Did anyone else try the multiplayer in this? Not the sniper assassin minigame, but the actual, on-the-ground Agent 47 vs. somehow paler Agent 47 mode where you had to race an opponent to a target. It's not in the same realm of quality as the main game, but how could it be? These levels aren't designed for multiplayer, aren't designed for semi-random targets that wander around areas where the usual target is hunkered down, aren't designed to exist in an ecosystem where you can't hoard 600,000 muffins. That being said, I had some actual-ass fun playing it, which is more than I can say for most multiplayer affairs in recent years.

It only existed in the first two non-tutorial levels, Miami and Santa Fortuna - one of which is a pretty solid level, the other is among the worst in the trilogy, notable in the campaign for spreading 3 targets across three thirds of a map that is only one-third interesting. Two players spawn in with no equipment and are drip-fed a series of targets that do not normally exist in the level, and you are given a point if you can take them out without being detected, at which point the other player is given a couple seconds to do the same or forfeit the point. Equipment spawns in chests around the level - the first player gets their pick of three items, leaving only two for the other player.

While I never for one second considered playing this with an internet stranger, I did play tens of hours of this with an old high school friend, during which we took this game - a game whose single-player mode we had independently reduced to a digital chore list, noting each item's placement and coldly, surgically eliminating targets in increasingly efficient ways - and found new ways to plumb the depths of the other person's sociopathy. That's so weird that you don't have a silenced pistol yet, I've got six of them already. Are you waiting carefully, calculating the best time to poison the target? You have five seconds, I just gunned him down in broad daylight so you couldn't get the point. I hope you have the announcer voice off because I'm killing every single person in the level so that every target kill is undetected. I'm sprinting around behind you, throwing coins into your world so you can't play the game.

For some reason, IOI gave up on the unenviable task of adapting these levels for a multiplayer game mode that four people played, each of whom offered a resounding... "eh, not really my thing". Really a shame, to be honest, because it was a spectacularly interesting shitshow to play, and I think it only would've been more so if we got a chance to see levels like Mumbai or Whittleton Creek. I never expected Hitman to have that kind of up-too-late-during-the-sleepover multiplayer experience - the kind where you spend more time fucking over the other person and laughing than actually trying to play the game - but I've tasted it, and now I need more.

In all seriousness, it was intriguing to see IOI's attempts at tweaking these levels for non-standard game modes. Contracts mode is kind of self-moderating, since players ideally pick only the contracts that match the exact level of challenge they want. A real-time versus mode is a whole different beast, and while this was a decent stab at creating an alternate game mode, I'm mostly curious to see what lessons IOI takes from this for things like their upcoming Freelancer mode update for Hitman 3 or the as-yet-untitled James Bond game they're working on. In fact, I suspect that the success of Freelancer will largely depend on the lessons that they take from this. IOI have toyed with using limited replays to create stakes with the Elusive Target system, a system that still uses the traditional setup of giving each target a single, scripted path through the level. Creating stakes by having the level itself change every time you return is a different kind of challenge, and this alternate game mode is really the only thing I can think of that's similar within the Hitman series.

One the one hand, IOI has made a lot of baffling decisions over the years - I think Absolution is the easiest example of this, with IOI leadership openly admitting in interviews that they were chasing trends they had identified in other games to try and make Hitman more "modern". On the other, they seem to have really locked their focus in recent years on what's truly crucial to creating a Hitman game and have used their missteps in previous games/modes to make the core experience stronger. It's easy to forget that something that feels like a natural fit - the use of "Instinct" in the trilogy - began as a resource bar in Absolution that often made things harder to see and would show you the exact point on the map someone was walking to. Most of the PVP mode's most severe weaknesses have already been removed from the equation by virtue of Freelancer not being PVP, so I've got some confidence that IOI will be able to make something worthwhile out of the update. Not much left to do now but wait and see.

A hard one to rate, because it's got a much better onboarding process than its older sibling (i.e. working the economy no longer means wrestling with this screen), but the difference between treading water and seeing real success is understanding when the simplified menus are betraying you.

I've been playing the Vicky series long enough to have met some of my most long-lasting friends as a result, but this isn't the case for all the players who are picking up the shiny new Paradox game. You can generally stay afloat by playing the tutorial and clicking the options that have the biggest, greenest "predicted profit" numbers next to them - good! It's good that people who don't know how to sort through all the info can pick this up and play with their friends without immediately crashing and burning. However...

There's a lot being calculated here, and the big "predicted profit" numbers are only so useful unless you understand what they represent. I've heard many complaints from friends who have picked this up for the first time, clicked all the correct Big Green Buttons, only to assume that it was a bug when their attempts to cut costs by gutting the military result in an economic crisis. All the buttons and numbers that you'd need to understand the economic crisis are present, but I don't think the game does a good enough job of indicating where they are and when you'd use them. This (combined with the UI simplicity) deprives the unaware player of a great deal of gameplay depth, to the point where my friends picking up Vicky for the first time describe it as "a game you watch more than you play".

If you do know what you're looking at, though, and you like the idea of "building tall" rather than "building wide" with your empires, this game will really sink its hooks into you. Learning the intricacies of Vicky 3 means you'll spend a lot less time scrolling Twitter with the game on max speed and a lot more time engaged with the game's systems, poking through the data provided to determine how you'll meet your long-term goals. The feeling of satisfaction you get from a Victoria 3 game is not dissimilar from the fun you have playing Factorio or Satisfactory - knowing a complex system of supply chains like the back of your hand, continually tweaking it to become more efficient, to grow bigger, to provide a better standard of living for the people in your country.

I don't really have a neat way to put a little bow on this, but I wanted to throw this review out there so people understand that this is NOT Crusader Kings 3. It's one of those games where you have to get really familiar with it for everything to click if you're not madly in love with the setting, but it's also a pain in the ass to become familiar with everything here. Paradox have really put forth a solid, earnest attempt at cleaning this up so it resembles a game more than an Excel spreadsheet (the map is fucking gorgeous!) but there's really only so much you can do with a product like this. At some point, you either bounce right off of this, settle for clicking Big Green Buttons, or you sit down with a YouTube video or friend (or your knowledge from economics classes) and go "okay, so while it says you'll lose a lot of money by making this switch, you're producing a LOT more oil, which drives the price down, meaning other businesses that rely on it are more profitable, and since you've got worker cooperatives, those dividends go to the workers which (with graduated taxation) are taxable at a higher rate than ordinary wages, which mea--"

One of the best examples of what these choose-your-own-adventure games have to offer. A believable world that you learn about the way an actual child does - some things are explained to you very simply, but you will learn a lot about society through observation only to understand why the world works that way when you're much older. While a world where people can die multiple times is pretty interesting, I don’t feel like they took full advantage of this bit of lore in my first playthrough despite being almost constantly surrounded by death. Of course, it plays a significant role in the part of the game centered around the revolt (a fixed part of the timeline?) but most of the time it came up in my playthroughs, it was related to executions or people who just happened to be due for their “True Death” anyway. The mechanics of being reborn still make dying undesirable, but I may have to do a couple more replays to see if they use this in a more interesting way in other routes.

Unlike many other “Choose your own adventure” games I’m unable to level my usual complaint at it - many of these games grant you outcomes based on a single button press, making them feel unearned. Sir Brante does an excellent job of making all the outcomes in the game feel like natural consequences of your decisions, and trying to juggle all the sources of tension present in the game becomes quite a challenge. Even with the immediate effects of your actions shown, this is by no means an easy game, as each decision has increasing weight as the story goes on, each feeling like it could be the one that comes back to bite you in the end. Characters are given agency, moving their own pieces around and even people who share your goal may take approaches that conflict with yours. Supporting the upheaval of the current order feels just as tense as it should, and while Brante experiences far more excitement than the average person would, he never feels like a superhuman in his fictional context.

This isn’t to say the game is perfect. While the game generally does a good job of making you feel like there’s a diverse pool of possible outcomes, there are a few endings for the Brante family in particular that feel detached from their context in the story. There are also quite a few typos - nothing that really prevents you from understanding a sentence, but there are enough that I had to go back and do a repeat read more than once. Additionally, I feel like showing the possible events at the beginning of the chapter is the game tipping its hand a bit too much at the expense of the story. This would be a little better if the requirements to trigger the events weren’t displayed here, so that you still know what’s possible without knowing what exact stat threshold will guide you to the desired ending.

All that being said, I still think this is the best game of its type on the Steam store right now. It’s got a setting with enough interesting idiosyncrasies that you want to know more, but it's never weighed down with lore dumps. The decisions can be genuinely tough and the NPCs feel like they have real agency in the story, making great use of it by working towards understandable goals. It’s paced well, respects the player’s time, and doesn’t try to drown you in minutiae.