Top Stealth Games of Today Now Discounted

• Hitman Trilogy began in 2016 with episodic releases.
• Hitman 2 released as a complete game with immediate success.
• Hitman 3 absorbed and polished content from the first two games.
• Gameplay includes varied loadouts for stealth or messy approaches.
• Hitman 3 features live-service content and a roguelike mode.

Discover the World of Hitman Games

The fervor around the upcoming Metal Gear Solid 3 remake is a great reminder that once upon a time, we were drowning in iconic stealth franchises.

Over the years, some series have dwindled or transformed, but one has kept kicking and found even greater success as of late: the most recent Hitman games.

Hitman Trilogy

Beginning in 2016, IO Interactive released what would become a trilogy of Hitman titles comprising the World of Assassination.

The first game, which released new levels episodically, struggled to find its footing. Eventually, its publisher Square Enix parted ways with IO Interactive and the series.

Hitman 2, taking some lessons from the first, released as one whole game to much more immediate success.

Eventually, IO struck gold with the third and final installment in the trilogy, which absorbed the content of the first two and polished things up a bit.

Gameplay and Features

In case you're new here, the fun of Hitman isn't just getting a clean kill; it's how big you can go on its sprawling maps.

You can equip and use remarkably different loadouts to try and tackle the game in both messy and stealthy ways.

• If you want to be a marksman, there's a way forward.
• If you want to use an explosive golf ball or rubber duck, that's also valid.
• Want to be up close and deadly with a garotte wire? Knock yourself out.
• Want to go virtually undetected and never even see the target? That's also probably doable via some well-placed rat poison.

There are even substories that the player can discover across levels, which culminate in flashy and hilarious alternative methods to complete the objective.

In one playthrough, I managed to track a target to an underground experimental weapons facility and reprogram the robot they were field-testing to fire on them.

My personal favorite occurred in Mumbai, where I found signs of another assassin in the immediate area and somehow got them to take out some of my targets for me.

Replayability

You are going to want to do as many tricks as you possibly can.

Hitman 2 is one of the handful of games that stoked some kind of obsession from me.

The series locales are so expansive and delightful to explore.

Spanning the globe, the trilogy takes you to places like:

• The Italian countryside
• An English manor that hosts a Knives Out-style murder mystery dinner
• The crowded city streets of Mumbai
• A skyscraper in Dubai
• A suburb in Vermont
• A race track in Miami

You can even pick up the DLC maps and missions for both Hitman 2 and 3 for another $21 as part of the Hitman World of Assassination Deluxe Pack on PlayStation.

Live Service and Additional Content

Hitman 3 is still being supported as a live-service title and receives special missions called Elusive Targets pretty regularly.

These are limited-time missions that challenge players to kill the target in one attempt.

Last year, IO added a roguelike mode called Freelancer.

In it, you can deck out Agent 47's safehouse and take contracts to wipe out a series of targets in randomly picked locations from across the series' 20 maps.

The goal is to lure out the big bad on every run by effectively taking out their lieutenants.

If you die, you take your XP gains, invest in more tools, and start a run again.

Conclusion

More or less, Hitman has become an incredible offer over the years with more than enough replayable content to merit the asking price.

Rather than rest on its laurels, the developers have spent the subsequent years honing it into one of the sharpest and best titles of the generation.

I can't imagine not picking up all three of the games for this abominably low price.