Hitman: World of Assassination Freelancer Mode Review

Hitman 3 became Hitman: World of Assassination, and with this new name change came the addition of Freelancer Mode, which allows players to take on a new role in Agent 47’s history. This new gameplay mode essentially acts as a whole new game in which players enter a roguelike mode where freedom is the main concept.

For a while, we’ve had glimpses of what the game mode would look like. Some players were even able to participate in the Closed Technical Test, which allowed the developers at IO Interactive to implement several changes to the mode based on feedback. So, after all is said and done, what does this new Freelancer Mode bring to the table, and is it worth playing? Let’s find out.

In Freelancer mode, players will be faced with the task of taking down several criminal Syndicates through a variety of campaigns. The primary objective is to identify each of the Syndicate members and then finish things off by tracking and taking down the Syndicate leader in a Showdown. Each successful mission gives you a payout of this mode’s currency, known as Merces, allowing you to purchase weapons and freelancer tools to aid you in your mission.

Oh, yeah, did I forget to mention that Freelancer Mode also completely cleans you out? No longer will you be able to engage in missions with whatever weapons and tools you want. Instead, you have to go and find these weapons and tools inside the maps as you slay your targets or buy them through the newly introduced Suppliers, who will take your hard-earned Merces and give you some nice weapons such as Sniper Rifles or Pistols and SMGs.

This approach, in and of itself, brings a completely new approach to the way players engage with Hitman. You have to pull off successful missions to earn more Merces and, subsequently, completely gather the weapons and tools for your arsenal. However, there’s also one more caveat that needs to be noted. If you ever fail the mission (either by the target escaping or dying) you will lose whatever gear you brought alongside a portion of your Merces.

What starts as a rather simple mission structure for Hitman: World of Assassination becomes a test in which players must juggle a risk vs. reward approach. Each campaign gives players a wide variety of missions that have different requirements to be fulfilled. Of course, you will need to pick the missions that suit your current inventory or use your Merces to buy the items you need to accomplish the mission.

The game doesn’t leave you completely naked, though. Each of the maps will include a variety of boxes that can home a random assortment of items. You can get useful tools such as noisemakers and some poisons to even weapons of varying rarities. If you’re lucky, you might even find some elusive weapons.

If you accomplish each of the campaign’s missions, you’re also rewarded with one of three random Freelancer Tools, which you can take with you to your next mission. Once you complete the campaign and take down the leader of the Syndicate, you’ll be awarded a random weapon that will be available to you permanently (until you lose it by failing a mission, of course).

There is one more aspect that I neglected to mention about this, which might become one of the worst punishments that the game will have to offer. If you end up losing the campaign, you will also lose all your Freelancer Tools. In addition, you will also lose your progress over the other campaigns and will be forced to start from scratch.

There are two ways to reach this failure state. The first occurs if you die during a Showdown mission or the target escapes. The second occurs if you fail a mission in a High Alert stage. When you fail a mission, the Syndicate will go under High Alert, placing more guards and hazards along the way and making your way to the target a whole lot harder.

You don’t necessarily have to fail a mission for a High Alert mission to show up, however. As you progress through various campaigns, each stage will become harder as you go along. However, as an offset to this issue, you will also begin to receive better Merces payouts for the trouble.

Suppose all of this, alongside the additional objectives that pop up whenever you pick a mission, isn’t enough for you. In that case, you can challenge yourself with the Freelancer Mode’s Prestige Objectives, which allow you to pick one of three different missions that reward you with a big payout. While completing these additional objectives is optional, it’s satisfying to see all the missions marked down and letting the cash flow in so you can buy much better weapons.

All this is done to increase your Mastery level in the Freelancer mode. As you gain more levels, you will be able to expand your safehouse and gain access to various different places and furniture decorations. Thus, you’ll be able to give 47 a place he can call home. I won’t mince words here; this is definitely the best part of the whole Freelancer experience, as you can see 47 take on the sights of the beautiful house he lives in while he does various other activities like fishing or maintaining his garden.

As you expand your safehouse, you’ll also be able to access various other hidden weapons, which will be refreshed every time you come back from a mission. That way, you will always have access to weapons, fiber wires, and even homemade explosives/poisons regardless of whether or not you fail your current mission and lose all your weapons and Freelancer tools.

The safehouse is a fun area to explore in and of itself. Especially because you get invaded by this sense of loneliness as 47 does these activities. While Diana Burnwood accompanies him, you can only hear her voice whenever she gives you a mission briefing. Other than that, 47 will always be alone, exploring the nice home he lives in and making the most out of it. There’s no longer any organization to work for or some plot about one of his brothers. This time, it’s all about 47 and his own story in the world of assassination.

From all I’ve been saying thus far, you’d think I’d be ready to call this mode an excellent way to expand the limits of the World of Assassination. Unfortunately, Freelancer Mode has a myriad of issues that can even turn off some of the game’s most hardened veterans. This game mode leaves me questioning, at times, whether or not it was even playtested before it was released.

Let’s start with the easy stuff. This game mode is riddled with bugs affecting performance and even the game’s stability in general, from framedrops and stutters in areas where the game never struggled for me before (looking at you, Chonqing) to NPCs gaining the ability to walk through the air and summoning enforcers as soon as they are killed as if it were Cyberpunk 2077 all over again.

On one occasion, which I wish I were recording, I was playing through the game like normal in Chonqing, and, out of nowhere, the scooters in the parking lot near the arcade proceeded to spontaneously combust, leaving me dead and losing my precious Collector’s Sieker Gun and Striker for no apparent reason. Even the safehouse isn’t safe (hehe) from these issues, as one of the places you can redecorate has a spot that entirely softlocks you from doing anything at all, forcing you to restart the whole mode entirely.

Don’t get me started on the spawn points, either. Freelancer mode picks a random spawning point whenever you begin a mission. Sometimes they can be the very first spawn point, allowing you to start your mission as you normally would in any other run in the vanilla game, or you could be put in a spawning point where you’re surrounded by a bunch of enforcers, leaving you in a spot where you’ll be forced to fight off significant opposition before you can even start doing your mission.

I’ll grant the mode that this is an issue that extends to the vanilla game as well. But, in the vanilla mode, you were at least able to spawn with a disguise so that you were able to play without the worry of being here. In Freelancer, you have to either wait for the guards to go away, take cover if you are pretty much surrounded by guards and bring heavy weaponry with you, or get escorted out of the building due to trespassing. I know for a fact that some Hitman players wouldn’t want to deal with that in the first place.

Another aspect that I neglected to mention about the mission structure of Freelancer is that, after clearing the first set of Syndicates, you’ll be able to tackle what’s known as Hardcore Mode. If you’re going to play Freelancer, for the love of god, don’t pick Hardcore Mode. This mode is where the bugs and glitches that this game mode has become the most apparent, no thanks to the fact that maps are set to the hardest possible difficulty (using NPC AI from the vanilla Hitman Master difficulty).

Hardcore also makes sub-missions mandatory, meaning that you have to complete those AND the Prestige Objective of your choice if you want the mission to be successful. On top of this, you will also no longer be able to see lootable boxes or couriers on the map, which means that these resources will become way harder to find unless you rely purely on their specific sound cues.

The worst part about all of this is definitely the way some Prestige Objectives can pop up that completely contradict the objectives set in your main mission. The most egregious of these is when I got assigned a mission in which I had to take down six guards and the target with Perfect Shooter (never miss your shots/only headshots), but then my choice of Prestige Objective was a choice between getting Melee Kills, Silent Assassin – No Firearms, and Open Safe – Explosion in a stage that doesn’t even have a safe in it.

I was lucky that the mission took place in Whittleton Creek, a place that essentially provides a lot of Melee weapons. Otherwise, I would’ve been screwed out of this mission. I also think this is the best time to mention that this review was done in conjunction with my friend and other fellow Hitman enthusiast, Legon Avannor. You probably remember seeing him in Perish. We experienced Hardcore Mode and were exposed to the same degree of pain. Kudos to him for being able to stomach and complete a full run of the mode, though. Not like I’m left without my own highlights, either.

All of this added pain builds up to… Nothing, really, as the payouts you get from clearing the missions aren’t any different from the normal mode. In addition, clearing stages in Hardcore doesn’t even award you with any other weapons that you wouldn’t get in the normal Freelancer mode. Did I mention that Hardcore mode also puts every mission in High Alert, meaning that if you fail it, you have to start all the way over from scratch?

I think the best way I can summarize the number of issues that Hitman Freelancer Mode has is with the second screenshot that you can see above. Look at how in the Instinct mode, you can see two outlines that say there are no enforcers nearby, and then in the minimap, you not only see there are quite a lot more NPCs around 47, but also they are all enforcers except for one, a guy who is a civilian anyway.

I don’t buy IO Interactive’s reasoning about how they removed the penalty in Freelancer mode due to “accessibility for players who have blackouts.” I firmly believe that the reason why there was no penalty introduced in the first place, players would be incredibly mad at them because a lot of hardcore players would have to resort to Alt+F4ing the game to get one chance at getting each campaign done in this mode.

But even then, all of these issues and bugs and glitches extend to the normal mode anyway. The appearance of enforcers, the random spawn points, the horrible NPC and objective placement, which can spawn a target either right next to you or at the other end of the map inside of a hostile area full of enforcers, and everything else I mentioned thus far, and you’ll end up losing your weaponry and freelancer tools more often than you might expect.

Hitman Freelancer Mode is great as a concept but has faltered quite a lot in its execution. It’s not the worst experience I’ve had in the world of assassination (hi, Colorado!), but it has left me with quite a sour taste. This is even odder when you consider that they had a Closed Technical Test and made a big deal about picking up feedback from Hitman player data and metrics.

So, why is this game mode the way it is with such a rough level of polish? IO Interactive addressed a few things, such as being able to see which Missions had a safe in them and being able to switch your Prestige Objective so… What gives?

Freelancer Mode is currently available for free for all the owners of Hitman: World of Assassination. As such, I can’t be too harsh against the game mode. After all, it does accomplish its objective of bringing a huge degree of liberty for Hitman players alongside a new long-term objective that doesn’t miss the point of the original game. This feels like the appropriate evolution for Hitman; it just needs to have a lot more care thrown its way, which might come in future updates.

That isn’t to mention that I also had my degree of fun while playing Freelancer. Sometimes, I even had more fun in this mode than in any other main modes in Hitman. Ultimately, it’s free, so you can try it out yourself. I’ll go back to my safehouse and do some fishing now.

Hitman: World of Assassination – Freelancer Mode

Hitman: World of Assassination – Freelancer Mode

While Freelancer Mode introduces a lot of new elements to the table, it also brings a myriad of bugs and issues that can take away from the overall experience. The freelancer mode is by no means bad, but it definitely has issues executing its concept due to its flawed RNG and mechanics.