Hitman offers sunny Marrakech as a free trial
Free killings
Get out yer skinny tie, bald barcode boy. You’re going to Morocco for a two-week holiday. Hitman developers IO Interactive are letting folks download the third level of their innocent waiter simulator as a free trial. The 'Hitman Summer Pack' they call it. That’s nice. But it's only temporary, unlike previous free episodes which we were allowed to download for keepsies. The trial will last until until July 31 whereupon the whole episode will disappear from your library again and dissolve into a nearby crowd. Still, a two week murdercation in North Africa isn't bad. It’s also the best level from Hitman, and don’t let those sordid Sapienza lovers tell you otherwise.
You can grab it from Steam, says IO, but the cluttered arrangement of the Hitman page means it's hard to find. Thankfully, one kind Steamer has explained how to add the third episode to your library through the magic of SteamDB. So follow those instructions if you're having trouble.
In the Marrakech level, Ian Hitman Esq. has to kill a banker who has taken refuge in the Swedish embassy, as well as a Moroccan general who is lording it up in a run-down building on the other side of the map. As far as atmosphere goes, it’s cracker. The medina is bustling, there are protestors outside the embassy, there's a news crew wandering around, and a nice hookah lounge in the centre of it all. 5 stars on TripAdvisor.
IO Interactive previously gave away Sapienza, the sunny seaside village in Italy, in a 'Spring Pack' (we were allowed to keep that one). And you could already play the training level of the game for free, which sees you wandering around a big ‘my first assassination’ set pretending to murder people. But that tutorial hangar doesn’t compare to the crowded towns and up-market hotels of the rest of the game.
This is also a sneaky way of getting people bloodthirsty for Hitman 2, which was announced at E3 this summer. It looks like more of the same, closer to a second season of missions than a fully reworked sequel. But our video team has looked over it to see exactly what’s new.
You might also see a pattern here. It's possible there'll be an autumn pack too (we already had Paris for winter last year). My money is on muddy Colorado.
Hitman 2, meanwhile, is due out on November 13.