Hitman: Hitting Men

I saw a speedrun of the Dubai mission that took 24 seconds, and he only made it to #35 on the global leaderboard.

Quite looking forward to getting my mitts on this, eventually.

Getting mastery 20 on the Hitman 3 levels looks like it's going to be more challenging than in the earlier games.

I've completed all the mission stories, done a whole bunch of other stuff and completed a big chunk of the challenges and I'm only on 12/20, without any big wins left. Lots of scrappy little 1000-pointers like finding different exits. They've removed the No Evidence challenges as well as anything connected to Master level, so that's a good source of XP that's no longer available.

I'm going to have to try for a Silent Assassin run I think, no idea as yet how to do it but need to have a think. And there's an escalation (I think only because I bought the Deluxe pack) which should be a handy source of both XP and unlocks.

I feel like a Victorian urchin, face pressed longingly against the window of a toy shop the week before Christmas.

I saw a speedrun of the Dubai mission that took 24 seconds, and he only made it to #35 on the global leaderboard.

I saw a video of someone doing it in 9 secs. I'm not sure how that's fun, but more power to them.

I feel like a Victorian urchin, face pressed longingly against the window of a toy shop the week before Christmas.

You are mostly just saving yourself from launch week irritations. Mine's still losing the server connection randomly, I booted it up earlier today to find that I had no access to any levels at all (fixed by a restart), the HDR is busted and I've had a couple of really weird scripting bugs even in the first level. I mean I can play it but it'll be a better experience after a patch or two.

the HDR is busted

Ha, my TV doesn't even do that anyway.

I wouldn't be playing a ton, regardless - not with the kids around - but it's frustrating to not be able to even check that the transfer went okay*, or look at the older levels in the shiny new engine.

I did start the first level in offline mode, just briefly, but only just made it into the building before switching back off.

I've got Twitter alerts on the IOI and Hitman accounts, so if/when they do announce anything, I'll know, at least.

*I know that Escalation progress is reset - I'm guessing that means my runs to get the Buccaneer, Summer Suave, and other associated unlocks were for naught, which is an additional disappointment.

I think if you've completed the escalations and got the rewards, those unlocks should carry over. It won't remember you've done the escalation itself (in the same way as it doesn't remember how many mission stories you've done on each level) but you should have those suits.

In other news, the Dubai escalation is pretty tough. But you at least get the suit just for starting it.

This feels like a lot?

I love videogames.

I realise how pretty this is gonna sound, but Hitman speedruns on PC always feel just a little bit like cheating to me - or at least, not something I'm all that bothered by. Mouselook is already a huge advantage over console, but fully rebindable controls and more flexible peripherals (like multi-button mice) make pulling off some combos a hell of a lot quicker on PC than a console could ever have it.

Indeed. It’s a skill, for sure, but not one I have any interest in.

Anyway, I’ve done Silent Assassin on Dubai now, getting very tempted to move on. Hitting level 20 Mastery on this one is basically going to be nearly every challenge.

List of known issues now up on the official forum:

Looks like Ninchilla's issue is top of the list, and a fix is being tested, so hopefully not too long now.

🤞

I've never really understood why Hitman requires a permanent connection to a server, anyway. What's the reason for it? I know the IOI accounts have enabled progress transfer which is impressive but then you could play these games perfectly happily without ever creating an IOI account, so that's not the reason. They're not doing any sort of cloud computing because you CAN play the games offline, it just won't save your progress. I'm guessing it must be some sort of anti-cheating mechanism to preserve the integrity of the leaderboards, but again why prevent single-player progress from being saved if you're offline? It's very, very odd and has undoubtedly caused them a whole load of problems that could have been avoided.

Literally no consolation at all but on PS4 it's all working really well. We had another round of Hitmans with Friends on Friday (we're only at Marrakesh - Paris, Sapienza, Paris Christmas scenario over the holiday) and everything in 3 held up really well. The Stadia engine has been swapped for 3 regardless of which part of the game you're playing which is all very streamlined and impressive.
Played through Dubai last week and had a lot of fun poking about. Really keen to play the next level & not sure I can resist the whole murder mystery scenario to gain more Dubai mastery at this point.

Server maintenance incoming - 15:45 today for 75 minutes. #prayforninchilla

I'm sure you're all on tenterhooks.

I actually am. You've been looking forward to this for a while and I like it when nice things happen to people and I would like this nice thing to happen please thank you mister baldshoot

Let's see if Santa 47 is listening…

Back online apparently.

DOES IT WORK NINCHILLA

I DON'T KNOW, I'M AT WORK

please thank you mister baldshoot

… and now he's Mr Baldishot in my head, with every level playing out to the Benny Hill theme tune. Great.

I DON'T KNOW, I'M AT WORK

bloody hell

If it works, I'll stream my first attempt at Dubai, and everyone can tune in to laugh at me with their extra experience.

Well, Dartmoor is quite something: an am-dram production of Knives Out played via the Hitman engine. I have no idea yet how replayable this will be, but first playthrough is riotously entertaining.

Well, Dartmoor is quite something: an am-dram production of Knives Out played via the Hitman engine. I have no idea yet how replayable this will be, but first playthrough is riotously entertaining.

Hmm… Thought I was just going to have a quick go and got through Dartmoor fairly quickly with probably one of the least satisfying routes. Then ended up going back to Marrakesh to get more mastery after watching what folk were doing on Friday night.
The PS4 is showing it's age on the H3 cut scenes: didn't notice on Dubai but the ones bookending Dartmoor looked like they'd jumped out of a PS3 game. I still think it's bananas that they didn't go for something stylised along the lines of the mission intros for cut scenes. Probably means they can bring it out again in 5 years as 'the final product' where they've finished the thing everyone cares least about.

Well, it's working. Unfortunately, I haven't actually got to play any of it yet; Sprog 2 refused to settle last night, so all I was able to do was check what suits I still had (all of them, near as I can tell).

Oddly, I also seem to have a bunch of other escalation rewards that I know I didn't unlock in Hitman 2, including the muffin and feather duster.

Hopefully I'll actually get to hit some men this evening.

Ninchilla, today:

Well, it's working.

The PS4 is showing it's age on the H3 cut scenes: didn't notice on Dubai but the ones bookending Dartmoor looked like they'd jumped out of a PS3 game. I still think it's bananas that they didn't go for something stylised along the lines of the mission intros for cut scenes.

This is very noticeable, sadly. We've gone from lavish pre-rendered cut-scenes for Hitman 1, to stylish static images for Hitman 2, to whatever the hell these are for Hitman 3. They look, honestly, terrible. They're also badly-encoded, washed-out video files rather than being rendered on the fly using the game assets, so it's like they actively went out of their way to make them look as bad as they possibly could.

It doesn't bother me, because I don't give a monkey's about the storyline - in fact I think it's a slight shame that since Whittleton Creek, the overall story has started to encroach on the missions a bit. I'd much prefer it if Hitman was a series of disconnected sandboxes where you have to murder Bad People, with Diana making sardonic asides in your earpiece. For most of the first two games, you can pretty much pretend this is the case. Hitman 3, not quite so much. Ah well. Some people love this stuff.

I've played through the Hitman 1 missions dozens of times by now, on two different console generations, and I still neither know nor care why I'm killing these people. Which feels strangely appropriate from 47's perspective as simply an instrument of others' murderous intent.

The story seems like it's for Diana, as she's the one out of the handler/agent pairing who has any kind of reaction to our discoveries; 47's stoic focus on the target hasn't been affected one iota by anything that's happened in (or out of) a single cutscene.

I don't think the way I play the game helps, to be honest. I get a minute or two of story, then a mission briefing and about six hours of gameplay before moving onto the next level. Maybe if I played through every level once in sequence then moved onto the next, I'd be able to keep a handle on it better, but if you play Hitman the correct way it's so disjointed that it's impossible to care.

The individual character stories within levels, and the environmental storytelling, are always unfailingly superb, of course. That's the kind of Hitman narrative I care about.

I've played through the Hitman 1 missions dozens of times by now, on two different console generations, and I still neither know nor care why I'm killing these people.

Clearly, your training is complete, Agent. Please proceed down the hall where your fake passport, carbon fibre silenced pistol and one-way ticket to Mar-a-largo await.

Am I the only one who's followed the story, then? It's actually not bad, but I'm readily admit that the dissonance between goofy gameplay options and po-faced International Shadow Organisation nonsense is almost as strong as 47's commitment to Not Giving A Fuck About Any Of This.

Short version, for anyone who is remotely interested:
Hitman (2016)
Spoiler - click to show47 was genetically engineered in Romania, for some reason. I think this is covered in Hitman 2 (the original Hitman 2, not Hitman 2 2018)? He was one of several/dozens of similar "trainees", and Lucas Grey was another. Having spent decades doing… not much?, Lucas decides he's going to Do Something About It, and buys the IAGO dossier, which gives him a bunch of shady information about shady people - namely, the members of Providence, who were originally responsible for the experiments that created him and 47. Then he leaks information about the existence of the IAGO dossier, prompting an ICA contract on Dalia Margolis and Viktor Novikov in Paris.Spoiler - click to showAfter that, he continues to leak specific information about people connected to Providence to folks who'll want them killed in response (Sapienza, Marrakesh, Bangkok), in order to draw out the higher-ups (e.g., Jordan Cross's dad is a recluse, but is assassinated, presumably by Grey, when he attends Jordan's funeral), becoming the Shadow Client that much of the back half of Hitman 2016 is concerned with identifying. The Constant, who runs the day-to-day business of Providence, approaches Diana and tasks her with finding the Shadow Client, in exchange for information about 47's past (which, again, she seems to care much more about than he does).Hitman 2
Spoiler - click to showEventually, after killing more of his allies in New Zealand, Santa Fortuna, and Mumbai, Gray reveals himself to 47 (behave), and offers him an "antidote" he stole from Ether that will help 47 get some of his memories back. Diana and 47 switch sides to take down Providence instead, starting with Janus in Whittleton Creek, who was a previous Constant, and might have intel to lead them to the Partners. Instead, they find out about the Ark Society, where they kidnap the Constant.Hitman 2 DLCSpoiler - click to showInformation the Constant provides under interrogation reveals who the partners are, and they learn that they're moving money from New York to the Maldives, in preparation of faking their own deaths and resuming lives under new identities.

And you can do most of this dressed as a blue flamingo.

Right, then… let's see what all the fuss is about.

Two runs down on Dubai, neither very elegant, but I'm starting to get a bit of a feel for the place. Mastery 7 so far, and if I'd bothered to bring the fiber wire, that'd be another 2 challenges, too, but ho hum. Spent longer than I'd like to admit fucking up the puzzle in the Spoiler - click to showserver room and longer still on a fruitless search for Spoiler - click to showthe exploding golf ball, but that's the level 10 mastery unlock;I'll not worry too much about it for now.

How I'm gonna get SASO is, as yet, a mystery.

I'm expecting SASO to involve a lot of clambering around on the outside of the building, but I'm not even close to figuring it out yet. The permanent ladder shortcuts you can unlock will certainly help. Silent Assassin is eminently doable, at least.

Sniper seems like it could be tricky, too - not a lot of unobserved areas, and the whole thing is much more vertical than sprawling.

I've never managed Sniper Assassin.

The one time I tried it was in Paris - there's an obvious sniper vantage spot and a clear opportunity to snipe both targets within seconds of each other. As soon as I took the first shot, every guard in the place went immediately to high alert and started running immediately toward my position. How does that work then? Surely you're meant to have some sort of window where they don't know where the shots are coming from - otherwise how can you do that without being detected?

Also, re your "level 10 mastery unlock" - that item does exist in the level, one of the NPCs is having a phone conversation about it at one point which tells you where it's hidden.

Yeah, I heard the conversation, just couldn't find the thing.

I remember there was a period in Hitman 2016 where guards instantly knew where you were when you died a sniper rifle, but they did change it, and it's much easier now.

Maybe I need to give it another go then, it was fairly early on in the life of Hitman 2 and basically I thought "fuck this" and never tried it again…

Also. Not a spoiler, just a reminder. If you've ever played the Contract Creation tutorial, there's a bit where you have to "place" something (rather than chuck it) using the L1 and R1 buttons. I don't think that move is ever mentioned anywhere else and I'd kind of forgotten about it. In Hitman 3, it has… uses.

Also. Not a spoiler, just a reminder. If you've ever played the Contract Creation tutorial, there's a bit where you have to "place" something (rather than chuck it) using the L1 and R1 buttons. I don't think that move is ever mentioned anywhere else and I'd kind of forgotten about it. In Hitman 3, it has… uses.

I had to look this up. I was doing the training (yes, yes, I know, I want to start totally fresh) and wanted to put the remote explosive on the cupboard by the guy's feet, but 47 just kept throwing the damn thing on the floor. Handy to know how it's done, since the game never actually tells you.

No shame in doing the training. Those levels are superb. I love the wooden boat in particular.

Mart - are you still getting server disconnects? Mine still regularly pops up messages saying it's lost connection, it'll reconnect immediately but it's bloody annoying. I'd hoped they'd fixed that after the server maintenance the other day, but I think that was just to get Ninchilla online.

Also. Not a spoiler, just a reminder. If you've ever played the Contract Creation tutorial, there's a bit where you have to "place" something (rather than chuck it) using the L1 and R1 buttons. I don't think that move is ever mentioned anywhere else and I'd kind of forgotten about it. In Hitman 3, it has… uses.

Oh, I use this all the time to place explosives or distractions.

I worked out why I had those extra unlocks, too - they've reworked a bunch of the mastery unlocks, so stuff that used to be behind certain challenges is just progress now - the muffin is the level 6 mastery item for Whittleton Creek.

and longer still on a fruitless search for Spoiler - click to showthe exploding golf ball, but that's the level 10 mastery unlock;I'll not worry too much about it for now.

How I'm gonna get SASO is, as yet, a mystery.

Spoiler - click to showI found the golf ball on my first run – it's really close to where you discover the opportunity – but this was the assassination method that didn't work for me. Although in subsequent plays I've realised that it's not like Sapienza, I think you need to do some leg work to get it to go

Before deleting Hitman 2, I took a screenshot of Paris to compare the reflection tech; I didn't get the positioning very close, but I think it still works okay:

Today is Expanse Day, so I'm not likely to pay much tonight, and tomorrow is D&D, but I'll definitely be back in Dubai on Friday, and this time, I'm bringing fiber wire…

I'm sorry, I have to ask. Is a fiber wire just a shoe lace?

Getting mastery 20 on the Hitman 3 levels looks like it's going to be more challenging than in the earlier games.

I'm trying to get to Mastery 20 on Miami in Hitman 2 on Series X at the moment and it seems to be increasing at a glacial pace. I'm pretty sure I've done everything (and more) that took me to 20 on PS4, but I've just barely scraped to 17.

Just managed Silent Assassin on Dubai. Suit Only is still a mystery; they're never alone, just surrounded by bodyguards. Ugh. Mastery is 14 now, but I found the mysterious item we were talking about, and deployed it most effectively.

There are a few challenges left, not least the Sniper and SASO runs, but Mastery 20 will take a while.

A few runs of Dartmoor done now and it's a very unique level but I'm not totally convinced:

Spoiler - click to showSo much of it is based around the (very long, heavily scripted) murder mystery. That makes for a very entertaining first playthrough but you're realistically never going to do it again and there's not a massive amount of other stuff on the level. The other two mission stories (one in the graveyard, one in the garden) are very short and self-contained - and while the building has lots of access points and secret passages, so is in theory an interesting space, there's very little need to actually engage with all that stuff right now when you can simply dress up as the Private Investigator and wander wherever you please.

I'm guessing it will come into its own with contracts and escalations - and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see it get a Landslide/Icon style makeover at some point further down the line.