Hitman: Hitting Men

That'll be why then. Dammit.

I thought that'd be an easy way to off him while getting to the more interesting business of the singer.

The hotel was stunning, I wondered if that atrium was based on a real hotel. My only complaint about the presentation is the voice actors. Why do all the Thai staff have the same accents as the militia in Colorado? (I know why, but c'mon.)

Yeah, the accents are a problem in Hitman 1 specifically. It's particularly jarring in Marrakesh where everyone in the bazaar has American accents. And of course the woman right at the start of Sapienza endlessly shouting "Rocco! Rocco!" At least in Paris, Bangkok and Hokkaido, the locations are rarefied enough that you can kind of forgive the Western accents a bit.

For Hitman 2 and 3 they got much better at this stuff and NPCs generally have location-specific voices where appropriate.

I skipped Marrakesh completely.

You might want to try the bonus level for Marrakesh instead, A House Made of Sand, which is set at night in the bazaar area and is much better than the main mission.

… especially as one of the unlocks in it is the best silenced scoped sniper rifle in the game.

That’s my evening sorted.

After a brief trip to YouTube for some Kirby info. looks at Mart

After a brief trip to YouTube for some Kirby info. looks at Mart

I'm literally in the office right now, working the graveyard shift to cover the social posting and website updates that'll happen both during and after the show. Taxi home is booked for 1:20am. Yawn.

As for Kirby… well, I'm on the last boss so I'll be happy to spoil it for you when I'm done.

I skipped Marrakesh completely.

You might want to try the bonus level for Marrakesh instead, A House Made of Sand, which is set at night in the bazaar area and is much better than the main mission.

… especially as one of the unlocks in it is the best silenced scoped sniper rifle in the game.

Well that was painful.

It's the escalation that unlocks the sniper, not House Built on Sand. After 30 (genuinely, three zero) attempts I finally managed the third escalation. I could only be a real-life hitman if you were allowed to quick-save.

But I finally have my silenced rifle, and finished Colorado in two minutes, which was a joy after spending so long faffing with my first run.

It's the escalation that unlocks the sniper, not House Built on Sand.

I had a feeling I was wrong. All I remembered was it's nighttime and you're shooting from the roof of one shop to where the targets are on the other. Sorry, sir.

No worries! I enjoyed the night market mission a lot more than main Marrakesh, and I appreciate how your progress on the side missions contributes to your main mission level.

But the escalations are not for me.

Anyone planning on trying out the mobile Hitman Sniper game? It's out in… oh, just over an hour apparently.

https://twitter.com/HitmanSniperOG/status/1499391866818678784

God no. Cannot be doing with phone gaming in any capacity these days. Let us know if they release it on a proper system though.

I'm less excited because it's Square Enix trying to get back into a world they gave up, with characters who all seem horribly generic rather than 47, but okay.

Played it. Hate it. It's like someone took the idea of Hitman and tried to make it arcadey and instant gratification. Meh.

March roadmap:

Apparently they've tweaked the Elusive Target Arcade. Now each set of targets has a single complication, rather than a different one for each target, and they're considering making the complications optional in the next patch. Seems like a sensible change, it makes the whole thing less like an escalation and gives it a bit more of a coherent feel.

Also, I think we may have missed an Elusive Target klaxon: the Broker appeared in Paris on February 25. He might still be around, I'll have to load up the game later to check.

I stopped calling out Elusives because I thought we'd done them all and they're just repeating things now… aren't they? I didn't think the rewards were updated either, it's just XP.

They're doing "#2" versions of the ones we've already seen in Hitman 3, so fair enough not to call those out, but they're also interspersing them with H1/H2 elusives we haven't seen in H3 before.

The Broker is in Paris and he's new to Hitman 3.

Oh fuck. Okay!

He's around for roughly another 72 hours. Thank goodness for February being a short month…

Good stuff. I'll get that sorted over the weekend then. Thanks for checking!

Had a go at lunch - got the guy, but bungled the recovery of the precious jeweled egg and got caught trespassing (but wasn't killed). Thank goodness for quitting the entire game, it hasn't recorded it as a fail… I'll try again later.

Played it. Hate it. It's like someone took the idea of Hitman and tried to make it arcadey and instant gratification. Meh.

I take this back, it's… okay? I think. Pretty okay. It's the very bare essentials of Hitman Sniper Assassin, boiled down into an arcade style game where it's about using the environment lures and accidental kills to get the job done. I've scratched the surface of the campaign and played a fair bit of the PVP mode, and I'm not hating it any more. PVP is silly in that you can basically cause all kinds of carnage and still win, but that's okay. You rack up enough blood money (read: coins) and weapon parts to not worry about IAPs (so far, but then this is a Square Enix game), and I've unlocked three of the six characters so far. It's okay! It's not Hitman, but then what is?

Had a go at lunch - got the guy, but bungled the recovery of the precious jeweled egg and got caught trespassing (but wasn't killed). Thank goodness for quitting the entire game, it hasn't recorded it as a fail… I'll try again later.

I thought this was a really good ET. I managed to execute everything flawlessly right up to the end but then the target's bodyguard decided to come check out what was happening just as I was making my escape, so no SA for me and a bit of a hurried dash to the exit.

I just got him. Was trying to be clever previously, but started in the auction this time to make getting the egg easier. SA, no problems this time.

Thing is, the reward was 6000 XP. That's it. No new gear, nothing interesting. So, for me, even though it's a new ET, I don't really care. Don't think I'm going to bother with these any more, unless there's actually something to get out of it.

Whatever happened to the thrill of the hunt?

I need to get paid to get out of bed.

I dunno, I still really like Elusive Targets (ones we haven't seen before, at least). They're interesting puzzles and a way of seeing levels in a new light.

I unlocked some sort of casual suit today for completing The Broker, too, which I guess is one of the cumulative ET rewards, so they're not entirely pointless.

I unlocked some sort of casual suit today for completing The Broker, too, which I guess is one of the cumulative ET rewards, so they're not entirely pointless.

Yeah, I can see that. Me, I finished all the ET challenge targets a while back (was either The Fury or the one before?), so there's no kit left for me to unlock. Elusive Arcade does though, so I guess I'm doing that instead.

Berlin Egg Hunt is back as a permanent fixture then. Yawn.

Haven't really been keeping up with this lately since they just started cycling the Elusive Targets round again:

Anyway, latest update is that Freelancer Mode has been pushed back to the second half of the year (was going to be "Spring") but we can expect an additional map, Ambrose Island, in July. So not too long to wait.

I've still got loads to do in the game anyway, I'm sure at some point I'll go back to it and play nothing else for a couple of months, again.

Finally, some new(ish) Elusive Targets!

https://twitter.com/IOInteractive/status/1532332479276896261

Shit, I didn't read the dates… the serial killer target started already. Why put that second on the graphic after the one that starts on June 10th?! Gah.

He's mine at lunchtime.

Done. That was silly. The whole point of the mission is that he's an unknown, so you have to work out who he is… and yet they put a picture of his face on the roadmap graphic. Good lord.

I thought that was a pretty good ET actually, I don't think the point of it was working out who he was at all. It's pretty obvious where he's going to be, Diana outright tells you that you've found the place as soon as you walk in, and he's having loud and obvious conversations with several people that you can easily overhear.

The tricky bit was isolating him:

Spoiler - click to showThe glass of whisky on the table is perhaps TOO obvious. It's almost impossible to clear the kitchen and hallway of people long enough to poison it. In the end I shot him with the emetic dart gun, from the bathroom window, as he stood on the deck, then drowned him in the toilet when he came in to puke. Sadly just as I was dragging him to the cupboard someone else came in to use the bathroom, so I Benny Hill'd it to the exit and got a completion but no SA.

I didn't even bother isolating him…

Spoiler - click to showI went for the glass of whisky on the table. The garage connected to the kitchen where it is has a serving guy right outside the door that was easily lured in with a coin. Stole his clothes, threw another coin to distract the enforcer leaning on the counter and then poisoned the glass. I was already back in my suit and down the street by the time the target drank it… emetic poison was an option, but the footfall in the nearby toilet was too high for a clean kill, as you discovered.

Took a bit of recon to work it out, but like I said… the picture on the roadmap did half the work for me.

Ambrose Island coming on July 26… and it’s free. Didn’t see that one coming.

Didn't realise it was so close, but I thought they'd always said it would be free…

New Elusive Target (well, one I've not done before) as well, so I'll take that.

Ambrose Island out now, and patch notes as follows:

https://www.ioi.dk/hitman-3-july-patch-notes/

I've only gotten as far as watching the intro for Ambrose Island yet – anybody actually found the time for a look around?

Where does it fall… somewhere inside Hitman 3's story? In which case, I'll look forward to exploring it sometime in 2025.

Yeah, it's a side-story mission that takes place just before Sgail.

Finished my first "successful" run on Ambrose Island earlier.

Spoiler - click to show I managed to get both keycards and the pirate lady Silent Assassin, but a body got spotted – not sure which – and I lost it before I took on the militia guy, so I threw caution to the wind and blew him up.

Looking forward to giving it another go. I'd kind of forgotten how fun learning a new map can be.

Run #2 down. Getting a sense of the layout now, but again a found body (I might be getting a bit carried away with knocking people out 😅) spoiled the SA.

Might try for the sniper next, to switch it up a bit.

SASO done!

It was extremely hairy in places - there are just so many NPCs everywhere.

Spoiler - click to showHid in the projector room to get Crest with an emetic dart and drowned him easily enough. I opted to go for the keycards instead of the Control Unit; sneaking into the colonial ruins (up the vines on the beach and then through the kitchen) to use the other enteric dart on Crest's lackey was tense as f–k, but I managed to dart him and then stash him in a bush (had to knock him out with a coconut because I got overheard just choking him out). Snuck back out the same way, then across to the pirate compound. Came in from the beach (I ended up climbing the ruins rather than just taking the beach path, which overcomplicated things), then freed the hostages and got Akka with the electrified cage. Picked up the second keycard while her corpse was dragged off, then back around the beach to exit.

Glad to get it checked off, along with a few challenges. Most of what's left is redacted, so I might look a few things up to get Mastery 20.

To my shame, I haven't even managed a single look at this yet. Must rectify that soon.

I've been missing Elusive Targets all over the place. Need the motivation to come back to this in general.

I can hardly remember the last time I had the PS4 on at all; I've only really played Sea of Thieves for months.

Now I'm back in the office, I have zero solo TV gaming time. It's Sea of Thieves at the weekend, then just Switch on the sofa or bus to work. I can bust out some Xcloud gaming, but Hitman isn't on there…

Yes it is!

SHIT.

Now I'm wondering how playable it is… will try!

It's not bad, in my admittedly limited experience – Hitman, at least the way I play it, isn't a game that requires split-second reactions, so a little bit of input lag isn't the end of the world.

Been getting really into Ambrose Island – that Mastery 20 took longer than I expected – to the point that I've started looking at speeding up my times on Silent Assassin. My fastest so far is 6m 20s with a poison-heavy run, but it still feels like there's a lot of room for improvement.

Spoiler - click to showStarted in the Stilted Village with lethal poison, Kalmer and a remote explosive, with another lethal poison stashed in the Green Container location in the pirate base. From the start, headed to the chef's hut, nabbed the kitchen key and woke her up with the alarm clock, then dashed over to the restaurant. Made the food, poisoned it, then headed out and kept bumping into Crest until the chef reached the kitchen (you'll be waiting forever for his loop to repeat if you don't delay him here). Hopped over the fence at the beach and up the slope to the pirate base, through the bushes to the hut and changed into the metalworker disguise, then through the fence to the base proper. Took out the guy behind the container for his clothes, picked up the second poison, then up into Akka's room to poison the whiskey glass. Back down and across the bridge towards the Shrine, across the rope bridge, tranq'ing a milita soldier to pick up his clothes, the headed on into the Colonial Ruins. Downstairs, took the shortcut ladder to the cave, remote explosive by the computer and detonated it, picking up the boat keys while everybody was panicked. Waited for both targets to die, then hopped in the militia boat for exit.