Hitman World of Assassination on iOS is a great port

All of the mainline Hitman games are combined into Hitman World of Assassination, and it’s finally been released on iOS. It looks and plays really well for a mobile port of a AAA title, but that doesn’t mean it’s without issues. I played a few levels on my iPhone 16 and iPad Pro (M4) this week, and while I’m a little disappointed that IOI Interactive didn’t align this release with Mac, at least iOS buyers will get that version when it drops later this year.

When I first opened the game, I was pleased with how the clean menus from the console/PC versions had been ported over. However, perhaps enlarging and tweaking things a bit to make them more touch-friendly would have been helpful for mobile players. It’s not a huge deal, but there are smaller touch targets on some items than I’m used to, at least on iPhone. This is much less of an issue on iPad. However, the in-game touch controls are a little more annoying on the larger screen, but I assume most people playing will use a controller.

Touch controls are better on iOS since things are more condensed, but I’d still recommend using Backbone or a similar controller to make it easier. The touch controls are more or less fine, especially for a game like this that has a slower pace, but it feels so much better when you’re using joysticks and buttons. One of the major annoyances I had with touch controls is that all contextual buttons appear over whatever they’re related to on the screen, which often led to me having to adjust my grip to open/close doors or takedown enemies.

From a performance standpoint, the game played well on my iPhone 16, but it was not a super seamless 60fps experience. It was around 30 with a few frame drops, but it wasn’t anything that overly detracted from a game with this pace. You can also choose to run with a 60fps target, but I found that a little too taxing for this phone without relying heavily on upscaling. Either way, issues were fairly rare, and usually after a minute, things would level out and play smoothly. There are also two versions of MetalFX upscaling you can use, ‘Temporal,’ which offers the best look and lets you choose between Balanced, Performance and Quality, or ‘Spatial,’ which has less of a performance cost; however, that version is locked in Performance mode on iPhone. No matter what you choose, it seems to play fine, except for 60fps and Quality upscaling, which does tax the iPhone 16 a lot. This is likely for iPads and future iPhones. I only tested the game on an iPad Pro with an M4 chip, and it played and looked a lot better on there.

If you want to use cloud saves to switch between your phone and tablet seamlessly, you’re unfortunately playing the wrong game. There’s no option to leverage iCloud or any other form of cloud saves with Hitman: World of Assassination, and I find it baffling. Especially for a game as large as this, it’s technically the first three Hitman games all packed into one, with some bonus missions and levels. I’d love to play on my iPad at home and my Phone on the go, but sadly it’s impossible. If I could throw a Mac into that mix later this year, that would be even better.

Once you go to play, the game will walk you through a trio of tutorials, or you can choose to start with any mission from the game’s pretty decent back catalogue. That said, to unlock them all, it costs $100 to unlock the full game or $4 per location, which usually has one level and some bonuses to play in the same location. If you buy the game once, it will technically be able to download on any of your iOS devices, but since it’s an in-app purchase, you won’t be able to share it with members of your family plan. It’s also unclear if this will unlock the Mac version once it releases later this year or if you’ll need to re-buy it. I’ve reached out and will update this story if we receive an answer. It should also be noted that the game is 48GB total, and you’ll need to download each level individually. So if you plan to play this offline, make sure you leave your phone open to download all the levels you want before you go.

That said, it’s pretty cool that this game is available on mobile, and I’m glad I can play missions on the go, even with touch controls. However, the lack of cloud saves makes this hard to justify at this price. Hopefully, the company integrates iCloud into this before the Mac version comes out later this fall. You can download the game and play the first mission for free if you want to test it out.