I'm going to aim for Mastery 20 - I do want to actually see more than the first level in the game! There will always be escalations and elusive targets to give good reasons to return to earlier levels, later on.
The main problem I had with Hitman 2 was that the elusive targets kept appearing on levels I hadn't played yet. Trying to learn enough of Sgail in a hurry in order to take down an elusive target was a tough challenge. Although admittedly I wasn't helping myself by primarily working through the Hitman 1 content at the time.
I still haven't played Colorado.
I got lucky with the Sgàil ET, and even got Silent Assassin, but I managed very few of the Hitman 2 Elusives generally - I just never seemed to get the time to try them.
Colorado is a challenge, but it's got some really interesting mission stories and kill options.
My standard for "done" with a level is Mastery 20 and SASO – on the main story mission at least. Still never played most of the escalations and alternative missions.
I've never had a chance to attempt an Elusive contract, bar once. I fucked it up in the first three minutes. Kind of put me off ever trying again.
Elusive Targets rely on you knowing the level fairly well, if only so you don't accidentally stumble into a restricted area and get gunned down right away. I usually found that I needed to be prepared to take about an hour to attempt them, and 100% of the times I screwed up, it was because I got impatient.
Also, I rarely attempted the kill on my first run - just scope the place out, work out patterns, things they interact with, and identify approach vectors; then start over with a loadout that makes use of what you've seen. At any point up until you take the shot, if things start to go a bit wrong, restart.
And be prepared to wait around a while.
At any point up until you take the shot, if things start to go a bit wrong, restart.
I thought the point was you got one attempt?
Once you kill the target, that's your lot – you can do as many recon attempts as you like so long as the target survives.
You also can't reattempt if 47 dies.
You also can't reattempt if 47 dies.
THAT'S my experience. Sigh.
Colorado 20 done, and an SASO "first" run on Situs Inversus.
I did get a little lost in the basement and had to reload at one point, but I got to the sauna controls in the end…
I do think IOI have mismanaged the messaging around Hitman 3 a bit, it seems like 90% of the posts about it aren't excitement for the game but confusion around the import process. Looks like PC players are going to get a solution though:
The Divine Descendance (Mumbai Escalation) compete - Imperial Classic with Gloves get! Only one non-Elusive-Target suit remaining*, from The Calvino Cacophony in Santa Fortuna.
I hope they have a better/quicker UI for selecting suits in 3 than a single long, horizontal row; even a way to rearrange them, or mark favourites for quicker access would be nice.
*well, that and the Ghost Mode-exclusive Phantom suit… grr.
Happy Hitman day everyone! Unlocks at 1pm UK time, apparently, for some reason.
I probably won't be jumping in for a couple of days as I'm on the last-but-one chapter of Yakuza and want to finish that before getting obsessed with this - I look forward to all your stories of how the import and transfer process goes this evening.
I set it downloading last night but the carryover site still hasn't materialised. Completed the Calvino Cacophony, though, so I'll be bringing all the still-available suits with me when it does launch.
I've tried to stay away from any information as much as possible - I don't even know all the locations, only the first three - so I'm going in as unspoiled as I can. Really looking forward to this.
The carryover site is live now at profile.hitman.com.
EDIT: as might be expected, it's getting fucking hammered right now.
Doesn't seem to be working for me. First time through it told me I had no eligible accounts (I do, because I checked on the IOI site yesterday); now it's just hanging.
I'm quite surprised they didn't put this site up in advance of the game launching…
https://twitter.com/IOInteractive/status/1351907620769177608?s=19
Since you can only export once, I'm guessing they wanted to let people keep playing Hitman 2 instead of doing it early and then be effectively locked out of any kind of progress?
Site is back up but still not showing my account.
I mean it's not the end of the world if I can't carry a couple of weeks of progress over, given I only restarted recently, but it would be nice.
The transfer site is back, but they're still struggling with the IOI Account site. I've turned on Twitter alerts for IOI, and I assume they'll tweet once things are working again.
Succeeded: transferring my stuff, but so far, I'm just seeing a lot of this:
I might go back into Hitman 2 in the meantime and take some screenshots for comparison, just to see what's been changed or upgraded graphically, even in the peasant PS4 version.
It's barely been out half a day and I've already seen a site post tweets linking to an article about
Spoiler - click to showhow to unlock the game's secret ending.
FFS.
(I didn't read it, obviously)
I'm not reading anything. Still just getting the connection failure error; I don't even want to play a ton right now, just make sure all my stuff is there. 
Almost guaranteed though that the servers will shit the bed day one
Psychic Garwoofoo strikes again.
Your powers are truly awe-inspiring.
I've tinkered this morning, having discovered the usual annoyance - you can't access the main menu or store until you've at least done the first training mission - and it seems okay. Accessing the Store tab on the far right of the menu allowed me to install the following:
- Hitman 3: Hitman GOTY (second option along)
- Hitman 3: Hitman 2 Standard (third option along)
- Hitman 3: Hitman 2 Expansion (fourth option along)
It didn't seem to install anything outside of an unlock key, so that's something. Everything is showing on my Destination list and the separate stories are listed under Campaigns, so I think that was pretty easy all in all.
I also had to manually install the Deluxe Pack (first option), which is weird… you'd think that would auto-install as part of the preload.
(I'm not in need of the progress unlock, since I didn't even start H2 after buying it on Xbox… can't even begin to imagine how much fun that is to do right now)
Just retried the transfer - this time it detected my account and got all the way through the process. Hurrah!
Is the game itself actually working now then?
I had a weird disconnect issue when I finished the first training mission, but a retry fixed it. Server still seems to be a bit touch and go, I guess.
I've still been unable to get it to log in, but I'm at work now; maybe things will settle down some by the time I get to play this evening..?
My decision to keep plugging away on Hitman 2 instead of upgrading straight away appears to be paying off! Although I had to stop last night because I kept getting connection errors, so maybe I'm going to be adversely impacted by the network problems anyway.
Lost all resolve after watching the PC Gamer review yesterday. In a simple bit of Martnomics my PSN balance – made from discounted wallet top-up's – took care of the bulk of the purchase.
Finished the last level of H2 last night (Silent Assassin first go!) as the download whirred away.
Had a quick look this morning & getting everything into H3 seemed pretty straight forward (and quick – it must all 'be there' already). Progress transfer is pending so will wait on that before starting. Genuinely delighted with the way they've managed the move over: all that content in one place plus, H1 in H3 is a content upgrade for me since in includes the extra mission I've not had access to previously.
Just had a very quick look and it all seems to have worked (and be working) - progress has carried over and it immediately unlocked all the related achievements when I booted up the game. Access to Hitman 1 and 2 levels has been detected automatically and I tested it by having a quick sprint round Paris, all looks good and working as expected. No connection issues but then it was only a quick test at a quiet time of day.
A few observations:
- That is a LOT of levels on the main screen now. The three sniper levels have been moved out to the Game Modes section, which reduces the clutter a bit.
- I don't have all my suits. Some of the sillier default options from Hitman 2 seems to have vanished. Hopefully everything you've actually unlocked, Ninchilla, will make it across OK.
- Progress and mastery levels are all present and correct, from a quick glance I've got my items too.
- Performance seems even better than Hitman 2, which looked and ran great on the Series X. This is very slick indeed now.
Going to try and finish Yakuza tonight - I'm on the last chapter - then I will be Hitting Men for the foreseeable future.
Previous gen Hitmen beware: the One X version (and presumably the PS4 Pro version) no longer have the High Framerate option that Hitman 2 had. So you're stuck at 30fps now. A real shame because Hitman 2 ran so well on the enhanced machines.
Ninchilla - you're on base PS4 anyway, aren't you? So hopefully this won't be something that you'll notice.
Mart/aniki - both on Series X so you're good to go?
Yep, 4K 60FPS all the way here.
I'm still doing the training. Don't want to move on from anything until I've got all the challenges. I'll be here a while.
Has anyone killed someone yet
Has anyone killed someone yet
You can't rush these things.
It's not a JRPG.
Ninchilla - you're on base PS4 anyway, aren't you? So hopefully this won't be something that you'll notice.
I'd have to get into the fucking game first. Carryover was fine - listed as finished pretty much straight away, when it finally loaded - but every time I try and play the game, it disconnects when it tries to download my profile.
Not impressed so far.
I'll keep my eyes peeled for 'target stood on explosive dog turd or something' then but the wait is almost killing ME.
It's been fine for me so far. More Hitmans. Delighted that it's the full package with GOTY for hitman 1 with missions I never had access to before. Data carried fine.
Played through Dubai, possibly got a bug in one of the assassination options but otherwise looks grand, base PS4 wasn't troubled by anything.
Still can't log in. Still no comment from IOI. Starting to get pissed off now. It's been 48 hours, I'd like to play the game I bought, please.
There was a tweet thread about the sheer depth and breadth of what IOI is attempting to pull off with Hitman 3's content- and progression-sharing from two previous games on three (cross-gen) platforms, plus all the legal and logistical nightmares involved, and honestly it makes me break out in a cold sweat just thinking about the complexity of this feat. I've had to pull all-nighters fixing server issues with customers breathing down my neck across the internet before – never approaching this scale – and it's not fun.
That it works at all, for anybody, is a staggering technical achievement.
Which, I realise, is small comfort to people who are having problems, but still – I'm on the side of the server engineers on this one.
Yep, it's the most impressive thing I've seen since Rock Band 4 (which managed to port several thousand separate bits of DLC across hardware generations AND got all the instruments working).
The progression-sharing is presumably fairly straightforward? Write the details to a file that's linked to the IOI account, restore it on the new machine when logged in using the same account?
But the access pack stuff is impressive, it was amazing that they got it working from 1 to 2 and this is an order of magnitude more complex.
That doesn't help Ninchilla, of course. Worth a reinstall maybe? I dunno, I've only logged in briefly to check the maps had made it over and I'm planning on jumping in tonight, I'll be very annoyed if I have problems too.
The profile transfer was fine - but when it tries to load my profile in-game, it just instantly disconnects.
I'm basically resigned to the idea that, since it's not working now, it'll continue to not work until Monday at the earliest.
At this stage I would definitely try a complete nuke: uninstall the game, remove any residual save data, reinstall. It may be a corrupted local file caused by the various issues over the last few days. You’ve got nothing to lose…
Tried a reinstall - there wasn't any save data because I hadn't made it past the error. No change.
If it’s any consolation, I’m trying to play and every 5 minutes I’m getting a pop up saying connection to the servers has been lost. I can dismiss it and continue, but the whole thing is clearly still struggling.
Dubai is a nice intro:
Spoiler - click to showVery much designed to ease players into the game - there are several outfits here that allow you to move around very freely, and lots of guards standing around in isolated positions next to lockers etc. The targets occupy different halves of the level and have clearly defined routes that you can observe easily. I spotted several opportunities even in my first runthrough, and despatched them both without too much difficulty. That said, a quick flick through the Challenges list reveals several things I have no idea how to achieve, so there's definitely depth here, and I'm only mastery level 5 out of 20, so plenty to do before moving on.
One interesting change is that levels in Hitman 3 only have 3 Mission Stories each, as opposed to the 7 or 8 of the previous games. All those opportunities are still in there, it's just less inclined to signpost them to you as part of the narrative. I don't have an issue with that.
I thought Hitman 2 only had 3 defined Mission Stories, too? Hitman 1 just had Opportunities, which you had to discover; as far as I remember, there wasn't a menu option to track them ahead of time. Kids these days don't know they're born.
Hitman and Hitman 2 both have several mission stories per level, at least in the Hitman 2 version of Hitman 1, but only 3 of them are ever "featured" stories that tie into a Mission Stories challenge. There's an achievement for completing all of them on each level.
Well, at least they're finally acknowledged the issue publicly.
https://twitter.com/IOInteractive/status/1353053803814277121
(Is there a way to make tweets embed?)
