There have been 14 Elusive Targets in Hitman so far, each one an interesting character in his or her own right, but I think it's fair to say that none have been quite like the 15th. She is known as the Angel of Death, she has dozens of kills to her credit, and she looks very much like your sweet, doting grandmother. And it's not a disguise.

Etta Davis is a retired nurse, formerly of the Royal Health Service in the UK, who has taken her murderous show on the road. In the past, she killed primarily with poison, but as she's grown older she's become more hands-on, and now prefers blunt instruments and the occasional violent "accident." How a woman in her 70s is able to throw healthy young men off of rooftops isn't clear, but Agent 47 isn't here to get the lowdown on geriatric weight training. He's here to punch Nana's ticket. 

The new Hitman Elusive Target goes live at 5 pm PT/8 pm ET today, December 2, and will remain in play for 168 hours—no more and no less. As always, there are no second chances, so if you blow it she's gone for good. (And you also get to bear the eternal shame of having been outfoxed by a woman with a purse full of hard candy. Better not screw this one up.) 

Sorry, Leon.

The rendering of game worlds tends to be the focus of their praise: The haunting decay of Metro 2033's subway cities, the attention to detail in GTA V's storefronts, the postcard beauty of The Witcher 3's grand vistas. Often, though, these discussions skip over the less tangible aspects of a place: its atmosphere, its purpose, its people. A world’s inhabitants define it as much as its appearance, and can transform a familiar environment into a foreign one without shifting a single polygonal brick.

Hitman—the game and the franchise—exemplifies the notion of systemically-defined space. The clockwork routines of its people imprint themselves on the environment: this rooftop is where the guard takes his smoke break, that apartment is where the trainee chef argues with his sister, oblivious to the professional chameleon sneaking in and stealing his uniform. AI routines dictate how we navigate the world, directing us down certain paths and establishing distinct associations between form and function. Our passage through a place becomes part of its identity.

The game I always come back to when thinking of the effect people have on a space is Dragon Age: Origins. Depending on your chosen origin story, you begin your adventure in either the Dwarven city of Orzammar, the Elven Alienage, the Mage Tower, the Brecilian Forest, or the town of Highever. Aside from Highever, you'll revisit each location later in the game from the perspective of The Warden. Thanks to the war with the darkspawn, your home is not the same place you left it, with the Alienage on the brink of riot, Brecilian Forest plagued by disease, and the Mage Tower overrun with abominations. Though each location looks the same, the atmosphere is far more grim, with hopeless faces and hostile glares emphasizing the human, Dwarven, and Elven cost of the war in a way no bombastic battle can.

Hitman recontextualizes familiar locations even more dramatically than Dragon Age with its bonus episodes, which modify the Sapienza and Marrakesh maps by repopulating them with fresh actors and different AI routines. Because Hitman is all about manipulating and deceiving the AI, the new denizens provide a raft of new challenges, forcing players to switch up tactics and approach the familiar locations from a fresh perspective. Hitman is at its best when you're exploring the interplay of its systems, overflowing sinks near exposed electrical wires and dropping weapons on patrol paths to trick guards into leading you to the security office. This is the kind of experimentation the bonus episodes focus on, giving you a whole new batch of virtual puppets to knock out, strip down to their underwear, and dump inside empty refrigerators.

The first bonus mission, set in Sapienza, is an excellent example of how an environment’s actors can transform it. Sapienza is Hitman’s second location, and in the original mission it features an elegant Italian town basking beneath the midday sun, its majestic villa and sweeping seaside vistas evoking a sprawling grandeur. It's the largest level of the first season—or at least it feels that way because it's so packed with possibility. Secret passages lurk behind loose walls. A valuable disguise lies waiting inside a church morgue. Gunpowder cannons peek from the crenellations of a ruined castle. The possibility space is as large as the town itself.

The Sapienza that features in the bonus episode, though, is a different beast. Night cloaks the town in shadow, reducing visibility and forcing you to sneak in closer than normal to suss out the situation. Fences close off access to the beach and the villa, adding a claustrophobic pressure to the challenge of remaining unseen. Streets that once felt breezy and boisterous now seem cold and cloistered, their crucial lines-of-sight blocked by barricades and movie props. Guards travel in pairs and workers cluster beneath a handful of floodlights, refusing to wander off for an easy takedown. Despite the darkness, silent assassinations are tougher than ever.

Gone are the town's ordinary residents, replaced by rabid movie fans scrambling to catch a glimpse of the blockbuster being filmed in Sapienza's main street. Hired thugs give way to professional security guards, their focus keen and their trigger fingers notably less itchy. Cleaners and gardeners sleep the night away, their valuable blue-collar invisibility stripped from Agent 47's toolkit. In their stead, camera operators and pyrotechnicians hurry to and fro, their hawkish eyes quick to out 47 as an imposter. To survive their gaze, you must approach Sapienza as if it were an entirely new location. The architecture of the buildings and byways may remain the same, but the people have changed dramatically.

Consider Sapienza's Gelateria Bella café. Formerly a hotbed of civilian activity best avoided, at night it shuts its doors and becomes a break room for exhausted film crew and catering staff, a sanctuary where they vent their frustrations and helpfully clue you into valuable opportunities. What was once a hostile place loosens its tie and untucks its shirt, adopting the laid-back air of school grounds after the end-of-day bell. Its locked doors and inattentive inhabitants give it a sense of safety, as much your sanctuary as it is the film crew's. Forget avoiding the café; at night, it's one of the first places you'll want to visit. 

The purpose a place serves informs its character just as clearly as its aesthetics. Take the clock tower overlooking Sapienza's main street: during the daytime, its stairwell echoes with silence, its empty roof the perfect sniper's perch. It is a monument to cold, clinical death, a place for those wanting to distance themselves from intimate assassination. 

The second time around, though, the roof of the clock tower becomes a camera nest, playing host to both a cameraman and a security guard. Stripped of its solitude, the tower takes on a new purpose. Eliminating its occupants away from prying eyes and ears nets you two disguises, all the more precious given Sapienza’s night-time crowd. Its elevated vantage is equally useful, affording a clear view of the clockwork routines whirring away in the street below—an opportunity denied by the decentralised nature of the level during the day. Physically and conceptually, the tower becomes a pillar of your second trip to Sapienza.

If there's one word to describe the Sapienza bonus mission, it's focused. Beyond its smaller area, the mission foregoes roaming targets for a fixed one: the movie star Dino Bosco, revealed to you right as you begin the level. By centering your attention on a single location, the level becomes more directed than its previous incarnation, a case of focusing on the how rather than the who and where. 

This design produces a Sapienza divided into regions of tiered intensity, concentric zones of escalating danger focused on the boisterous Bosco. On the periphery, the streets are quiet, the thick shadows masking the evidence of your misdeeds. As you work your way onto the film set, security steps up its presence and its vigilance, demanding patience and planning to remain incognito. Danger rises like the clicking of a Geiger counter, its steady ascent in sharp contrast to the fluctuating tension of stalking Silvio Caruso and Francesca De Santis during the day-time.

Bosco's preference for standing in the spotlight instead of wandering secluded alleyways drastically alters the pacing of the episode. Impulsive hit-and-run tactics are out of the question; patient observation is the only way to complete your mission undetected. Guns are suddenly useless against Bosco's Iron Man suit, while his massive ego ensures he's always being watched, waited on, and fawned over. Just like the movie under direction, you're going to have to throw your practiced script out the window if you want a hit on your hands.

As Sapienza shows, how we perceive a location is as much about its people, its mood, and its focus as its aesthetic. If the first trip to Sapienza was a lazy summer vacation, the second is a guided tour, its intimidating freedom exchanged for a smaller, tighter task. From Paris to Hokkaido, Hitman is a shining example of spatial economy, leveraging assassination challenges, escalation missions, and elusive targets to squeeze every drop of blood out of its exotic locations. Season Two might not have a release date yet, but with so much left to explore in Season One, I'm more than happy to wait.

With the first season of Hitman now wrapped up, Io Interactive says that today's November update is the first in a series of "major game updates that will tweak the game and add new content leading up to the launch of the disc-based edition early next year, and beyond that into season two." The biggest change in this patch is the addition of an "Offline Profile," which makes all the rewards you've earned in the live game accessible even when you're disconnected. 

That means all Mastery items, including weapons, gear, and starting/pickup locations, plus Elusive Target suit rewards and Challenge Pack unlocks, are yours to use as you like when you're away from the internet's sweet embrace. (Hey, it happens sometimes, right?) You'll need to connect to the game servers once to acquire your Hit-stuff locally, but after that you're as free as a bald bird in a well-tailored suit. 

The update also makes a "stability sweep" through the game to fix various sorts of crashes and instability, adds an "opportunity completion checkmark" to simplify the process of tracking your progress toward claiming achievements, rewards capable players with a "Silent Assassin" rating on the scoring screen (when they've earned one), overhauls the statistics page, and adds a "success state" indicator to contracts. 

My favorite addition is a new move that didn't work out quite like it was supposed to: The ability to pull enemies over balconies or out of windows, Sam Fisher-like, while you're hanging below them. "Unfortunately, there is a known issue for this move: NPCs that see this move will not blame 47, even if they are looking directly at the NPC or at 47," the studio wrote. It's apparently too late to do anything about it now, so the plan is to let players abuse it to their hearts' content until the rollout of the December update, when the feature will be removed. It will be brought back into action in January, around the same time as the disc-based release.   

The Hitman November update is about 2.1GB in size, and "mandatory" for all players. Full details are available on Steam.

Like many, I was surprised when Hitman was announced as episodic. Surprised, but not worried. Story has never been the main focus of the Hitman series. That changed for Hitman: Absolution, and I like many series fans didn't much care for that game. In deciding to release each mission individually, IO seemed to be signalling that this new Hitman was back to being a standalone series of sandbox murder playgrounds. Everything fans loved about Blood Money, but larger and with more options.

Looking back, that's pretty much what we got. Hitman, like Blood Money before it, does have a story, but it's a tale told in the margins in post-mission cutscenes, overheard dialogue, and, later on, specific mission objectives that nonetheless follow the regular template. That's good, because the template works. There is a target, or two, or four, each with their own routes and security. Your job, as bald killer clone 47, is to assassinate them.

You can, in many cases, just shoot your target and run away, hoping to reach the exit before the security team surrounds you. Doing so would be valid, but messy. 47 is a professional, and that means getting in and out with the minimum of fuss. Shootouts can be lethal 47 is far from invincible but Hitman's hardest, most satisfying challenge is taking out targets without being recognised. This is where disguises come in. 47 can take clothes from unconscious (or dead) NPCs, wearing them to blend in. Disguise as a waiter, and you'll have access to a larger part of the level than a member of the public. Disguise as a security guard, and your access expands further still.

Disguises have been one of the series' defining features since its inception, but Hitman offers the most elegant implementation to date. Instead of Blood Money's opaque and seemingly arbitrary suspicion meter, here you can only be discovered by specific NPCs of the same type. In certain cases the system requires some suspension of disbelief it's not always clear why some guards can recognise their colleagues when so many others cannot but the transparency is welcome, ensuring you can circumnavigate these characters in an effort to remain undetected.

It's not just a case of using disguises to get to a target. You must also figure out how you're going to kill them. Again: you have a silenced pistol, and it will do the job. Alternatively, you can take various tools into each mission, from guns and explosives, to lockpicks and a variety of poisons. Often, though, the most fiendish means of murder can be found within the level itself. 47 can rewire electric cables, loosen chandeliers, or tamper with gas heaters. And beyond the more generic options, each mission has its own tailored murder methods called 'Opportunities'.

Opportunities allow you to manipulate your targets from their set routines, often fatally so. Similar in function to Blood Money's accidents, they're a powerful tool to either draw a target away from their security, or to lead them straight to their own demise. In Hitman, not only are there more per level, but they're more formalised letting you discover and track specific Opportunities based on overheard conversations or information found throughout the level.

While Opportunities are invariably the most entertaining ends, and most directly buy into the fantasy of Hitman's premise, they can also be overbearing. By default, Opportunites lead you, step by step, exactly where you need to go. If dropping a stuffed moose on some jerk requires a cameraman disguise, you'll be told where to track one down. Arguably it means Hitman is more welcoming to newcomers. To my mind, though, such detailed direction undersells the satisfaction of the core experience.

Fortunately, every element of the UI can be tweaked. Opportunities can be set to minimal, giving you only the broadest of objectives and letting you to figure out the finer details. Or the objectives can be disabled entirely, challenging you to complete Opportunities more organically, using NPC dialogue and contextual hints. The result is the same a jerk, dead by moose but the feeling of accomplishment is far greater.

My recommendation is to disable as many UI elements as you feel comfortable with before you first attempt each mission. Each Hitman mission is designed to be replayed, but you only get one chance at experiencing it for the first time. Turning off unnecessary hints forces you to stumble through these massive, intricate spaces, picking up items, searching for clues and seizing upon opportunities (note the lower-case 'o'). I'm hesitant to say this is Hitman as it's meant to be played part of the appeal is how well the challenge scales. Nonetheless, the detail within each environment is such that Hitman is improved by the need for exploration.

IO has succeeded in making levels bigger than any previous Hitman. They're dense, too, packed full of items and possibilities. Thematically, few of its environments are as strong as those of Blood Money there's nothing that feels quite as iconic as the suburban witness protection scheme, or the New Orleans Mardi Gras. Nevertheless, each level offers something slightly different. Paris takes place in an enormous mansion during a fashion show layering access between public, staff, and the secret auction being held on the top floor. Sapienza is a vibrant and rustic town. Marrakesh, a contrast between the public unrest of the streets and the calm, minimalist interior of the Swedish consulate.

The early missions are all different takes on a similar theme usually there's a big house involved. Later, though, IO starts to tweak and experiment with the formula. Colorado takes place on a farm full of mercenaries, and the entire area is marked as hostile. Hokkaido is set in a high-tech hospital, meaning 47 is unable to smuggle in items. These small shifts to the established formula can have a big effect at least on your first run through.

Each level is designed to be replayed, either repeating a mission to find new methods, or taking on one of the Escalations special missions featuring alternate targets that evolve with new complications each time you complete them. As such, every environment is big and intricate enough to support multiple approaches, be it silent, fiendish, or crazed axe-murderer. Marrakesh and Bangkok are arguably the weakest in this aspect, but even they have plenty to do. In the best spaces Sapienza and Hokkaido, specifically I've happily spent hours playing and replaying, each time finding fun new tricks.

As in Blood Money, the joy of Hitman is in manipulating these self-contained puzzle sandboxes. Strip away the theme and fantasy, and you're left with a diorama of moving parts a seemingly perfect system of loops, each intersecting to create a complex scene. It's left to you to decide how you want to break it whether it's by surgically removing key actors, or by violently smashing it all up with guns, bombs and a stuffed moose. This was the formula the series had been slowly perfecting, up until Absolution dialled it back in favour of smaller levels that fit a more prescribed narrative format. This new Hitman bigger, denser and with more options.

There are problems, though, some of them caused by the episodic structure. The biggest is the reuse of the same few voice actors. Hitman bills itself as a 'World of Assassination', but the voices of that world are the same, no matter where you are. I didn't find it too distracting, but then I'm more invested in Hitman as a systemic challenge. If you're looking for an immersive experience, the repetition of voices will definitely damage that. Similarly, music repeats too. If, like me, you were a fan of the fantastic Jesper Kyd soundtracks of earlier games, the score for this Hitman is a disappointment.

Online functionality is also awkwardly implemented, with unlocks and challenge progress requiring an internet connection. You can play offline, but you can't carry an offline mission online or vice-versa. You also can't use your unlocked items or alternate starting locations while offline. None of the online systems the community-created Contracts mode, nor the one-time only Elusive Targets are worth the downsides of this system. Hitman never justifies its restrictions. At least now you're no longer kicked directly back to the menu should your connection drop.

Issues aside, the actual design of Hitman the targets, environments and challenges is strong throughout its six episodes. Hitman isn't perfect, but it's a well made and entertaining successor to Blood Money a far cry from the mistakes of Absolution, and a return to form for the series.

The very particular set of skills of Hitman are once again being called upon, this time to rub out a new Elusive Target in the City of Light. His name is Gabriel Santos, otherwise known as The Chef, and he must die because, apparently, he is a dick.

Seriously, that's pretty much it with this guy. He's known for committing physical assaults on assistants and producers, but by rights that should get him an exclusive Amazon series, not a bullet in the head. The two cases of "assault with bladed meat tenderizer" sound scary, but it's not like we're talking about a razor-sharp cleaver here, right?

But somebody's paying the bill, and so he has to die. The 14th Elusive Target is live now and will remain en Paris for seven days, which means you've got until 5 am PT on November 25 to punch his ticket. Miss the window, or botch the job, and he's gone for good.

The debut of the new Elusive Target also marks a change in how Elusive Target rewards are unlocked, as detailed in the image below. Even if this is your first Elusive Target, or you've blown the previous 13, it will still be possible to unlock all of these rewards; however, if you miss (or screw up) too many from this point on, some of them will end up beyond your reach.

"It's important to note that these adjustments won't affect anything you've already unlocked or your progress to unlocking the three accumulative suits (HMA, Blood Money and Signature Suit) that have been the three rewards available so far," Io Interactive explained. "It's equally important to note that the new rewards system comes into effect starting with ET 14, meaning that you cannot retroactively unlock suits based on previous ET's. If you want that Winter Suit, you'll need to complete 5 ET's with a Silent Assassin rating, starting from ET 14."

The Hitman November content schedule indicates that a new Escalation Contract will be available next week, and that the 15th Elusive Target will appear in Marrakesh on November 28.

This is a bit different.

In last episode's review, I pointed out that many of Hitman's systems feel satisfying, regardless of the level they're in. Great level design is important, obviously. But, thanks to those systems, even a lesser space can still nail Hitman's core fantasy. What makes Episode 6 so interesting is it aligns the systems more closely to the design and layout of the level.

Episode 6 is set in a high-tech hospital, hidden away in the mountains of Hokkaido. Your job is to eliminate former ICA board member, Erich Soders first seen during the Prologue, during 47's training. 47 has infiltrated the hospital under his somewhat on-the-nose alias Tobias Rieper. This is Hokkaido's first trick: you're a patient, and thus unable to carry any weapons or gear into the level not even coins. You can smuggle items via an agency pickup location, but only after you've unlocked a few levels of mastery from completing the mission. Beyond that, Hokkaido is all about on-site procurement.

Hokkaido's second trick is the hospital's AI which automatically locks and unlocks doors depending on what you're wearing. Clothes are installed with an RFID chip, and so a security guard can gain automatic access to more areas than a patient. This is what I mean by aligning systems with layout. Here, Hitman's social stealth isn't just a way to fool NPCs. It also decides where you can go, or, at least, how easily.

As well as being an interesting way to move through the level, it also drives home the fantasy that every Hitman mission is based around. The disguise system has always been about opening doors about letting you move unseen past tight security. A previously locked door swishing open as you walk up in your new costume is a new, potent variant on that experience. Naturally, it's also possible to find routes around the AI's gating. That's a fun challenge in its own right. I've only attempted a couple of no-disguise silent assassin playthroughs in Hitman, but I expect Hokkaido would be a fun one.

Episode 6 features less targets than Colorado two instead of four but doesn't feel any smaller. Both targets have their respective areas, and offer lots of bespoke ways to manipulate events in your favour. I don't want to spoil the Opportunities there are some good ones here. That said, we're in Japan. There is a sushi bar. If you've played Hitman 2, (or, yes, even Absolution) you should know at least some of what to expect.

This is the end of Hitman's first season, although it's already been confirmed that a second is in development. If it hadn't, you'd be able to tell from the way Hitman ends. This isn't a conclusion, so much as a progression, ready for the next slab of story. That'll be disappointing to some, no doubt, but I've never been invested enough in the story to be bothered by the non-ending.

At the season's end, Hitman's strengths are still its strengths and its weaknesses still its weaknesses. Nonetheless, it's promising to see how IO has used these past couple of episodes to break away from the formula of the first four showing a willingness to experiment that has lead to some surprising, memorable moments. Hokkaido may feel a little sparse, relative to some previous episodes, but it's one of my favourite maps of the season possibly even beating out Sapienza.

Hitman developer Io Interactive said in August that the game, which recently wrapped up its first six-episode season with a trip to Japan, could get two more seasons if all went well. And apparently it's gone well enough, because production director Hakan Abrak confirmed in a recent interview with Gamergen that a second season is on the way.

The site is French and the Google translation is a bit bumpy, but the important part is clear enough. "Yes, there is a second season," Abrak said. The studio's goal is to "create a high-fidelity sandbox," he continued, where players can roam freely, interact with the AI, and come up with creative ways to achieve their goals.

The second season will introduce new cities, but some locations from the first season could be brought back as well, although not necessarily as they were: Abrak mentioned a trip to central Paris during the holidays as one possible variation on a season one location. Naturally, there will be new Elusive Targets as well.

Also interesting is that, "For the first time in the history of Hitman, we do not kill everyone [at the end]," he said. "Normally everyone dies except Diana, but not this time. So a base is built, a Hitman in which [we] created deep characters that we will develop for future seasons as well. A bit like a TV series, we can draw a parallel which depends on characters we have followed since and during the previous seasons. Some will come to their end, and we will follow other for a long time."

Hitman: The Complete First Season, a disc-based release of the game that includes all six episodes plus three bonus missions, the soundtrack, and other content, is set to come out in January.

Hitman's sixth and final episode lands today, drawing Agent 47's latest transglobal journey to an end for the time being. Named 'Situs Inversus', season one's ultimate mission sends the hairless hired gun to Hokkaido, Japan and is "the culmination of everything players will have learnt in terms of both gameplay and story," so says publisher Square Enix. It also packs some PC-specific features, such as DirectX 12 support.

Besides a new story mission and a host of challenges and gear, episode six remedies a number of bugs and also supports multi GPU and "exclusive fullscreen," according to this Steam Community update post. As it's disabled by default, multi GPU is enabled via the Hitman Launcher. It's worth bearing the following in mind before doing so.

• Currently only dual GPU configurations are supported. 
• Expect highest scaling in 1440p/2160p. 
• Steam overlay is automatically disabled when using Multi GPU due to an incompatibility
• If you experience instability, especially when toggling windowed and fullscreen mode, then disable services that provide in-game capture, such as Raptr, plays.tv, etc. 

Notes specific to AMD and Nvidia cards can also be found via the link above.

Set within the grounds of the "hyper-exclusive" GAMA private hospital and resort, episode six looks a little like this:

It was a brave decision to go fully digital episodic with Hitman, fundamentally changing how we make the game, and for us it has been a major success, says IO Interactive's studio head Hannes Seifert. I want to say a big thank you to all the players for making this possible! Together we've built and run the biggest and most replayable locations of any Hitman game and added new live content every single week since launch. And although we re now completing season one, this is only the beginning for our ever expanding World of Assassination.

Hitman Episode 6: Hokkaido is out now. While this marks the end of the first season, Phil reckons Hitman is best served in distinct courses.

Update: here's a load more info, from the official site.

"The Hokkaido location is set within the grounds of the hyper-exclusive GAMA private hospital and resort. This secluded facility is a fusion of Japanese beauty and cutting-edge technology, featuring its own Zen gardens, organic sushi restaurant and traditional Japanese hot spring."

"Episode 6: Hokkaido features a mission called 'Situs Inversus' and is the culmination of everything players will have learnt in terms of both gameplay and story. As players have come to expect, the location will also be used for Escalation Contracts, Elusive Targets and community-created Featured Contracts. Plus, we'll have the usual array of weapon and gear unlocks that can be used across all previous locations."

Original story: Everyone's second-favourite bald assassin (after Mike from Breaking Bad) is heading to Hokkaido, Japan soon, what with Hitman's first season wrapping up in a few short weeks. As revealed by the following teaser trailer, Episode 6: Hokkaido will arrive on October 31, featuring katanas, a luxury hospital, and a big old mountain, which are not especially Halloween-y things.

We know from Hitman's Twitter page that Agent 47 has come to Hokkaido to "locate two targets at a hyper-exclusive private hospital", before presumably downgrading their conditions from 'alive' to 'dead'. Episode 6 will be the season finale of Hitman, and I'm sure we'll hear more about what's included soon.

The trouble with reviewing each individual Hitman level and I'm definitely not saying this entire endeavour has been a waste of time is that so much of what makes Hitman good happens in its systems. The levels are important, particularly in regards to the guard placement, disguise flow and creative opportunities. But all, so far, have been variations on the same theme. That it works is because, at its core, Hitman's stealth and AI manipulation systems are satisfying.

Episode 5's new level departs from the template set over the past four episodes. And yet, this is still a competently constructed space in which to cleanly and creatively kill some people. It's good, because, like past episodes, it's attached to a good game.

What makes this new mission, Freedom Fighters, different, is that 47 is operating in hostile territory. Previous episodes, much like Blood Money before them, feature an area of public space to explore, giving the player chance to watch, learn and plan. Here, 47 is infiltrating a Colorado farm occupied by a patchwork militia of hackers, explosive experts and assassins. If you're spotted, you're in trouble. In that sense, Episode 5 features a style of challenge reminiscent of Hitman 2: Silent Assassin.

The shift places a bigger emphasis on sneaking, at least up to the point of securing your disguise. Still, while Colorado eventually morphs into a more familiar style, the change in atmosphere keeps things feeling fresh. We've infiltrated a lot of mansions in Hitman up to now. It's nice to try something a bit different.

This episode also brings stronger ties to the overarching story that, up until now, has been told almost exclusively in the cutscenes that play after each mission. It's still just a small part of the level, but, ultimately, that's all it can be. Because of Hitman's release model, each mission must stand alone to preserve its replayability over the life of an episode.

The farm is broken up into distinct sections, some with specific restrictions on who is allowed inside. A basic grunt can't enter the patch of land used for creating and testing explosives, and the main house is off limits to all but the elite guards. Freedom Fighters features four targets, each doing their own thing in a separate part of the compound. The structure creates lots of small-scale stealth challenges, reinforcing the hostile theme.

Normally, I prefer the more open, public levels. But Hitman needed to mix up its formula, and Colorado does the job. In terms of murder methods, it's a little less interesting than previous episodes only a few Opportunities exist spread over all four targets. But there's plenty to try, and the layout of the farm, and the nature of its restrictions, opens up the possibility for a satisfying series of contracts, escalations and elusive targets.

Colorado isn't the most visually appealing or intricate level in Hitman. But it provides some much needed variety a change of scenery and challenge that rounds out the Hitman experience. It feels as if IO has spent most of this season demonstrating that it can still get Hitman right. It's nice to see they're now confident enough to move away from the template they've created.