Nowadays, with where I’m at in my life with a family and plenty of responsibilities outside of gaming, I kind of appreciate the smaller-scale mobile games a bit more since more of my “serious" gaming is now done on a Steam Deck or Nintendo Switch. For my phone gaming I kind of want something I don’t have to focus too hard on, and can bust out for as long a time as I feel like, even if it’s just a minute or two. That said, I also still really appreciate when a full-blown, big-pants, gamey-wamey game comes out on mobile. Something that can offer dozens of hours of entertainment for the money, with none of the distracting nonsense you typically find in mobile titles. Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal is one of those big-daddy games.
This is a port of a 2006 release, technically the 4th release in IO Interactive’s Hitman series and the one that kind of felt like the most fully-realized vision of the Hitman formula. Stealth mixed with action mixed with a pretty compelling and over the top story. It also, more than any previous Hitman game, leaned into the idea of giving the player the ability to think outside the box and complete missions in a number of different ways. Now Feral Interactive has brought all of that goodness to mobile devices in the form of Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal, and as is typical with this developer they’ve done so with a thoughtfulness for the platform that is not often seen when games from PC and console are ported to mobile.
This is covered at length in our own 5 star review of Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal, so I won’t go into too much detail here. Just know that this feels like a game that was designed from the ground up for mobile, despite being a nearly two decades old game. Virtual controls can often be tricky for a game designed for console and PC, but Hitman is a bit more slower-paced and methodical than your typical action game and as such the virtual controls actually work extremely well. This mobile release also supports controllers if you want to play in a more traditional way, but it’s nice to know that if you’re out and about in the world and have a sudden urge to assassinate some awful characters, you can do so even if you aren’t equipped with a controller.
Above and beyond offering an excellent translation of the 2006 original, Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal also plugs in some new features into this mobile version like the Instinct Mode from later Hitman titles that highlights significant elements in a level or a new mini-map that can give you an overview of a level’s setup and allow you to strategize appropriately. It’s because of things like that and the overall thoughtfulness of this mobile version of Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal that makes it the definitive version of this fan-favorite entry in the long-running series, and this should be an easy pickup decision for anyone who appreciates a meaty premium game on mobile.
