The best non-Hitman game from Hitman's devs wouldn't have happened if it didn't blow EA execs' minds and 'low expectations' with a hocus-pocus demo powered mostly by dreams

These days, we indelibly associate IO Interactive with the Hitman series, but back when the studio was young we… well, we associated it with the Hitman series. It's been making Hitman for a while, starting with its first game, Hitman: Codename 47, all the way back in 2000.

But after releasing Hitman 2: Silent Assassin two years later, IO zigged where you thought it would zag: it released Freedom Fighters, a squad-based third-person shooter set in a Soviet-occupied USA. Its claim to fame was its rather excellent battle system...