Hokkaido is hard. Not having any items to start with? No smuggling spots? Ooof.
I'm up to Mastery 14 now, having done a chunk of the challenges and had fun exploring. But I'm reaching the point where things are getting more piecemeal, so I can only get one or two additional challenges at a time. Getting to 20 will be a struggle. It won't be as quick as Colorado, for sure.
How you're meant to do the ones where you're a ninja, or in the Kill Bill outfit? Fuck knows. And Sniper Assassin seems insane… the girl on the bridge, fine, but the guy's in a sealed room and never moves…
Read the description for Sniper Assassin more carefully - you only need to snipe the one target. You can bump off the old codger any way you choose.
I haven't done the Ninja one yet but I think it's doable. The motorcycle outfit, no idea. SASO is reasonably straightforward though and don't miss the new Ice Cold Cowboy challenge for another 4000 mastery points.
Hokkaido does have one of the best assassinations in the whole series:
Spoiler - click to showThe heart in the bin
which is made even better once you realise there are two connected challenges:
Spoiler - click to showKilling Soders then destroying the heart gets you Overkill ; destroying the heart then killing Soders gets you I Think He Is Dead Now
Read the description for Sniper Assassin more carefully - you only need to snipe the one target. You can bump off the old codger any way you choose.
AHHHHHHHHHH.
I haven't done the Ninja one yet but I think it's doable. The motorcycle outfit, no idea.
The description says you need to kill the targets in the suit, so maybe it's a case of only wearing it when you have to? Hmm. I'll have a think. Might be a Mastery 20 thing where you can bring the Katana in with you… although I think I can already stash it somewhere.
SASO is reasonably straightforward though and don't miss the new Ice Cold Cowboy challenge for another 4000 mastery points.
I have a save point as of this morning where I'm about to get that latter one. I already did SA totally by accident, I'll work out the SASO eventually.
Hokkaido does have one of the best assassinations in the whole series:
Spoiler - click to showThe heart in the bin
which is made even better once you realise there are two connected challenges:
Spoiler - click to showKilling Soders then destroying the heart gets you Overkill ; destroying the heart then killing Soders gets you I Think He Is Dead Now
Already did the first one, which I thought was hilarious. Didn't realise reversing it was the other, that's easy. My favourite one was
Spoiler - click to showsending KAI a bit loopy and then having her absolutely destroy Soders with the robotic limbs.
I also very much enjoyed
Spoiler - click to showthe conversation with the man trapped in the morgue freezer. Easter eggs!
I haven't done the Ninja one yet but I think it's doable.
I did it the other night, it's pretty straightforward - though I did have a piece of gear with me that helped.
Spoiler - click to showBring a card hacker if you have one - the Disposable Scrambler is a Mastery Reward on Colorado, so you should have that one at least. You can sneak down the mountain, past the helipad and into the side door below the garden that takes you to the staff bedrooms; hack into that one bedroom to get the remote trigger for the mortician's brain chip, then it's basically the standard heart-in-bin, lawyer-in-sauna route, with a hop back out the window to the snowmobiles for exit.
I bet if you stashed a shuriken*, you could also get Yuki in the back of the head as she enters the sauna. That's another challenge done, easy.
(* though that'd need Mastery 20 so you can have more than one bit of kit)
I used a hacking device for my SASO run too, I'm not sure how you'd do that run without being able to unlock that one door that's just outside the entrance to the sauna control room.
Also didn't use the neuro trigger/heart approach for Soders, instead I:
Spoiler - click to showused the fugu poison to poison the stem cells - there's a way up from the morgue that takes you right up to the stem cells room without having to go through any other part of the hospital.
Also didn't use the neuro trigger/heart approach for Soders, instead I:
Spoiler - click to showused the fugu poison to poison the stem cells - there's a way up from the morgue that takes you right up to the stem cells room without having to go through any other part of the hospital.
Can't you
Spoiler - click to showpoison the stem cells in the morgue directly, then rely on the nurse coming down to refresh the canister to do the job for you when she goes back up to the operating room? That seems like even less of a risk. I haven't tracked her movements exactly, but she definitely goes back and forth because I caught her in there once.
You can also
Spoiler - click to showmanually trigger disposal of the stem cell storage in the operating room, to force her to come down for new ones.
I didn't realise she came down to the morgue, I've never seen her do that. Definitely safer to do it that way though if you can.
Sadly, my method requires either too many uses of the card hacker or perfect timing to get into the room behind the nurse before the door closes. Hmm.
Played at lunch and took out Soders, but now I'm struggling to get back over to the maintenance room to get Yuki in the sauna without being spotted. I'll get this ninja challenge eventually though.
If you let the guy out of the morgue freezer, he gives you a universal keycard.
If you let the guy out of the morgue freezer, he gives you a universal keycard.
Well, fuck. I knew that, but had completely overlooked using the hacker on the panel, since the keycard is in the Director's office. Sorted then.
You do have to listen to his entire fucking monologue first, so it's not an approach for speed runs.
…and that's Hokkaido Mastery 20.
Still got some challenges to do, including a bunch that'll need me to make contracts rather than do the main one (you can't kill the main targets with an icicle, for instance). Then three escalations and the final part of Patient Zero… BUT. I'm counting that as Hitman 1 completed. Adding it to the list in a bit!
Outstanding work. Are you moving on to Hitman 2 straight away? I think it’s the best of the three (especially if you’ve got the two DLC levels, which I’m assuming you do).
Probably? Once I've finished up the loose ends. I've got a bad feeling a few of the challenges are borked - for instance, the one where you have to stop the Curator jumping off the clifftop, which feels like it's not going to pop. We'll see.
I also just got stuck into Death's Door, so that's going to keep me distracted for a bit. But yes, Hitman 2 is right on the horizon.
Which two DLC levels? I'm pretty sure I have everything…
The original release of Hitman 2 had six levels (Hawke’s Bay, Miami, Santa Fortuna, Mumbai, Whittleton Creek and Isle of Sgail). Then they released two DLC packs that came with one level each (New York and Haven Island) and a sniper mode map. If you’ve got those two levels or have 3 sniper maps rather than the 1 the base game came with, you are good to go.
Winter roadmap leading to the launch of Year 2 is up:
Not a lot in there I'm fussed about, really. I'll take the new Paris and Hokkaido missions, I guess?
Wow, that's a complete filler month.
Holiday Hoarders and Snow Festival are recycled content from the earlier games. Holiday Hoarders is, of all things, a Home Alone crossover event, and the Santa suit you get is amazing, but it's really difficult to the point where I'd say it's almost impossible without a guide. Snow Festival is fun but a bit inconsequential, and the reward is yet another big parka.
And that's all the Hitman 3 elusive targets getting a rerun already. Ah well. I assume there's little point in replaying them if you've already bumped them off? I think I missed Silent Assassin on the Ascensionist and the Heartbreaker so I guess there's that to go for, at least.
If they're phoning this one in to give themselves time for the announcement (or release?) of totally new levels and modes next year, I'm all for it.
Yeah, it's understandable, and it's not like I don't still have a whole heap of stuff to do in the game.
Yeah, I'm still trying to work my way through stuff in Sapienza, for God's sake. I dropped a speaker on the politician guy last night, in a decidedly not-Silent Assassin run that involved a lotta wrenches being thrown in a lotta faces. Next up, I have to electrocute him while he's pissing on a grave.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If they're phoning this one in to give themselves time for the announcement (or release?) of totally new levels and modes next year, I'm all for it.
Full reveal in early 2022, release in late Jan if I understood the video correctly?
Next up, I have to electrocute him while he's pissing on a grave.
Ironically, that challenge is a piece of piss. 
And that's all the Hitman 3 elusive targets getting a rerun already. Ah well. I assume there's little point in replaying them if you've already bumped them off? I think I missed Silent Assassin on the Ascensionist and the Heartbreaker so I guess there's that to go for, at least.
I thought if you've killed them before, you don't get to try again, even if it's re-released?
Slightly disappointed that we're apparently only getting one ET for each H3 level.
There might be more coming in the Arcade?
It even sounds like they might be replayable in Arcade. I guess we'll find out Soon™.
Full reveal in early 2022, release in late Jan if I understood the video correctly?
I think it's a reveal in January followed by a major update in the Spring. Year 2 officially starts on 20 January. But I'm sure they will drip-feed new content throughout the year.
Ah, yeah, Jan 20th was what I was thinking of.
And that's all the Hitman 3 elusive targets getting a rerun already. Ah well. I assume there's little point in replaying them if you've already bumped them off? I think I missed Silent Assassin on the Ascensionist and the Heartbreaker so I guess there's that to go for, at least.
I thought if you've killed them before, you don't get to try again, even if it's re-released?
For reference, the Ascensionist is showing up on my main menu and it's already ticked, with 'Previously Eliminated' written on the card. So, looks like it's only for folk who missed out first time around.
Oh my god, Patient Zero. How the hell are you meant to do this? I'm barely a minute in and suddenly, people are getting infected left, right and centre, I'm running around battering people with my collapsible truncheon and snapping necks while the number in the top left climbs up, up, up. What an absolutely mental mission.
I've never even managed to finish that one, never mind SASO.
Pretty much every bit of Hitman 3 content is on sale right now on both Xbox and PlayStation: base game, access passes, 7 Deadly Sins. Just in case anyone here is missing any of it.
My buggy issues with the 7DS content still isn't resolved, despite multiple uninstalls and other things. It's been left as an 'open bug' by IO, so I won't hold out any hope of playing some of those levels in the future.
Had a run-through of Holiday Hoarders for a bit of Christmas Eve fun. A couple of observations:
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The reskin of Paris is absolutely gorgeous. Amazing they put in so much work for such a throwaway bit of seasonal content. They really did have all the budget back in the Hitman 1 days. I particularly enjoyed the sleigh bell remix of the ending tune as I flew away on the helicopter.
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They've relaxed the restrictions for getting the Santa suit - hurrah! Now you get awarded it for any straightforward completion of Holiday Hoarders. In Hitman 2 you needed to complete all the challenges, including the "12 presents" task which I think is probably the single most difficult challenge I've seen in Hitman.
Merry Christmas, Hitmen.
I just looked up how to do the 12 presents one when it came out for Hitman 2; trying to figure it out on your own sounds potentially infuriating.
Hokkaido Snow Festival is up now. It's fun, a bit like a permanent Elusive Target I guess, most notable in Hitman 2 for giving you the excellent kimono. In Hitman 3 it gives you a much less exciting Big Coat, but it's still worth a play.
I got a Big Coat for Christmas, I don't need another one.
My Hitman playing stopped dead in its tracks when I was failing spectacularly at the last Patient Zero mission, so I need to get back on the horse. Will make an effort in the coming days, I think.
I've had Patient Zero since 2017(?), and I've never managed to finish the last mission.
https://www.xbox.com/play/media/AMJS4XTM
Out of frustration, I might have done a bit of research. But hey, I'll take an SASO when I can get it (and with no additional infections either).
Two of the challenges require you to get infected but not die. So that'll be interesting.
Two of the challenges require you to get infected but not die. So that'll be interesting.
Did those too. When you know, it's not difficult (well, apart from the bit where you basically have to kill everyone in the resort and stay alive).
I've found the break point in the infection chain - it's literally one person who gets exposed early on, and you can be standing near them when it happens. Kill them as soon as they're infected in the stairwell before they come into contact with anyone else and it's really not difficult to do the rest at all. Some of the level does seem a little broken, in that the patient never seems to return to the theatre area despite the schedule saying otherwise, but it's not that hard really…
All Patient Zero challenges done, AND I've done the Hokkaido Snow Festival ones too. Except now, there's the Holiday Hoarders stuff in Paris, meaning I'm still not 100% done with Hitman 1 yet. DAMN THIS GAME AND ITS EVER-EXPANDING CONTENT.
Issues with the 7DS content still aren't resolved yet either, I'll have to pick up that thread again with IO's tech support.
Honestly, how the fuck do you work out where the 12 items are… by following the thieves, I guess. Stupid game.
Seriously, don’t waste your time.
If you absolutely have to do that one, use a guide.
YESPLZ
Breaking news: Hitman 3 Year 2 exclusively brings new challenges to Colorado (and only Colorado) that unlock clothing you'll never equip, more at 11.
