Moving stealthily from cover to cover is paramount to success for Agent 47, and for the most part the game is equal to the task. Snapping in and out of cover is done with a single button press, as is moving quickly from one piece to another. Shooting is smooth as well, though the auto-aim always places the crosshairs centre mass, which can be a bit annoying when squaring off against armoured foes. Of course, you can always disable it and rely on your own reflexes exclusively.

Movement is smooth and satisfying, offering up some atypical first-person maneuvers (such as climbing, sliding and hurdling) that are handled nicely. Aiming and shooting are tight as well, regardless of what weapon you’re using — which includes a really enjoyable bow-and-arrow setup. My only gripe is that having one bumper control tossing explosives while the other brought up a weapon wheel felt like an odd pairing — and needless to say I gave away my position a few times by accidentally flinging a grenade when I wanted to simply select a silenced weapon.

Everything runs smoothly on the control front… until the time comes to sprint with precision. It’s during the game’s chase sequences that its shortcomings being painfully obvious. There are few things more maddening than being on a target’s heels only to clamber up a wall or dive into a pile of hay because you get too close to it. The game is simply too finicky for its own good in this regard, and you’ll end up replaying these sections far more often than you should because of it.

New to the campaign is a series of optional “strike force” missions, which is meant to take sort of a real-time strategy approach. You command units, moving them to defend or attack various points, while retaining the ability to jump into any one of them and take direct control. On paper it sounds pretty cool. In practice it feels like a work in progress. Unmanned units are largely impotent and splitting your forces never works. Instead you just end up ordering everyone to advance on a specific locale and jump from one unit to the next, killing as many enemies as you can. If Treyarch plans to bring the concept back next time it definitely needs some fine tuning.