Suit For Hire Review

SUPERHOT. My Friend Pedro. Hotline Miami. There aren’t a lot of games that let you play as not-John Wick, but without exception, every title that does is fantastic. There’s just something satisfying about one-tapping enemies while dodging around small levels. It doesn’t matter how good those levels look, what perspective the game uses, or if your protagonist has a backstory. If you’re able to activate slow motion at will, and don’t have to make precision shots to take down your foes, whatever game you’re playing is all but guaranteed to be a cult classic. It’s been decades since Max Payne created whatever genre the likes of Sifu is part of, and yet that genre is still one of the few that doesn’t have a singular dud in it. Suit for Hire is the latest gun-kata-em-up, and even though it isn’t as technically polished as its contemporaries, it’s still infinitely more enjoyable than most of what’s on Steam’s virtual shelves.

If you haven’t played any of the games listed in the introductory paragraph…well, first, you really should. Secondly, all of them, including Suit for Hire, have the same basic concept. You play as a (usually) unnamed protagonist who is tasked with eliminating goons because that’s just what (usually) unnamed protagonists do. You only need to fire one or two shots to take down targets in missions that can be completed quickly, but are designed to be replayed until you can obtain a perfect score. You almost always use some combination of firearms and melee attacks to do so, can slow down time, and jump/dash/roll. The differences between them boils down to whether or not you view your actions from the first person, third person, or top down, and whatever gimmick they have.

‍Suit for Hire follows this formula to the tee. In it, you play as a Suit, who is, well, for hire. You’re a hitman who travels all around the globe killing mobsters, and that’s the extent of its narrative. Gameplay is obviously more complex, but not by much. Each one of its thirty-odd missions start you out with only a handgun and a handful of bullets that will take down your opponents with a single headshot that’s all but guaranteed to land because of auto-aim assist. Using that pistol, your fists, or weapons you can find, you end the lives of everyone you come across over the course of a few minutes. You can only get shot a few times depending on what difficulty setting you play on, and it’s rarely challenging to complete an action sequence. You can knock down the speed of time if you need to make a long shot, parkour around incoming bullets, parry melee attacks, or perform a takedown to replenish your ammunition. All of this is done in either third person or from a top down perspective (à la Hotline: Miami), and you can swap between those camera angles freely.

It should go without saying that Suit for Hire feels absolutely fantastic to play. Like the many titles that inspired it, you’re effectively John Wick. Many of the arenas you fight in are ripped straight from that film franchise, and have music to match. Whereas certain games require you to earn the right to be a badass, it’s a given in Suit for Hire. It takes skill to master that right, though. You won’t have to try hard to pass a level, but if you want to rack up a high score, you’ll have to play them to the point where you see them in your sleep. It’s a satisfying process that involves a lot of trial and error. Because a complete playthrough will only take you five or so hours, though, you don’t have to devote your life to it. There’s a reason why Suit for Hire’s genre has such a devoted following, and the game won’t change anyone’s mind about that for the worse.

All of that isn’t to say that Suit for Hire is perfect. The title lacks the innovation and imagination of many of its contemporaries. Its graphics, for as little as they actually matter, aren’t artistic nor are they very good. Its arsenal is seriously small. It has next to nothing in the way of enemy variety, either. The same handful of archetypes are used on all of its levels, without any real variations on their skins or with their weapons. Your objective is, without exception, to kill your enemies while occasionally pressing some sort of button. None of that changes the fact that Suit for Hire is immensely satisfying to play, but it’s very much a cookie cutter entry into whatever its genre is called.

If you’ve played any other title in that genre, you know that isn’t actually a dig at it, though. Suit for Hire is a John Wick film adapted into a video game without any of the plot and with all of the violence. It has its problems, most notably its sparingly few enemy types and equally small selection of weapons. For any other title, those things would be a major and almost game-ruining issue, but those titles rarely have gameplay as good as Suit for Hire’s. It doesn’t exactly innovate or expand on what Max Payne did years ago, and instead imitates it successfully enough for it to be worth playing. If you’re looking for something nuanced or intriguing, Suit for Hire isn’t the experience for you. If you want to dive off ledges in slow motion while blasting baddies with a six shooter, however, there are only a few other games that will let you do that. One of them is, of course, Suit for Hire, which makes it worth picking up.