, Le Chiffre from Casino Royale, Conor McGregor and others) divides the conversation. Some players came to the game for them ("Bought For Eminem Stayed For The Fun Gameplay") or praise their design ("All of the new elusive targets they keep adding are so creative"). Others see them as a stand-in for new locations: "Please spend money and give us New Maps with New Targets", "Hitman became Fortnite", and "we do not need these goofy ass collabs". The time-limited sale of some of these packs is a separate complaint, covered below.
AI, guidance and the older gamesLow
The NPCs get both praise and complaints. Some reviewers like how they react to what 47 does, while others report guards and cameras that spot him through walls ("I was spotted by a camera through a wall") or NPCs who shrug off a large bloodstain. Mission stories, the guided routes to each target, teach newcomers how a map works, but a few veterans find them too much hand-holding; one fan's advice is "Please turn off the opportunities and just go with your heart." Fans of Blood Money split between calling this trilogy the series' high point and missing older features such as human shields and the end-of-mission newspaper that tracked how noticed you were.
Elusive TargetsLow
The one-shot Elusive Targets divide players. Some call them a highlight ("personally they've always been my favorite part of the game"), and others object to targets that can be missed for good or that end after a single mistake, or want them gone altogether ("Why the hell are elusive targets still a thing"). The Elusive Target Arcade, which brings many old targets back, softened this for some, though the 12-hour cooldowns on replaying targets draw complaints of their own ("12 hour cooldown even on a paid DLC contract").
What frustrates players
A confusing way to buy the gameHigh
Editions, upgrade packs, access passes and DLC are the most common complaint: they come up in 20% of all negative reviews, and in hundreds of positive ones too. Reviewers say the cheapest version, "Part One", contains only the first game's missions. It is what some bought on sale or took to be HITMAN 3, and those buyers write things like "DO NOT BUY PART 1!! It means Hitman 1 ONLY!" and "I purchased a version of Hitman 3 that doesn't include Hitman 3." One reviewer describes buying a $7 single-map "Sapienza edition" that was shown as the price of the game; another notes that edition has since been removed. Standard edition buyers report that New York and Haven Island, the HITMAN 2 expansion maps, need a separate access pass, and some Deluxe buyers say content is missing even so. The free Starter Pack confuses people as well, and one player who installed the game found almost all of it locked: "Have downloaded 80 gigs, and everything is locked, nice".
Inside the game, players complain that the menus double as a shop, with greyed-out missions behind "Get Access" buttons and DLC pop-ups: "Stop giving me pop-ups to lazy DLC slop." Several joke that buying it takes a guide, a chart or a spreadsheet ("game's good but you need a masters degree to figure out how to buy the version of the game you want"). A few defend the setup, saying the store is clear to anyone who reads ("negative reviews are from people who lack the ability to read") and that the Deluxe edition covers everything important. Many of the complaints come from players who love the game anyway: "Good game, bad commercial product".
Always onlineMedium
The online requirement comes up in 10% of all negative reviews. Reviewers explain that offline you keep the story missions but lose unlocks, mastery progress, challenges, Freelancer, contracts and Elusive Targets, which many find hard to accept in a single-player game ("Great game ruined by needing to always be online to progress at all."). They also describe the connection failing in practice: drops in the middle of a mission, "Your connection to the HITMAN server has been lost" messages and maintenance downtime ("Hitman is offline for maintenance"). Some worry about the long term: "This game will be lost one day and that is a crime against this art form." A number of players point to Peacock, a community-made local server, as the workaround, and a few note that the online checks do not stop "cheaters from populating the leaderboards".
Crashes, especially on AMD cardsMedium
Crashes, failed launches, corrupted saves and driver errors appear in 13% of all negative reviews. The most specific pattern involves AMD Radeon cards, the RX 9000 series in particular, where players report the graphics driver timing out within 15 to 20 minutes of play: "Game is fundamentally broken for AMD users." and "Not working on my 9070 XT gpu". One owner later edited their warning to say AMD had fixed it, linking a driver release (26.9.2). Others report crashes after updates, a game that stopped launching, DLC that failed to activate and corrupted save files.
Paying again for the earlier gamesLow
Owners of HITMAN (2016) and HITMAN 2 describe their old copies sitting unused in their libraries while World of Assassination asks them to pay for the same missions again. Some found their old progress unavailable: "They removed the ability to transfer data from the two previous games back in February." One quotes IOI's own wording back at it: "We don't want to force anyone to (re)buy what they already own". Players who bought Part One or the standard edition and later wanted the full package report the same problem on a smaller scale, with no simple upgrade path.
Time-limited and delisted DLCLow
Paid packs sold only for a limited window anger collectors and completionists: "Loved the game, but the timed PAID DLC's has to be one of the scummiest marketing tactics." and "the timed DLC should be illegal. I can never 100% this game now". Reviewers name the Bruce Lee pack, which they say disappeared from sale in November 2025, and the Eminem pack, which they say was sold only in December. Delisted content such as the Conor McGregor pack, and rewards handed out as Twitch drops, feed the same complaint about fear of missing out in a single-player game.
Waiting for co-op and new mapsLow
Long-time players keep asking for new locations ("just wish after all these years we would get some new maps") and for the co-op mode they say was announced in June 2025: "When are we getting co-op that was announced in June 2025?" and "No Co Op after its been promised for years now bruh".
Accents and missing languagesLow
A handful of reviews note that NPCs around the world speak with American or British accents ("everyone is speaking english in an american accent even in China or germany"), and players ask for Ukrainian, Arabic and Portuguese language support.
3. The player conversation
Reviewers mostly praise the game and save their anger for the shop. Positive reviews range from one-word verdicts ("peak", "Bald.") to long essays on level design, and a good share of the criticism comes from players who like the game, in the "great game, but" form: "Good game. Terrible sales team." Store complaints come from new buyers and veterans alike. Other topics split by experience. Reviewers with long play records bring up Freelancer, the online requirement, the celebrity collaborations, timed DLC and new maps more often than others, while reviewers with fewer hours more often raise Part One, crashes, VR problems and progress lost from the earlier games, often because the game would not run or did not contain what they thought they had bought.
The weekly share of positive reviews stayed between 81% and 95% from October 2025 to September 2026, with no lasting trend. In the lowest week, starting 17 November 2025, about half of the negative reviews are about the store or DLC, and some of them complain that the Bruce Lee pack is gone for good. VR comments turned more positive from September 2025, and from February 2026 reviews began thanking IOI for cross-progression and, a few weeks later, native Mac support.
4. What the developers could do
- Sell one clearly named complete edition and retire Part One. The store is the most common complaint in the reviews, and Part One buyers keep saying they paid for a version that did not contain the game they were looking for.
- Let progression and Freelancer work offline. Players object to unlocks, mastery and whole modes depending on servers that drop them mid-mission and that some expect to close one day.
- Fix the AMD Radeon crashes and launch failures. Crash reports run through the negative reviews, and RX 9000 owners describe driver timeouts within minutes of play, a problem several say has gone on for months.
- Credit what players already own. Owners of HITMAN (2016), HITMAN 2, Part One or the standard edition describe paying again for missions they had, with no upgrade path and, for some, lost progress.
- Stop selling paid DLC for a limited time and bring delisted packs back. Completionists point to timed packs such as Bruce Lee and to the delisted McGregor content when they say they can never finish the game.
- Take the shop out of the menus. Players resent "Get Access" buttons and DLC pop-ups inside a game they paid for, and one says Part One owners "basically play the game with ads".
- Fix Freelancer's bugs and soften its harshest losses. Its critics name harsh losses after a single failed run, unlucky target spawns and bugs, and even a reviewer who likes the mode writes that "IOI kind of neglects Freelancer."
- Finish the PC VR fixes for Quest 3 headsets. The update reviewers date to September 2025 won over many VR players, but Quest 3 owners streaming to a PC still report blur, crashes and launch failures.
