Hitman Sniper: The Shadows Review: Explore the dark and sinister world of assassins

Hitman Sniper: The Shadows is a sequel to the original Gunman sniper game launched on mobile in 2015. Instead of having Agent 47 protagonist once again, this new title is accompanied by a team of snipers in the absence of the classic agent. In this Hitman Sniper: The Shadows review, we will share our first impressions of the game by pointing out the good and bad sides.

Hit your targets as you make your way into the ICA

Starting with Hitman Sniper: The Shadows revisionit implies the main gameplay shooting enemies from your sniper perch. Most of the objectives are henchmen / guards and then there are some high profile objectives in the campaign. And while Hitman Sniper had a campaign and a zombie mode, this one replaces the zombie mode with a PvP mode.

The gameplay is again very simplistic (and not in a good way) as players just have to do it aim, zoom And shoot. Most of the time the game does it for you, putting the crosshairs on your targets when you hit the warning symbols that appear at the discovery of a body. It’s actually quite honestly a downgrade from the previous game.

For some reason, it appears that the bots / targets have suffered a noticeable nerf. They take too long to react to a body right in front of them, often seem oblivious to things like explosions, and take even longer to seek assistance.

The game introduces a decent story but the fun wears off slowly

The campaign is decent as it goes through a small story and players have to take down a lot of important objectives. Not too different from Hitman Sniper. Players actually have to get their characters up to certain energy levels as well, and there are the usual sniper blueprints for upgrades.

Another thing worth discussing is the special feature of each of the new traders. While most of them were fine and accepted additions, the first one you’ll use can shoot four people at the same time. So much for the realistic gameplay. No bugs or anomalies were found.

While the previous game, Hitman Sniper was a decent title with a few flaws, many expected a little more from this title, so the question is whether it lived up to the hype. And the short answer is a disappointing no. The game looks great in terms of user interface when players first log in. It sets up a story and introduces the protagonists, however this is where the good features diminish.

Square Enix tackles replayability with new maps and different times of the day

In Hitman Sniper, their AI seemed to be much better and faster at analyzing the situation and taking action. There is also no warning to eliminate people who are not marked as targets / are innocent civilians.

The levels in fact make you kill innocent bystanders to prevent the guards from being alerted. Although it was featured in the trailer, there is no narration of Diana telling you what to do, information about certain goals, and most importantly, telling you to keep innocent people out of your sight.

One of the updates consists of multiple maps which can be set in day / night time. One of the things gamers didn’t like about this game’s prequel was that 2 maps (one for the missions and one in the zombie mode) which has become quite repetitive. The PvP mode it is OK. It is mainly about shooting at as many targets as possible and not dying. Not the best option, but certainly better than the repetitive modes of the original Hitman Sniper.

Clean up the UI and the game comes with a decent soundtrack

Hitman Sniper was a pretty cool game and that’s not a big update from there. However, in terms of audio, there are pretty good and crisp sound effects along with a decent theme song / soundtrack. It’s not quite on the level of the Hitman Sniper theme song (which was a real hit), but it’s something and better than nothing.

The controls are mostly touched and dragged while aiming, but one of the features that was missing was the Hitman Sniper reload minigame. It was a signature refill that simply isn’t in this title, but anyone who played the latest game will remember how natural it felt after a while.

Once players have pressed the reload button, the game switches to a reload animation in the third person perspective. Once again a feature that shouldn’t have been removed is being dropped. The user interface is fairly clean and standard with nothing to complain about.

No ads, but money rewards you with better weapons

The game has no ads that interrupt the game. It pushes you towards in-app purchases but it’s not pay-to-win and players can get away with paying nothing, although you can get better shotguns faster with real money.

Final verdict

There aren’t really many reasons to say this game is a good sequel. Nothing new here is a saving grace aside from more maps to play in. And considering the fact that the previous game had better gameplay elements (and is now free in many regions), this doesn’t look very good as a sequel.

Gambling is not something players should avoid. But it’s not a good sequel or game considering it’s a project from Square Enix, an AAA studio. The game doesn’t seem to have any major updates from the previous title aside from the addition of a sniper group in the player squad and new settings.

What are your views on the Hitman Sniper: The Shadows game and your review? Let us know in the Comments!