Game of Phones: Every week I’ll pick a game for iOS or Android that’s perfect for long journeys, the commute or just when you want to switch off from the outside world.
The perfect smartphone game should be easy to pick up, addictive to play and easy to put down. In essence it should be able to demand your complete attention for all of around 15mins at most.
Hitman Sniper is the purest form of that recipe and as a result it has remained stoically on every phone I’ve owned since it came out in 2016.
The premise is fantastically simple: you are Agent 47 from the renowned Hitman series of video games. You are presented with a vast mansion filled with the worst types of human beings and using the same level of inventiveness that the Hitman series is renowned for your job is to dispatch of these criminals one after the other.
This is where Hitman’s simple genius comes into play. The level is always the same, in the sense that you are always presented with the same mansion. However, the objectives change every single time.
Perhaps in one mission your job is simply to eliminate all the guards without any of them noticing. In another your job will be to eliminate one mob boss but by making it look like an accident.
To accomplish these tasks you’ll have to learn the movement patterns of everyone in the map. You’ll also have to experiment with the environment around you. Perhaps there’s a glass panel that you know one of the bosses will lean on and perhaps shooting that panel might make him fall.
As you progress the objectives will get ever more ridiculous and challenging, forcing you to upgrade your weapons and abilities such as being able to slow time or see through walls.
It is a testament to the design of this game that its developers have never felt the need to release a new map. Instead it has received a new game mode called Death Valley which is essentially a zombie horde mode. It’s fun but honestly I still prefer the original campaign.
In short, Hitman Sniper is everything a mobile game should be. It’s fun, challenging and brief. Each mission takes no more than 10-15 mins depending on how dedicated you are and once it’s done you can pop the phone back in your pocket and return to reality.
Hitman Sniper is available to download on the App Store for 49p and on the Google Play Store for 79p.