AT SOME POINT, Agent 47 will have to
pay for all the damage he’s dealt over the years.
A shuddering stab of PTSD whenever he saunters
into a hotel and imagines every linen basket is
bulging, not with dirty laundry, but with a body,
maybe. Or perhaps an inability to walk into a
Mitre 10 without seeing the racks of gleaming
tools as a smorgasbord of improvised weaponry.
For now, however, the bald-headed killer gets
to enjoy one of the major perks of being an
international assassin. From the glittering blue
waters of coastal Italy to the sweltering bustle ofHITMAN: THE
COMPLETE
FIRST SEASON
DIRECTOR Christian Elverdam
CAST David Bateson, Jane Perry, John HopkinsPLOT Agent 47 is commissioned to fulfil a series
of assassination contracts for the International
Contracts Agency (ICA). While each contract
seems unrelated, soon enough a link emerges...OUT NOW
★★★★★ FORMAT PS4SUPER MARIO RUN
★★★★★
OUT NOW / iOS
DIRECTOR Takashi Tezuka
CAST Charles Martinet, Maritta
Viola Sattelmaier
FOR YEARS NINTENDO has jealously
forbidden its characters from appearing on
smartphones. No more. In Super Mario Run,
Nintendo’s moustachioed mascot makes the
cross-platform leap, first to iPhone, then to
Android. It’s a familiar proposition: tour six
worlds, leaping flame pits and squishing
Goombas in order to save your beloved,
kidnapped by a spike-shelled dinosaur. Mario
now sprints automatically; you time your taps
to clear traps and bounce up walls.
The 24 main stages, each stuffed with secrets,
are rich and challenging, but
Toad Rally is where the game’s genius lies.
There you compete against other players
around the world in short, timed stages
to show off your virtuosity. SP
THE WALKING DEAD: A NEW FRONTIER
★★★★★
OUT NOW / ANDROID, iOS, MAC, PC, PS3, PS4, VITA,
360, XB1
DIRECTORS Rebekah Gamin Arcovitch,
Jason Latino
CAST Jeff Schine, Melissa Hutchison
WITH TWO TV shows, the long-running comic
and this video game series, it must be
increasingly tough to come up with a Walking
Dead story that feels fresh. Telltale’s third
batch of playable episodes begins hewing
disappointingly close to formula: there’s a
deserted location to raid, evil thugs to contend
with and, of course, undead skulls into which
to sink axes. The new lead character,
meanwhile, disgraced baseball star Javier, is a
little thin, with the badass Clementine back on
the sidelines after taking centre stage in
Season 2. Still, the visuals are richer than ever
and The Walking Dead’s paranoia-steeped
mood remains a fine fit for Telltale’s
what-to-say-next gameplay. NDS
a Marrakesh market, Hitman: The Complete
First Season offers sights of unimaginable
splendour and variety. It is quite the grand tour.
Released throughout 2016 in an episodic
format that mimicked the rhythms of prestige TV
rather than those of blockbuster video games,
this collection brings the six main chapters and
a clutch of bonus missions into one sinuous whole.
It’s a return to the freeform, improvisational style
of the earlier Hitman games, where you’re given a
rich locale to explore and an unwitting target to
eliminate. The ‘how’ and ‘when’ of the hit is,
meanwhile, left up to your imagination.
In the ictional town of Sapienza, for
example, which provides the location for the
second chapter in the series, you’re given the
run of a bustling market town by the seaside.
Your targets are Silvio Caruso and Francesca De
Santis, members of Ether, a pharmaceutical
company who have created a virus that can
assassinate speciic people by targeting their
DNA strands. Caruso and De Santis are
stationed inside a heavily guarded stately home,
which you must iniltrate by disguising yourself
as either a groundsman, a sports coach, a private
investigator or a scientist. By eavesdropping on
the locals you gather clues; then, when you inally
manage to isolate your targets, you can choose
the means of murder: a blunt swing of a golf
club, the ix of a poison pill in a glass of water or
something more spectacular, such as an explosive
propane tank dropped down a chimney.