Jean-Claude Van Damme is coming to Hitman this week as a double-crossing ICA agent, and it’s free to play for a month

'The Splitter’ is the game’s next elusive target

I’ve got a strange relationship with the stealth sandbox murderbox that is Hitman: World of Assassination. If you were to ask me to list my favourite games, the latest Hitman trilogy would be in the top five, no question. And yet, I must have gotten intimidated at some point with the amount of new updates and all the spiffy unlockable suits I was missing out on, and just haven’t touched it in a couple of years now. Is the appearance of Jean-Claude Van Damme as the game’s newest elusive target enough to reel me back in? I'm not sure, but I will say that I doubt Sean Bean can stretch his legs like that, even with the legendary flexibility offered by O2's famously variable plans. Here’s a trailer.

The actor formerly known as Jean-Claude Camille François Van Varenberg is making his appearance as Max Valliant, an ex-assassin for Ian Hitman’s current employer, the ICA. Diana’s got the briefing as usual, although I can’t mention her without regurgitating my favourite Diana fact, which is that Canadian actress Jane Perry practised her accent by imitating British newsreader Fiona Bruce. Anyway - Valiant was assassinated 20 years ago after becoming a liability, but he’s still alive, and has taken over an ICA facility in Chongqing. As an undercover 47, you’ll be escorting an ICA board member to a meeting with the ex-assassin. I imagine the meeting will probably get murder-y.

The elusive target drops on 12th of December, and World Of Assassination will be free to play from then up until 12th January next year. I’d highly recommend popping in if you haven’t had a chance yet, if for nothing else than to poke around my favourite level design in gaming. As for Van Damme, my brief bit of Wikipedia sluething found a few other gaming connections, namely a Universal Soldier Game Boy adaption, and his appearance as Guile in the 1994 Street Fighter film. Neither of which beat out Steven Seagal's cameo in the new Twarhammer DLC.