Cordeos

Hitman: Steve Gaynor Edition

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Pulled some wicked moves in my ongoing attempt to SOSA Colorado that I feel the need to share.

 

Ezra Berg is alone on the stairs outside the basement, out of line of sight of anyone for a short interval as he leaves the house. What I did was: standing at the top of the railing behind the box, I flicked a coin behind me into the backyard. This distracts the guard that will soon walk into line of sight of me, as well as make the guard next to the railing turn and face that way. As the railing guard is turning, I walk around behind him, just as Ezra is leaving the house. As Ezra climbs the stairs, I push the guard over the railing, which will only pacify him, so he lands behind Ezra. Thankfully, this is silent for some reason. I then shoot Ezra in the head, and he falls just below the top of the stairs. All of this takes about six seconds. I take a deep breath, and save my game, after maybe the 20th attempt at figuring out how, let alone actually doing this. It isn't yet over, as a guard is currently walking from the basement towards the door leading to these stairs, and if he so much as peeks either of these bodies, I lose my silent assassin rating. So. Grab the basement key from Ezra, pull the guard I pushed over the railing up the stairs a bit away from the door, open the door from out of sight of the guard as he approaches, then flick a coin in through the doorway to land behind him. As he turns, I dart in, and position myself behind the boxes to come out and baton him as he moves again to approach the door, the second guard thankfully moving up to look through the glass where the prisoner is held. Baton the second guard, pull the bodies from the stairs into the basement, and clean up. Phew. This took a couple or so attempts.

 

One out of three down!

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The recent update allows you to add custom contracts to a Favorites list, which is a slight improvement. Man, I wish they'd go deep on letting users have access to all the different stuff that the game keeps track of. There are escalations that can impose time limits on objective completion, enforce specific weapons/disguises, and completion order. There are a series of challenges in Bangkok that require an unseen kill with a specific weapon and disguise, but then also require that the body be found. All sorts of states are being kept track of. I don't know how hard it would be to allow access to those without it being a messy dev toolkit, but I want to open up the game's guts and fiddle around so badly.

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Oh wow I didn't know he looked so much like 47. Great vid.

 

...why didn't they use him instead of bloody Timothy Olyphant in the films?

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Would have got silent assassin on the latest elusive, only I got suspicious from the bloody guy at the counter on my way out. Did have to look up where the safe was, tho, so it was a bit of cheatin hitman

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After a few restarts and a lot of casing, I had a great plan that went south almost immediately after taking out the target. Still completed it, but was spotted a whole lot and spent a bunch of time hiding in laundry baskets.

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I got spotted in the safe room and ended up in a gunfight in a nearby bathroom. Killed one of the military dudes, took his pants while no one was looking, and walked right past the whole crowd of hotel guards yelling at me to get out. :lol:

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Its interesting how they seem to be leaving areas in the maps specifically for extra content. The office in sapienza being used in landslide, and the whole top floor penthouse for that elusive, which is completely empty normally, aside from that one guy.

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I was SO CLOSE to getting SA for the Hokkaido elusive targets, and then after I killed one of them I stumbled into a non-obvious restricted area and was almost taken out by a guard.

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That elusive was bloody hard compared to the last one. Mine went more than a little south, but I still attribute my failure in getting SA to stumbling into the director on the way back to the restaurant after taking out the surgeon lady.

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http://www.ioi.dk/the-future-of-ioi/

 

Quote

Therefore I am proud to announce today that IOI is now officially an independent studio. We have successfully concluded our negotiations with Square Enix and have agreed to a management buyout. Crucially, we will keep all of the rights to the Hitman IP. 

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Heck yes! This is the best news I've heard recently. This Hitman was one of my favourite games ever, and I'm delighted we'll now definitely get a second season.

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This is excellent news and I hope their future brings them also other games than just Hitman after Hitman.

 

I would really love a game like Freedom Fighters to appear from IO Interactive again.

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I feel like I might be the last person in the world to start playing this game, but I am, after picking up the GOTY edition on disc for about £20. It is, obviously, outstanding. It's the only game since MGSV to tickle the worst of my completionist urges.

 

I am a little disappointed to have missed all the Elusive Contracts, but there's still an unbelievable amount of content in this bundle. If anybody is holding off on it for that reason, I wouldn't worry about it. I've put at least 15 or 20 hours into the training missions and Paris alone; I've not even started on Sapienza yet, but I will soon.

 

The only thing I'm not so happy about is the speed at which I've been able to unlock all the mastery levels for Paris -- and that's only after doing about half the challenges, all the opportunities, and finishing maybe three or four escalations. I've got all the 'cheevos for that chapter, too, so…there's nothing left to get?

 

It would be nice if they could patch in some more rewards but equally it's fine if they don't. I mean, I can see from looking at my trophy percentages that it's only a tiny fraction of players who will ever bother to max out their mastery. I sort of hate this modern dependence on doing the thing to tick the box or to make the numbers go up -- but it does feel good to make a number go up…

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2 hours ago, marginalgloss said:

I feel like I might be the last person in the world to start playing this game, but I am, after picking up the GOTY edition on disc for about £20. It is, obviously, outstanding. It's the only game since MGSV to tickle the worst of my completionist urges.

 

I am a little disappointed to have missed all the Elusive Contracts, but there's still an unbelievable amount of content in this bundle. If anybody is holding off on it for that reason, I wouldn't worry about it. I've put at least 15 or 20 hours into the training missions and Paris alone; I've not even started on Sapienza yet, but I will soon.

 

The only thing I'm not so happy about is the speed at which I've been able to unlock all the mastery levels for Paris -- and that's only after doing about half the challenges, all the opportunities, and finishing maybe three or four escalations. I've got all the 'cheevos for that chapter, too, so…there's nothing left to get?

 

It would be nice if they could patch in some more rewards but equally it's fine if they don't. I mean, I can see from looking at my trophy percentages that it's only a tiny fraction of players who will ever bother to max out their mastery. I sort of hate this modern dependence on doing the thing to tick the box or to make the numbers go up -- but it does feel good to make a number go up…

you will be happy with that speed when you try to get to mastery 20 in Marrakesh

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You really want to savescum the challenges to get multiple kill types on a 'single' run, and planning how to best do that kinda becomes a game all in itself. 

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1 hour ago, Cbirdsong said:

You really want to savescum the challenges to get multiple kill types on a 'single' run, and planning how to best do that kinda becomes a game all in itself. 

 

Yeah, I loved doing this. As long as you don't exit the mission, the game keeps track of what challenges you complete even across save loading. Spending the time to plan and set up four different kills and then rapidly executing each one from a save game was very satisfying for me.

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I finally picked the season up and started playing after being obsessed with other people's stories. Absolutely in love and can't stop playing it in between everything else. Have found myself trying to really get familiar with a setting before moving on. So I've pretty much maxed out Paris, Sapienza, working on Marrakesh and Bangkok, and haven't started Colorado or Hokkaido yet. 

The wacky/tense nature of the game has really made me pine for old school couch gaming with friends to shout at you, so I have been trying to re-create that. I've been streaming it and having other people on who I screen share with so they can give color commentary/advice. If anyone would be interested in joining me I'm at RilenGames on Twitch and would love advice on some of the trickier escalation missions or any of the sniping challenges. 
Part of the fun of this approach is certainly that it leads to more exciting moments, as failures that I would normally savescum turn into rampages because I'm streaming. Case in point, from "Landslide":
https://clips.twitch.tv/SlipperyPlainMonitorMVGame

I'm really sad I didn't start playing earlier, as I think I actually picked the game up earlier. Now I never get the chance to collect any of those fancy Elusive Target suits. 

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Several months later and this is still one of the main games I'm playing. I've cleared all the opportunities (and done all the goofy trophy stuff) in all the missions apart from Colorado and Hokkaido. I still have some Mastery to build up, but I'm happy to leave that to give me a reason to come back in future. And man, there's still so much to do - I was staggered to pick a contract at random one time and find myself in a new version of Sapienza, where they were shooting a movie in front of the house - I've not even looked at these alternate campaigns outside of the main story.

 

All this makes me feel a little exhausted to learn that IO Interactive have just released a GOTY edition of the game, which includes all the content released so far plus a new campaign (set in reworked versions of the existing maps) and a grab-bag of new costumes and weapons. You can either buy the whole thing or pay about $15 for the upgrade, if you have previously bought the game. This upgrade seems to have received a fairly muted response, which makes me feel a little sorry for the devs since this is their first package as an independent studio. I've not seen a review of the new stuff anywhere, so I'd be interested to hear if anyone has given it a try. Given how much I'm enjoying the game I might pick it up at some point, but I'm in no hurry at the moment.

 

More exciting for me at least is the news that Elusive Targets are coming back next week. Worth noting you don't need the GOTY edition to play them, but they will only be available for people who missed them the first time around - if you attempted and failed, you don't get a second bite of the cherry.

 

They've also said that they'll have more to show regarding properly new Hitman stuff next year. I wonder if they'll build upon the first season, or whether they'll abandon the episodic model altogether. I wonder if it worked out well for them; I feel like the initial response to Paris and Sapienza was euphoric, with the rest of the maps receiving a slightly more muted reaction. Perhaps a lot of people felt like they had their fill with those episodes.  A quick glance at the PSN trophies for Hokkaido shows that only 11% of players ever finished that map - I guess that seems low. But that figure includes everyone who has ever downloaded the game (after they game the first one or two levels away free) is that a big number? I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens…

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The amount of ✨content✨ in this game is unbelievable. I've invested 118 hours and I'm nowhere near completing all of the challenges and feats in the main missions, let alone all the side missions, masteries, pro mode, escalations, contracts... it's crazy. In that sense the new GOTY stuff isn't great value but I was more than happy to buy it just because I love the game so much and want IOI to succeed as an indie.

 

Without spoiling anything, two of the four new campaign missions substantially change some basic game rules. One is sort of throwaway fun, the other I really enjoyed and could see being very hard to play well. While none of them feel as deep as the main missions they mix up the spaces in interesting ways and are worth playing.

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I wouldn't mind if they ditch the episodic payment model, but I really enjoy the episodic release model. Doling the maps out over a number of months really encourages you to fully explore each one in a way you might not if you just have all of them available to play right away.

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While watching this superbunnyhop video on the 'failure' of Hitman I was reminded of something I'm sure I'd forgotten - that the game was originally scheduled to be released in two big instalments, rather than six episodes. The first would have been everything up to and including Marrakesh; the second everything after; $35 each or $60 for both. It's an intriguing reminder of what could have been. 

 

It's an interesting video - food for thought, though I don't agree with all of it. One thing I do think it gets right is the difficulty of marketing difficult, unusual stealth games to a mass market audience via a publisher who is expecting astronomical sales. Hitman is a big franchise - they've made movies out of it! - but the latest game isn't an easy one to explain in terms outside of 'surly man with guns'. I mean, I know what it's about because I'm old and I remember Blood Money and all that - but I think I would get easily flummoxed trying to explain it to a teenager.

 

The game's brief popularity amongst streamers probably did them an enormous favour in that regard. It's only once you see someone playing it that you really start to understand what's going on here. 

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I spent quite some time thinking which game to buy on Steam sale and play over the summer, but then I remembered that I had not finished Hitman and redownloaded it instead. I played through the main missions from Marrakesh to Hokkaido this week, and yes, this game is still fantastic.

 

I love that it lets me experience the missions however I want to, that is, I can choose the hint level and save scum to my heart's content. This makes the game weirdly relaxing for me, since I can spent most of my time in disguise and things only get hectic for 15 s at a time. Based on the various gameplay videos I have watched, it seems that the game is relatively good about letting you recover after being spotted, but that is not the way I personally want to play, so I just load a save instead. Being able to walk from the scene of the crime with no one chasing or looking for you feels really good, something which surprisingly many games ignore in favor of ending the mission in an escape sequence.

 

I'm excited to get into the bonus missions and the Patient Zero campaign. I'm usually not very interested in replaying levels in video games, but the challenge assassination's are so fun that I might replay the regular levels soon as well.

 

I can't wait to play Hitman 2. It sounds like it will be nonepisodic, which is nice for players that breeze through these games. Nevertheless, I still hope that they focus on larger playgrounds and do not add any unnecessary small/linear in-between missions (looking at you Hitman: Absolution).

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