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Hitman Sniper: The Shadows Beginners’ Guide - Hints, Tips, and Tricks

March 4, 2022

Hitman Sniper: The Shadows is no ordinary shooting game. While it sees you perching in a vantage point and picking off targets, this is a shooter that rewards ingenuity and lateral thinking over straightforward accuracy.

Before we get into the nitty gritty of how the gameplay loop works and what the best strategies are, here’s a bit of backstory to set the mood.

Agent 47 is missing, and a new criminal network is threatening to take over the world. The International Contract Agency (ICA) has no choice but to activate Initiative 426 – aka The Shadows, a team of crack snipers with a lust for kills and glory.

Your role in all this is to play the part of The Shadows, travelling around the globe to take down targets, compete with other players, and build an unassailable reputation as the deadliest sniper around.

The Gameplay

The Gameplay

In gameplay terms, that means taking on a series of missions through the single-player campaign, which is broken up into chapters, and taking on human opponents in the PvP mode.

Each mission involves killing targets from a particular vantage point around a larger map. There are eight new vantage points, visible at different times of day.

You begin with a full vista, including your sniper perched on the left of the screen. Tapping the Scope-In icon brings the action a bit closer, and you can zoom-in further by either sliding the zoom meter up and down or pinching your fingers in and out on the screen.

To find targets you need to press the Instinct icon – a little eye. This highlights enemies in orange, and interactive objects in white.

Each mission has contract conditions that you have to meet – e.g. eliminating the head of security, killing all guards, and reaching 7,000 points. There are bonus objectives too, such as getting a body into a well or killing somebody with a chandelier.

That takes us nicely onto the various different ways that you can end a life in Hitman Sniper: The Shadows.

Special Kills

Special Kills

As you can imagine, shooting people openly attracts attention, which in turn attracts bullets. You can avoid this by either making shots look like accidents, or making bodies disappear. Add environment kills and examples

For instance, shooting a bucket that’s dangling over a well will attract a curious guard. Shooting the guard as he examines the bucket will make him fall into the well, thus concealing his body.

Shooting a car, meanwhile, makes the alarm go off, attracting nearby guards to step within range of the fuel canisters that are sitting next to the car. Shoot one of those and – boom – one or more guards have just died in what appears to be a tragic accident. Oops!

There are tons of these clever little tricks, so it pays to review the map and formulate a plan before firing the first bullet – though this is less straightforward in the PvP, where rounds are timed.

Scoring

Scoring

Aside from achieving the contract objectives, your aim in Hitman Sniper: The Shadows is to score as many points as possible. The higher your score, the greater your rewards.

You can earn points not only from kills but from moving kills, lured kills, headshots, and so on. It’s also possible to earn extra points through multi-kills, either through crafty shooting or by deploying a sniper’s unique Special Ability. Accidental kills also yield bonus points.

As you work your way through the campaign you’ll earn rewards, unlock additional agents, and level-up your gear, in turn enabling you to earn more points and access later missions.

Rewards are available through completing PvP events, opening a free chest every four hours, progressing along the ICA reputation road, completing tasks, opening Star Chests with Star Tokens, winning PvP matches, and completing campaign objectives.

You can also collect schemas to level-up your character, equip and level-up rifle parts, and fuse rifle parts to increase their max level, all of which allows you to score more points.

Perhaps the single best way to score big, however, is to pay attention to your agent’s Expertise. For instance, the first agent you’re given, Knight, is a headshot specialist, meaning you earn a bumper crop of points each time you shoot somebody in the head.

There’s a huge amount of variety and tactical depth in Hitman Sniper: The Shadows, and you’ll need to mix up your approach to deal with the different challenges on offer, but if you take advantage of your agent’s Expertise and review the battlefield before you start shooting you won’t go far wrong. Good luck!

You can check out Hitman Sniper: The Shadows for yourself on Google Play and the App Store by clicking here.