When you think of the Hitman VR experience, your mind immediately jumps to a first person POV of sneaking up on a security goon and strangling him with piano wire. But Hitman GO VR is based on the popular mobile title, Hitman GO , which seems very un-Hitman at first glance. For the unfamiliar, it's a board game-style set up that involves moving Agent 47 one turn at a time through complex turn-based puzzle levels.
I’m not very familiar with Hitman GO as a game, although it does maintain a fairly loyal audience. Currently sitting pretty on Metacritic with an 80 rating , Hitman GO is doing incredibly well with fans and critics especially considering it's outside-the-box thinking and design. When people want a Hitman game, they want certain things. But, minus the action gore-porn of the traditional titles, Hitman GO does deliver a lot of the same stealth elements fans are used to. You watch guard patrols. You time your movements. You kill quietly (by just moving your game piece onto a guard-occupied square.) It’s an engrossing puzzle experience that follows the time-honored maxim of “easy to play, hard to master.”
So how does it handle as a VR title? It’s tough to say, really, whether it succeeds or not because it is fundamentally just a board game. The VR experience is a bit more immersive, and having accurate head tracking lets you lean over and peer around the play space in a natural way. But you’re still rotating the camera with analog sticks and you’re still moving pieces with button presses. It’s not a game that really needed to come to VR. There weren't any VR-only style features, either.
But it’s not all bad. After all, Hitman GO has been out since 2014 so plenty of fans have played it and moved on. Any of those fans who left it behind that are now fortunate enough to have their Oculus delivered (finally) could do a lot worse then purchase Hitman GO VR as part of their library. It is a fun game and, VR or no, that’s never a bad thing. And anyone who hasn’t played it yet won’t be disappointed, provided they know this won’t be a violent, through-the-eyes-of-an-assassin VR bloodbath.
Scheduled for release on May 11, Hitman GO VR will be reasonably priced at $10 for Rift and $8 for Gear VR. I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone who wants super immersive, super sophisticated, push-your-PC-to-the-limit VR experiences. But anyone with a compatible platform who wants to add a fun game to their launch collection should take a look at Hitman GO VR.
