#2: Golden Handshake [HITMAN 2]
One of my favorite levels ever is a DLC mission. The Golden Handshake tasks 47 with infiltrating a massive New York bank, and gives you the tools to perform a flawless heist. Killing the main target is an after-thought — all the fun is figuring out how to ingeniously breach the vault with nothing but your wits.
And you can do some supremely fun things here. Agent 47 can interview for a job, and depending on how he answers his questions, will get a better or worse position in the company — you can even convince the interviewers to make you into an Executive and instantly unlock access to the top floors of the bank!
Then there’s the vault itself, where 47 can wreck the security servers to lure away guards, then use knock-out gas in the ventilation system. Once the guard room is clear of gas, you can just saunter in and open the vault — figuring out all the steps to breach the vault yourself is one of my favorite memories. It’s classic Hitman. It just makes you feel like the slickest sucker on the planet.
#1: A New Life [Hitman: Blood Money]
The quintessential Hitman level. A New Life isn’t flashy, or sprawling, or as complex as other levels, but it is everything we want in Hitman. Your goal is assassinating a mafia information guarded by the FBI. His suburban house is swarming with guards, and the party being planned gives 47 multiple ways to get inside. You can dress like a clown, or put on a catering uniform and poison donuts with a sedative syringe to clear out the cops.
You can pull so many clever little schemes here. You can find an Air Rifle and ammo in a house on the block, then poison the ammo to make it fully lethal. Just shoot from the neighboring tree house! You can disguise yourself as the pool boy to lure away the target’s wife — or kill her with a coin throw. You can use lighter fluid to burn the target when he tries to BBQ. Heck, why not use both cans of lighter fluid for maximum hilarity.
This level is simple, straightforward, and just so densely packed with detail. There are tons of little events you can trigger, and a mystery to solve — where is the microfilm? That makes this little level practically perfect.
I tried to limit my list to just 12 entries — or we’d be here all day. I could list 12 more missions easily. So incase your favorites didn’t make the cut, here are my honorable mentions presented in no particular order.
Honorable Mentions:
- Meat King’s Party [Hitman 3: Contracts]
- Anathema [Hitman 2: Silent Assassin]
- Blackwater Park [Hitman: Absolution]
- The Saints Attack [Hitman: Absolution]
- Curtains Down [Hitman: Blood Money]
- Amendment XXV [Hitman: Blood Money]
- A Gilded Cage [HITMAN]
- Another Life [HITMAN 2]
- Three-Headed Serpent [HITMAN 2]
And if your favorite still isn’t here — then you can blame my terrible memory. But these are the levels I always replayed for fun! There are so many more levels I love that aren’t anywhere on this list, so I encourage everyone out there to make your own.
