7 Beloved Video Game Franchises That Are Stuck In A Rut

4. Hitman

Hitman is supposed to do what it says on the tin; you're given a target, get dropped off somewhere and you have to kill them and escape. It takes an age to do it properly and you'll probably die a hundred times but when you finally get that Silent Assassin ranking, it feels like a huge win. After six years in the wilderness, the series made its grand return with Absolution in 2012. It initially had everything; the black suit and red tie, the pistols, it even had PVC-covered nuns with machine guns in the trailer! Expectations were high and the fans were hungry for more Agent 47, but what they got wasn't great at all. For the casual player it's admittedly a fun game. But for the audience that had enjoyed the series since its early instalments, it's a linear shell of what made the series so good in the first place. It removed pretty much all the open world sections and instead simply tells you what to do and when - going against the experimental nature of the franchise that made it so fun in the first place. So where does it go now? The idea of a next-gen non-linear Hitman game is an exciting prospect even though the nearest thing you've got to Hitman-related news is the rebooted movie (groan) but there is one currently in development. It's made more tantalising by a statement from Io-Interactive, promising a "globetrotting Agent 47 at the peak of his career" too - watch this space and let's hope for a throwback to the Hitman we know and love.