Hitman Episode 4: Bangkok Review

Now that we’ve reached the fourth episode of Hitman it’s become clear that we’re following a defined pattern. Whereas in Blood Money everything seemed different, in this latest iteration everything seems pretty much the same. It’s not that the locations are all the same or the missions have the same end point (well they do actually, it’s death), it’s just that it all feels very much same same but different (see what I did there?). When I loaded up Bangkok I was expecting some squalor and some busy, bustling streets with scooters racing around everywhere. I was expecting mayhem, lots of movement and action to conceal my dark motives. What I found was an episode very similar in style to Paris with a different background.

The similarities with Paris aren’t necessarily a bad thing, I just expected something different. In Bangkok what you have is the Himmapan luxury hotel and resort on the outskirts of the city, and with picturesque views and still waters it’s not what you expect from Bangkok. Once again you have two targets to take out; a 27 year old rockstar who has been a naughty boy murdering his girlfriend, and a family friend named Ken Morgan, who helped cover up the murder. In my first run-through I went for the family friend first. Of course with all Hitman games the assassinations are as easy or hard as you want them to be but I found this one a little too easy. After overhearing a conversation about the suite that Ken Morgan is supposed to stay in being unsuitable I managed to “find” myself a hotel worker outfit and headed off to find Ken. All it took was a quick apology and an offer to show him to his suite and I had the target locked down. It seemed to me that there was almost nowhere I couldn’t get to with that particular outfit on and those that would discover the ruse were few and far between. Once in the suite I quite easily lured Ken’s bodyguard away with the sound of a piano then took him down by slamming the lid on him. After that Ken was a sitting duck and I was in and out with relative ease. Now I’m certain there were other, more creative ways to take him out and with a little more digging I could have discovered them but I just found the hit far too easy on a first run-through.

It looks nice but where are all the ladies!?

Taking out the young rocker, Jordan Cross proved to be a little more difficult but again, certainly not as challenging as previous episode’s hits. For Jordan I simply lured him out of his suite into the atrium, gassed everyone in there, ran out and popped a few in his skull before speeding of into the sunset on the calm waters. In subsequent playthroughs I managed to kill each of them in better, more challenging ways but I won’t go into the gory details.

What I found most disappointing about this episode was the relative ‘sameness’ feel to it. The hotel was extremely large and mostly devoid of guests and the number of security guards just didn’t feel right for a hotel – there were probably more guards than guests. Furthermore the voice actors for the entire game appear to be the same in every locale and it really detracts from the overall experience; it’s hard to indulge yourself in the story when you’re hearing the same bloke in every country. The glitches from previous episodes have largely been fixed but I did experience one or two this time but none as game-breaking as previous missions.

Needs more squalla!

Final thoughts

After playing through Bangkok it was hard to pull myself away from comparisons to other episodes and judge it in isolation. The similarities with Paris are many but can mostly be overlooked, and the comparison with Sapienza is unfair as that location is probably one of the greatest in any Hitman game ever. By itself Bangkok is not a bad mission it just felt like filler in the grand scheme of things. Certainly passable by any means but here’s hoping the last two episodes will give us something a little different.