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Hitman 3

Hitman 3 logo

Hitman 3 is one of Square Enix and IO Interactive’s next-gen titles, set to release on January 20th, 2021. It’s the thrilling conclusion to the World of Assassination trilogy that started with Hitman in 2016. Agent 47 must team up with Diana once again and travel around the world to assassinate their enemies.

Agent 47

The character of Agent 47 originated in 2000 with the game Hitman: Codename 47. The first 5 Hitman games, released from 2000-2012, told the story of Agent 47 and how he went from a mysterious contract killer to a rogue operative. A stealth-based third-person shooter, each level would provide the player with a mission to ultimately assassinate a target and escape the area. However, there were often many ways to go about completing this goal. You could find clever dristrations and disguises to silently execute your target. Or, you could go in guns blazing once you find the target. This level-based assassination gameplay still exists today, but the Hitman series evolved in 2016 in a big way.

The iconic Agent 47

 Global Contracts

Agent 47’s contracts take him all across the globe. He has seen missions everywhere from east Asia, to the middle east, to Europe, to the Americas. Levels are fleshed out with numerous ways to go about completing each contract. Based on the difficulty level of your choosing, each unique level requires you to use intuition to figure out how to optimally complete your contract. Perhaps you’ll carry a brick to throw as a distraction or perhaps you’ll carry scissors to throw as a weapon. Perhaps you’ll carry a silenced pistol that you can hide in your jacket and walk the street with. Or perhaps you’ll carry a sniper rifle and hide from the view of all NPCs. The choice is yours.

Agent 47 overlook

Replayability

The big benefit to the Hitman games in the World of Assassination trilogy is the sandbox-style manner that they can be replayed. Story levels can be replayed with a different NPC as the target and other additional constraints. There might be more guards. You might have to use a certain weapon. Or, you might even have to wear a chicken suit the whole time. The possibilities are endless. If you have Hitman or Hitman 2, you can even import those levels into Hitman 3, giving you an incredible about of content to play around with. The game is packed with enough content that playing the same level with different goals and constraints doesn’t get old fast. There’s a reason that the Hitman series has always been synonymous with stealth games. After 20 years, Hitman continues to deliver new and interesting ways to complete your contract.

Four armed hackers on a building

Watch Dogs: Legion

Watch Dogs: Legion, coming to the Xbox Series X/S on November 10th and PS5 on November 12th is the third installment of the Watch Dogs series from Ubisoft. Watch Dogs broke new ground in the open-world third-person shooter genre in 2014 by introducing a wide range of hacking abilities available to the player through the character’s smartphone.The newest installment in the series is breaking ground again, this time by introducing the ability to recruit and play as anyone on the street.

Cyberattack

Like its predecessors, Legion’s single-player plot revolves around toppling corrupt futuristic law-enforcement and evil cybercriminals. In the future, “smart cities” use one operating system to control a great deal of the city’s infrastructure and property. Hacking into the system gives you the power to manipulate everything from traffic lights to people’s cellphones. You can even see the names of everyone walking down the street, along with various bits of their personal data.

Watch Dogs: Legion
Aiden Pearce, the original protagonist of Watch Dogs, makes an appearance through DLC.

Play as anyone

What sets Legion apart from Watch Dogs 1 and 2 is how that personal data now comes into play in a big way. Legion lets you actually recruit civilians into your hacker uprising and add them to your team. Every pedestrian in futuristic London will now have various traits that will make them stronger or weaker as a playable character. Finding a powerful team member is like striking gold. Like most typical open-world third-person shooters, dying means that you’ll wake up in the hospital. But now you’ll have to wait until that team member gets over their injury before you can play as them again. Unless… you want a challenge. For hardcore players, your player will actually permanently die and you will lose them with no way of getting them back.

Old lady with a gun in one hand, tasing a man with her other hand
That’s right. You can play as a stun-gun toting old lady.

Uniquity

With the GTA series having such a dominant position in this genre, the Watch Dogs series had to differentiate itself with the hacking system. Ubisoft has kicked off their entrance into the next generation of consoles by continuing to effectively innovate the series and set itself apart from other games with the ability to play as anyone in the city. Watch Dogs: Legion is unique enough that, even without experience in the series, it’s worth a try.

Watch Dogs: Legion, coming to the Xbox..
There will still be plenty of gun-based combat.

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