Hitman will ratchet up the difficulty with Professional mode on January 31

Hitman is set to up the ante with its next update, which will bring along a new Professional difficulty mode for some extra challenge. Set to hit Xbox One, PS4, and PC on January 31, Professional difficulty will add some extra-challenging replay value to the game for skilled players.

Professional difficulty will become available for all Story missions (except prologue) once a player has hit Mastery Level 20 for each location. To make things more difficult, Professional difficulty will include "strict" item rules, like making it easier to be noticed while carrying suspicious items, limited saves, and disguises that can be ruined depending on how you take out the NPC wearing them. Once professional difficulty arrives, leaderboards will also be segmented by difficulty.

Professional difficulty's launch coincides with the retail disc release of the full game, also occurring on January 31 for all platforms. If you want to jump in now, however, you can grab Hitman digitally from the Microsoft Store.

See at the Microsoft Store

Dan Thorp-Lancaster

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the former Editor-in-Chief of Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl