Ratlike cunning, glacial patience, a truly bloodthirsty capacity for improvisation - all definitely components of Hitman 2016's brilliance, but the secret ingredient here may well be just a teeny-weeny dash of class envy. The game's sixth and final downloadable map, a high-tech mountaintop spa in Hokkaido, is my second favourite (just after the brilliant second episode set in Mediterranean beauty-spot Sapienza). The map descends from a surgery overlooking an exquisitely tended Zen garden to a sushi restaurant and, glory of glories, an open-air hot spring where you'll gaze out at prayer lanterns drifting along a distant valley.
I'd love to spend a weekend in a spa like that. I doubt I'll ever have the pleasure, and that's why all of the map's residents need to die so urgently. Striding through crystal-clear water whose warmth I could all too readily imagine, I glanced at the billionaire playboys and power-brokers lounging on the rocks nearby and felt a sense of resentment no cackling villain has ever provoked. Look at you all, you lucky bastards. Look, at you all - happy as pigs in slurry. Well then, let's see if you're still smiling after I set off this landmine in the sauna.
Hitman is a game for the times because it's essentially about taking revenge on the impossibly rich - not just by killing them outright, but by breaching their sanctums, winding your way into their routines, impersonating their most trusted confidantes or protectors and, in general, hollowing their lives out until the final blow comes to seem like an act of mercy. It's not just a question of murder, but dethronement, as you sniff out various bankers, generals, celebs or black market gun-runners at the height of their affluence and bring them rudely crashing earthwards.
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