Looking for your next VR game to disappear into for hours? In Hitman: World of Assassination, Agent 47 proves that even in 2026, he’s still an audiovisual feast on PSVR 2.
At the end of May, IO Interactive is releasing 007 First Light, a new take on the world-famous secret agent James Bond. It’s an obvious fit: IOI knows a thing or two about agents. The Hitman series, built around Agent 47, now spans eight entries. The bald assassin with the barcode on the back of his head has long since become a video game icon. His debut, Hitman: Codename 47, is now 26 years old, and I still vividly remember my first missions with “Subject 47” in Hong Kong, Colombia, and Budapest.
Now, a quarter of a century later, I’m once again hunting my way across the globe. This time from a first-person perspective, and on PlayStation VR 2 instead of a low-resolution flat-screen TV in my childhood bedroom.
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Hitman VR, Take Three
Hitman: World of Assassination is hardly a new game at this point. It bundles the entries from the reboot trilogy released between 2016 and 2021. The series’ VR adaptation has also been around for years: first on the original PSVR, followed a year later by a PC VR version that never quite came together. Even back then, Hitman 3 in VR impressed with spectacular locations, but its clunky gamepad controls left an enormous amount of potential on the table.
The PC VR version did add motion controls with VR controllers, but the implementation was inconsistent, and bugs and glitches dragged down the overall experience. Certain trigger points still had to be activated with a button press—a compromise the developers had to make at the time, and one the new PSVR 2 version loosens up considerably.
“There were some performance issues and console limitations back then that we couldn’t work around,” Senior Game Designer Eskil Møhl told me during a visit to IO Interactive in Barcelona. The team learned a lot from the first two VR ports, he said, but those versions also left them with a wishlist of ideas they still wanted to implement. “We wanted more touch interactions to pull players deeper into the game.”
More Freedom of Movement
Compared with many modern VR games, these may sound like small touches—manual reloading, unlocking doors, pulling levers—but they do a lot to elevate Hitman in VR and make the PSVR 2 edition the most interactive VR version of the series yet. “We really wanted manual reloading in the game, for example, and we’re very happy with it. It feels cool, and it’s fun to figure out how to swap magazines in the different weapons, because the weapon models were already very well made in the base game,” Møhl says—and I can confirm that.
The weapons and items I’ve seen so far were impressively detailed. It even goes so far that you can use a shiny key as a mirror at the right angle to peek around a corner. The inventory is now accessed through a subtle but practical radial menu above your hand. You rotate through available items with the joystick, then grab the selected object with your free hand.
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Hitman’s world is incredibly rich in detail. That said, anyone expecting to pick up and inspect every little stone the way they can in Half-Life: Alyx will be disappointed. Making every object interactive simply isn’t feasible in a port of this scale. The workload would be enormous. Instead, the development team focused on the most important objects and marks them with a subtle bright outline or small white interaction points. At the press of a button, you can also highlight key points and people in the area—a useful and important feature, because otherwise it would be hard to keep track of everything.
Far More Immersive, but Not Quite Seamless
When it comes to the controls overall, I’m torn. Yes, the new freedom of motion controls is absolutely good for Hitman. Dual-wielding in particular—using two different items or weapons in both hands at the same time—adds a lot to the experience. You can take down multiple enemies at once, for example, by knocking out the first with a fire extinguisher and hurling a full can of cola at the next one’s head. Anything you can hold, you can also throw or use as a blunt object.
These new freedoms make Hitman’s sandbox world, with its countless ways to approach objectives, feel much more believable. Still, the controls don’t always feel as precise as I’d like. For instance, I still have trouble placing a crowbar exactly where I want it, or grabbing the slide of a gun correctly while reloading in a hectic situation.
You can also step out of the first-person perspective from time to time. For example, when Agent 47 leans against a bar or sits on a park bench reading a newspaper so he can eavesdrop on a conversation unnoticed. Climbing also switches to a third-person perspective with a movable camera. “That was a deliberate decision,” Møhl says. “Hitman is a very demanding game, and this gives players a chance to catch their breath and just let their eyes wander without having to be physically active themselves—and let’s be honest, in VR it’s simply no fun to stare at a ladder the whole time while climbing.”
The Real Star Is the World Itself
With its improved controls and new interaction options, Hitman on PSVR 2 takes a major step forward. But the real star is the environment. Rarely have I felt as lost in a game world as I did in the Italian town of Sapienza. The sleepy coastal town is gorgeous.
I stroll along the beach, wander through narrow alleys, step into small shops, or simply sit on a park bench and listen to the bustle of the marketplace, the sound of the sea, and the calls of seagulls. The lighting is a real showstopper, too. When I climb the steps of an old church tower and the occasional beam of sunlight briefly blinds me, I can almost feel the warmth on my skin.
No matter which level I enter, I initially forget I even have a mission to complete and turn into a wide-eyed tourist soaking up these lively spaces. And Hitman offers plenty of varied locations: a racetrack in Miami with a festival vibe, an industrial hall in nighttime Berlin converted into a dark techno bunker, or an opulent bank building in New York City complete with an underground garage and a gigantic vault. I wish Hitman had a walking-tour mode that simply let me admire the architecture.
Hitman: World of Assassination’s VR Mode Still Delivers in 2026
Hitman is one of the most beautiful VR games on PSVR 2, and its level of detail is almost unmatched. A world this rich and alive is extremely rare in VR, and that alone makes it worth visiting. Once you’ve set a virtual foot in Sapienza or Miami, it’s hard to stop marveling at it.
Even in its third version, however, the game still feels like a VR port, and that means compromises. The controls are much freer and more immersive, but they still struggle with occasional precision issues and small limitations. I also noticed repeated performance drops and minor stutters.
Overall, though, the 2025 VR mode for Hitman: World of Assassination on PSVR 2 is easily Agent 47’s best trip into virtual reality yet, and it remains an audiovisual treat. VR enthusiasts craving AAA content for their VR headset after Meta’s exit from VR game development should treat themselves to a trip into this massive sandbox.
The VR Edition of Hitman World of Assassination currently costs just under 40 euros for PSVR2—but the next sale is bound to come along.
