I had so much fun in Sapienza dressing up as that plague doctor and posing as a statue until I could knife the guy in the back. I know 47 does these OTT things because he's a professional but that was some serious 'slasher horror' energy right there. The other objectives that aren't Caruso kinda' made me tired of Sapienza though.
Caruso definitely has the highest number of interesting approaches, for sure, but de Santis has her moments, too. The virus sample is a particularly boring objective, though, and I'm glad they didn't do many other static targets (at least Soders has a lot of options for how to get to him).
The challenges saving instantly is a godsend. I only completed Sapienza two or three times, specifically because the virus bit was dull. But I assassinated the two targets dozens of times.
I ended up spending the whole of yesterday evening playing "A Silver Tongue" which is the extra mission they added to Miami in one of the expansion packs. At first I thought it was really disappointing - the guy you need to kill is wandering around in plain sight about 30 seconds from the start of the level. But then I spent a good couple of hours making his life thoroughly miserable (and rather short) in as many ways as I could: shooting him, stabbing him, blowing him up, poisoning him, garrotting him, drowning him in a portaloo, dropping coconuts on him… It ended up being a concentrated dose of Hitman with none of the tricky setup and all of the creative murdery goodness. Great stuff.
Played one of the levels I’d not previously seen - Bangkok, from Hitman 1. It’s decent enough I guess but feels a bit like a reprise of Paris, and a lot of the level seems quite empty. Still, the first run through never really shows you all of a level’s possibilities, and I’m only slightly miffed that I got hit with a pathing bug that meant one of my targets refused to come downstairs and eat my lovingly-poisoned birthday cake, instead just standing rooted to the spot waiting for something that wasn’t going to happen. Back in tonight to see if I can choke him with that damn cake.
Yeah, Bangkok's a weird one. It's the most "videogame"-y level in my head, in that it feels artificial in a way that none of the others really do. The way Jared Leto is all the way up in a tower with a ton of people and only one way in or out sucks; it really limits your choices.
I'll have to check, but I was certain there are multiple approaches to Cross's penthouse…
There's a couple of staircases and going across the roof, but I'm fairly certain I never found a way into the recording studio that didn't require going up that final set of stairs.
I could be wrong, though.
You could say the same about the Bank, though, and that’s a top tier level. I guess it’s all about the options once you actually get up there.
I'm fairly certain I never found a way into the recording studio that didn't require going up that final set of stairs.
I vaguely remember there's a drainpipe you can climb out the back of one of the hotel rooms?
There’s definitely one on the other side of the hotel, which takes you up to Ken Morgan’s penthouse, so if the design is symmetrical then there’s probably one leading up the recording studio too.
As mentioned in PWB there was a Hitman event. We played across PS4 mainly, one PC and one Stadia. We used Zoom for chat (& Zoom video stream for Stadia) with everyone streaming on YouTube and one PC twitch stream.
Everyone had H1 but most were playing via H2 (I think 3 were on H1 and the other 5 were on H2 – Stadia is H2 engine but releasing incrementally. You can tell by the grass).
We all set a up the same contract in Sapienza which was to kill the topless fishing guy next to the speedboat exit. This meant that whatever else happened in the level the "success" criteria was always the same. Then, for each round, we had two online wheel of fortune style randomisers. One for target and one for weapon.
It was a knockout style competition: two players play the same scenario and then there's a winner voted on by everyone else. If both players hit the target then there was a bit of debate but generally one player ran away with it by either hitting the brief very quickly or by going nuts and taking out loads of additional bystanders in a creative way. Or… one player died and the 2nd managed to hit the target in any way they could.
The final was between the two most inexperienced players and the criteria was the most kills in a hazmat suit.They had to get into the lab, into a suit and then just take out as many people as possible. It was really funny. By this point there was a change in the way everyone else viewed the competition. All spectators were chipping in with weapon locations or ways into the lab.
It was genuinely one of the best evenings of gaming I've had. All the technology worked really well. The only glitch was Stadia streaming because that went via Zoom and needed a bit of digging into the Zoom settings to get a syeady stream but otherwise it was fine.
Experience ranged. I've not played Sapienza since 2016/17. Unfortunately I drew the short straw and went first (and also had the longest play time of the night at 32 minutes). The guy I was drawn against has just rinsed H1 after getting a PS4 a couple of months ago. We had drawn knife as the weapon and the priest as the target. It took me half the time to find a knife and the other half to find the priest. He went straight for the Plague Doctor and circumcision knife and completed the brief in something like 12 minutes (Yeah, "something like" 12 minutes; it was 11 minutes and 49 seconds!).
It was really good fun and fulfilled the brief of watching pals play games. The dynamic was interesting too. Our first round was pretty cagy but after that more experienced players were helping others who hadn't been in the map before find weapons and targets. There was a great round where the target was 'plumber' and it was agreed that each would attempt a different plumber from the other.
Giant bomb have a raft of videos doing essentially the same thing but they use the main missions as the set and then pull costumes, weapons and a wildcard (e.g. feed three bodies to the wood chipper) at random. I hope this carries on and if there's any appetite for it here give me a shout.
That sounds brilliant.
I think something like that was the intention behind Hitman 2's Ghost mode, which featured two players going head-to-head in a single level, competing to see who could take down the target the quickest. However, as the players couldn't actually interact with each other in any way, and the feature only worked on two of the game's maps, it was all a little pointless. You'd get much the same effect by simply playing the game separately and communicating over voice comms. Or setting up a Contract and challenging your mates to beat each others' times.
So it was no surprise they took the feature out, I guess. Maintaining the servers probably cost a fair bit for a feature almost no-one used. I'm more disappointed in the removal of the Sniper Assassin co-op mode, as that always looked pretty cool and I wanted to try it; if nothing else there are now a few trophies/achievements in the game that are unobtainable.
I knew they'd taken out Ghost Mode, I didn't know they'd stripped the sniper co-op, too.
stripped the sniper
<MGSV joke>
Quiet, you.
I am ashamed of my words and deeds.
Quiet, you.
BADUM TISH
I thought I'd installed this on the Series X already, but apparently doing it through the phone app just downloads the free base game – so I was quite disappointed this evening to finish all three training levels and be greeted with a notification telling me to buy the expansion packs I already own.
So that's another 20-something downloads in the queue…
Alright, FINE, I'll fucking buy it, then
(I was always going to)
Looks like more Hitman, which is coincidentally exactly what I want.
(I've already pre-ordered it, of course).
I wonder how achievements/trophies will work on Hitman 3 if you carry your progress over. Most of the achievements in these games are linked to completing challenges. A lot of players going into the new game will be bringing in a lot of progress from H2.
Will H3 automatically unlock all the achievements you've earned in the previous game when you first load it up?
Will achievements only be unlocked in H3 if you redo them (and if so, how do you track what you've done and what you haven't, given that your progress will have been imported)?
Will achievements you've earned in H2 be permanently unavailable in H3?
Will H3 simply have no achievements for H1 or H2 content?
Basically I can't think of any reasonable way in which this could work and I can't think of any examples where this situation has occurred before.
I guess the sensible way would be for Hitman 3 to "upgrade" your installation of Hitman 2 and inherit all its achievements - but I have no idea if that sort of thing is technically possible on PS, Xbox, or both.
I think that at best you will have to earn them all again. Depending on how they are triggered though it might not be possible.
I believe it's possible (on PlayStation, at least) for different games (or SKUs, at least?) to share trophies - maybe unlocking a trophy (or achievement, depending on your flavor of next-gen) would just unlock it as Hitman, or Hitman 2, instead of having duplicate lists?
Anybody else on Xbox having a lot of connection issues with the Hitman 2 servers? I don't ever remember having trouble with it on PS4, but I'm seeing two or three disconnects a day on Series X.
I've had no problems (although haven't played in the last day or two). It does take quite a long time to log in, but I've had zero disconnects. Are you wired or on wifi?
WiFi. I've tried connecting with a cable through a powerlink adaptor but the Series X doesn't seem to like that at all. Maybe I need to try a different plug.
It might just be a temporary server glitch, I guess. If I'm on over the next day or two I'll let you know how it goes. Call of the Sea has taken up most of my attention lately but Agent 47 is never far from my thoughts.
Not having any server issues but I’ve got a bugged achievement now - completed all the mission stories in Santa Fortuna but the Heads Will Roll achievement hasn’t popped.
Having just re-hit Mastery 20 on Paris, I started up Sapienza and have been somewhat overwhelmed by the scale of it, all over again. And it's only the second of five levels, which comprise only the first of two games! I never made it past Mumbai on PS4, don't know if I'll ever make it to the end on XSX, but at least I've got something sizeable to focus on once Yakuza rolls the credits.
Whittleton Creek is a nice little map, and a real change of pace after the bustle of Mumbai, but despite some great little hidden gems, feels like it's got some of the least stuff going on. It also has one of the more frustrating objectives.
Isle of Sgàil is the one I've spent the least time on, and reminds me a lot of Colorado from the first game, in terms of how hard it is to just get around, so I found the layout quite tough to pin down.
The DLC levels are a bit of a mixed bag; I really like New York, but the Maldives, as I've said before, feels like a few very isolated and obvious sections, rather than a single place. If it'd just been the main resort, and ditched the mansion, I think it'd have been stronger for it.
I'd agree with most of that, apart from the fact that Mumbai is always the one that feels the most segregated to me - you've got the movie tower, the slums and the trainyard, and apart from a couple of very scripted sequences, none of the targets really move out of their assigned zones. It's an astonishing-looking level, for sure, but I probably prefer Whittleton Creek overall simply because it feels quite freeform. There are a lot of opportunities for mischief in that level that don't rely on scripted opportunities, and of course murdering people with muffins never gets old.
Exploding gopher-holes is a close second place.
Got to Mastery 20 in Sapienza last night (including an SASO Sniper Assassin run!), so it's on to Morocco next. I'm mostly focusing on mission stories and other challenges related to unlocks, but also just enjoying getting back to familiar locations and remembering all the tricks.
I expect a flawless SASO run first attempt in Morocco, given all our practice.
I expect a flawless SASO run first attempt in Morocco, given all our practice.
Not my first run – I hadn't got the card scammer unlocked initially, when I was running the mission stories to get the emetic vial – but I managed it tonight on my first SASO attempt. Not going to be winning any speed records with the 7:40-odd time, but it was clean enough in the end.
To get the card scammer I had to run through the mission stories on Colorado, and I think time has made me appreciate it much more than I did in the past. I don't think I've ever been as down on it as some other hitmen here on the Soc, but I found revisiting it unexpectedly nostalgic.
Started the year with a bang by killing both targets in Sapienza with cannons.
Game Informer have a video of the opening five minutes of Hitman 3's Dubai mission, captured on PC (but probably not too far off PS5 and Series X).
No spoilers or strategy suggestions, just a look at a new gadget and what seems to be a fuckload of ray tracing.
Is ray tracing seriously the new shiny thing this gen?
Seems to be. The handful of implementations I've seen so far have kinda overdone it to an extent, but there's something about that Hitman footage that seems to have nailed it. Maybe it's the setting of in-game excess and polish that helps sell it; not sure if Santa Fortuna is going to benefit from that level of reflections as much, but Paris is gonna look stunning in this engine.
Hokkaido is about 70% glass. It's going to be a hell of a thing to see, assuming the framerate's in double digits.
Is ray tracing seriously the new shiny thing this gen?
That and faster loading times.
Welcome to the gaming technology plateau, my friend. Please enjoy the complimentary muffins.
It’s always going to be “30fps with ray tracing or 60fps without”, isn’t it? And we’ll all be waiting for the next gen, again, to actually have the power to run games as they’re designed to be played.
I do like those faster loading times, though.
Watch Dogs Legion has a LOT of puddles. When the evening light hits everything just right, it can look almost photorealistic.
But I'd take 60fps any day over better reflections. (Appreciate it's not a straight trade off.)
Gimme a good game that runs smoothly… 30, 60, don't care. Something that's fun, not bloated overpriced nonsense that's supposedly good just because the hype train has been convinced it is without even playing it.
Oh, I can't have that? That's not how tech advancements work? Forget I spoke then. 
Mart, have you heard of the Switch?
Something that's fun, not bloated overpriced nonsense that's supposedly good just because the hype train has been convinced it is without even playing it.
I don't know if you're talking about Hitman, but they've had two pretty solid games to build up goodwill, and unless they severely depart from the formula I'm expecting a solid end to the trilogy.
Something that's fun, not bloated overpriced nonsense that's supposedly good just because the hype train has been convinced it is without even playing it.
I don't know if you're talking about Hitman, but they've had two pretty solid games to build up goodwill, and unless they severely depart from the formula I'm expecting a solid end to the trilogy.
Oh god, no. Hitman is a masterpiece.
It's more a general comment on next-gen development and the arseholes surrounding it. All the 'gamers' had already decided Cyberpunk was going to be amazing before it even came out, and then even after when it clearly wasn't. Last of Us 2 won tonnes of 'Best Of' awards despite being an utterly awful example of how the games industry prides profit over people. Ass Creed Valhalla is, by all accounts, dull as fuck despite costing Ubi tens of millions to develop.
Meanwhile, I've got tonnes of fun out of smaller games that are just good. Games are meant to be fun. The sooner developers put that first and foremost in their design docs, rather than thinking 'How much can we blow on making the same shit prettier?', the better for everyone. In my eyes, anyway.
So I'm thoroughly confused about what, if anything, carries into Hitman 3 from the previous games. Is there a definitive answer anywhere official? I've seen conflicting reports in my Google searches.
The official site says "All locations from HITMAN 1 and HITMAN 2 can be imported and played within HITMAN 3 at no additional cost for existing owners – plus progression from HITMAN 2 is directly carried over into HITMAN 3 at launch."