Hitman World of Assassination brings you closer to death than ever before. The first of many Hitman episodes released in 2016 and comprised of three titles, the DLC mixes live updates, new maps and modes across all games, tied into one major separate title, World of Assassination.

World of Assassination became a single game available for purchase starting January 26. The first two parts were removed from stores and added as a free update for those who own the third part.

Developer IO Interactive wanted the three games to become one game, a place to find everything that's been created over the past seven years. To achieve this, Hitman and Hitman 2 are no longer available for purchase, though if you own them you still own them, and Hitman 3 is now Hitman World of Assassination, which includes all the content from the previous three games.

This new format and entity creates a massive new game with 21 elaborate maps, multiple campaigns, game modes, and collectibles. Most importantly, it adds an entirely new way to play with Freelancer mode.

If you've played every map and ticked off every objective, standalone mode will present you with a challenge unlike anything the series has ever asked of you. What standalone mode does is remove certainty from the game, creating a rogue-like style of levels, participating characters, and non-playable characters. Where planning and execution are in the literal sense.

In your new safe house, you’ll be asked to choose a guild to take down. Each guild has 18 nodes to work through, with levels facing off at set intervals to determine your progress and force the four guild leaders to come out of hiding and appear before you. The levels are the same, and the main story events that happen during these levels are all the same, but the objectives are now randomized.

Guards, walkers, women, or anyone else could be potential targets. And just like the previous highly illustrative landmarks around which each level is designed, they have favorite times and locations. But you’re unlikely to see your target wandering under a hanging piano. Alternatively, he might spend his time simply wandering around a café in the square, never straying far from a group of guards or people enjoying themselves there over lunch.

If you want to take this person down without anyone noticing, there are ways to improve your chances. There are safes and couriers to rob and suppliers to buy weapons from. But sometimes even that doesn't help. That's the point.

The standalone mode is all about personalized assassinations rather than showboating, and it really brings the game to life. This objective can be locked down primarily in the arena, but it will be impossible to escape. However, the plaza had a building with a great view. The only way for Agent 47 to achieve this objective was to get to the roof, knock out a guard, and fire a gun, not a sniper rifle in hand. There was simply no other way. It was a liberating moment.

Serious deaths in standalone mode come with a lot of risk. If you fail a mission, you'll lose all the weapons and equipment you brought or found, and half of the Mercer Coins, the new currency in this mode. But in these levels, failure doesn't stop you from progressing through the decades. It just makes later levels more challenging.

Encounters add another twist to the game’s structure. And each face has the same free-form background. Each level has four objectives, and you have to distinguish the real target from the fake ones. You’ll be given some details, like whether they like food or have red hair, and you can use the suspect’s camera to take pictures and track potential prey. However, it’s still randomly selected.

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