HITMAN 2 - the new NON-episodic Hitman game

[agentorange]

for instance, when you can throw an improvised bomb into the chimney and it even changes the level design a little bit

What mission was that? I can't remember anymore.

Beldingford Manor

 

[unfairlight]

Beldingford Manor

Oh right.
AI in contracts is quite weird. I remember just shooting that guy in the head with a loud gun in the corner of the room and somehow all the guards who came by didn't actually suspect me. I also remember how the snipers in Bjarkhov Bomb and Beldingford hated me. I had multiple occasions where they just randomly started shooting me out of nowhere for no reason at all. I think I lost at least 2 otherwise Silent Assassin Bjarkhov runs to that.

 

[Belegarsson]

Gosh I love how chatty 47 is in this game. On Whittleton Creek when he presented the house to Cassidy, he described the rooms in the most boring manner possible, yet spilled out a full investigative report when they reached the bloody room on second floor in pure deadpan tone, then ended with "I dabble in detective stuffs in free time" casually.

 

[Dzupakazul]

Oh right, I forgot those. When she leads you to her room, doesn't she still have guards behind a window left of the door though?

If I recall correctly they rotate in and out of that room quite often, and rarely do I actually see anyone there, and there's enough blindspots to make sure her body is never found. Anyway, I never had problems with them in particular.

What mission was that? I can't remember anymore.

Beldingford Manor, as has been said. I like that mission mostly because it gives me a slight Thief vibe, and is actually not bad for Suit Only. And yeah, Bjarkhov is my least favourite mission in all Hitman, and the fact that your SA attempts on it were ruined by bullshit is honestly just par for the course.

 

[unfairlight]

Bjarkhov is my least favourite mission in all Hitman

Really? I can't understand how anyone would ever think that it was worse than Hidden Valley. Bjarkhov isn't great, but it still isn't anywhere close to as bad as Hidden Valley. Or the last mission in Hitman Contracts for that matter, which I would still consider a real mission because it has a rating at the end of it. The Wang Fou remake is also arguably worse, that mission was so rushed/unfinished and bad.
HitmanDB has a rated list of missions, the site is run by the Hitman speedrunner Kotti.
https://hitmandb.com/missions.php?f...RatingScore),1)+DESC&dosearch=Search+missions

 

[agentorange]

Bjarkhov Bomb has a great mood to it but it's a chore to play. I haven't played Contracts in a while but I remember enjoying the final mission, had a pretty unique, tense feeling to it. Granted I never bothered going for SA let alone speedrunning and stuff so I can see it being a pain in that case.

 

[Dzupakazul]

Really? I can't understand how anyone would ever think that it was worse than Hidden Valley.

Hidden Valley has a glitch that lets you just basically skip it by running A->B and still get SA, which takes all of like 2 minutes to complete. It's shit, yeah. But it's sorta skippable.
Bjarkhov is pretty much always going to take you like 5 minutes if performing an optimal speedrun, and every single one of those minutes is designed to be excruciating. In casual playthroughs, it's going to take far longer.
The telegraphed approach is painfully linear and padded, with targets being spread around A->B->C, and after you do C (or B) you have to run all the way back to A. On your way, nothing interesting is going to happen - once you get your disguise, you just have to run through that stupid tunnel, and then all the way to the ship, and then all the way to the other ship.
It's really, really slow. You're supposed to get a civvie's civvies, run into the cantine, talk to your contact, poison the soup, wait for the soup to take effect, wait for the target to walk into the bathroom, take the target's clothes, follow a soldier who gets enraged if you walk too close to him and also opens fire if you walk too far away from him, and he walks slower than you do, and get onto his little cart, which is slower than running 47, and only then you're supposed to be free to explore to figure out when and where to eliminate B and C. There's no nuance here, BTW - both of those targets are painfully static unless you didn't kill A and have a TV nearby. It can genuinely take the length of a sitcom episode to kickstart the targets moving and interacting with one another.
Trying to follow the target around while he's doing his schedule and killing everyone in one move (like letting target A go to target B and then they go by car to inspect target C, at which point you can blow them all up in one fiery explosion, or set a bomb in their car) means you have to wait a lot of extra time (target A is supposed to give you a lot of time to figure out how to kill him, so obviously he's going to take his sweet time moving anywhere; then, you're simply a spectator to the entire process of NPCs walking around), during which there is pretty much nothing of note to do.
And on top of that, the mission is bugged as fuck - the ship explosion kills all the technicians and guards around the ship, but the bodies discovered due to this are still on your account even though they're not registered as killed enemies / civilians. There's one patrolling guard who, if the explosion isn't timed correctly, will instantly find all the bodies, and if he doesn't manage to do that, there are guards running to investigate the explosion who ALSO find the bodies and it counts against you! You have to run into them in any disguise to confuse their AI to stop moving towards the ship in order to increase your chances of getting away with clean hands, so the mission is a fucking lottery.
This mission is just really tedious. These issues aren't as noticable if you're not gunning for SA and don't care about the random alerts out of nowhere and have a reason to care about the not particularly useful Dragunov Sniper (the vantage point where you could use it is actually a really shitty sniping spot), but I still hate this mission. I think I mostly got interested in routing Hitman because I was replaying Contracts and I wanted to figure out a way to shorten this shit.

I don't mind longer levels and I enjoy getting all the loot in Thief games, but that's because exploring a huge Thief level is absolutely rich in choices. But this is the same issue as A House Of Cards - you're essentially waiting for shit to happen, and there's nothing interesting. You're waiting for a bunch of premeditated events (that you already know will happen) to occur. Again, nothing to invoke the feeling of a patient assassin and clever stalker, especially if some dumb bug ruins the run and you have to reset it, then do the whole process over again.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uul4nGlMMTM

 

[Vibalist]

Am I the only one still disappointed in the AI? Like how you can

Spoiler

snipe Sierra Knox in her race car, causing it to crash right there on the track and then... nothing. No reaction from the NPC's, no change in behavior in her own father, no scripted event where medics rush onto the track. Just everyone continuing their usual routine, including spectators just standing there in the stands as if nothing happened.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

So is this a sequel to nu-HITMAN or do I get the new campaign if I have the 2016 game?
Also is still episodic?

 

[KazikluBey]

So is this a sequel to nu-HITMAN or do I get the new campaign if I have the 2016 game?
Also is still episodic?

Sequel to Hitman 2016. You get remastered Hitman 2016 levels for free if you own 2016. Not episodic.

 

[AwesomeButton]

So is this a sequel to nu-HITMAN or do I get the new campaign if I have the 2016 game?
Also is still episodic?

You get to pay for the new campaign, but if you owned the previous game, you get remastered missions for free in the new game. Also, you begin progressing mission mastery from the beginning.

 

[fantadomat]

As i said before,i play the old games so i could be an hired contract killer for random people,not to save kids,damsels or the fucking world from an evul corporation/organization

Interestingly enough, the plot of Hitman 2 was about saving your only friend in the whole world at the time, a priest who got caught up in your old shit you were trying to forget. Granted, the vibe is completely different from Absolution (the Agency actually helps you and you're not a lone wolf fugitive with a private investigator streak, but they feed you info on the priest in exchange for working for them again), but it was technically there.

Oh wait, it isn't, Hitman Blood Money is better than anything before it, despite having less missions than Silent Assassin and Contracts. The reason for it is that Blood Money just didn't have shit, boring filler levels and instead focused on putting more quality in each one just as 2016 did.

Well, there's Death of a Showman. I'd argue some of the levels don't really hold up very well if you're looking for multiple playthroughs (A House of Cards, in my opinion, has the "wow" factor when it starts and then gets bogged down in target scheduling. The one thing I really dislike in Hitman is when a target is scheduled to go somewhere or do something scripted, and he walks at a snail's pace to his destination. Really obnoxious and doesn't make me feel the tension of being a patient assassin, and it happens quite a lot in the original four games.)

fantadomat, man, you kinda have an unhealthy tendency to walk into threads to complain about games you don't like. A good tactic for harvesting brofists in Oblivion threads and somewhat silly everywhere else. Give this game a chance; it is nothing like what you're describing. There are some points about it that are somewhat contentious in the Hitman fanbase, but, in general, we like it. I know bitter cynicism is a staple here, but the post-Absolution games will be worth your while. You no longer have to worry about any episodic content.

EDIT:

I've been replaying just one mission for 15 hours straight in 2016, I couldn't imagine doing that in any other Hitman game.

I'm just glad all of my Hitman games are retail or GoG, because my Steam hour count would be considered embarassing. I tend to fixate for a long time on one game instead of completing multiple playthroughs (a trend I'm trying to get rid of) and I kinda did a loooot of Hitman stuff. I'm gonna just post this cause it's hilarious (this is not my channel, full disclosure).

Finally a normal human and not a retarded fanboy . As you pointed out there was a game about saving a friend but the game was all about contract with a few story missions,now it is opposite. The thing i cared about in this games is gone, so is the desire to play the games,as sales point out that i am not alone.
I don't really care about the ratings i get,if i cared i would have been slurping this game's ass. I do defend games i like and shit on games i don't.
Still you are a decent guy and kind off convinced me to give a 2016 a try.

 

[Sentinel]

1) Denuvo

1. Probably paid for by the publisher. I think every WB-published game has had Denuvo so far.

2) Always Online

2. Fair enough, but not something that I believe would actually make or break any sales.

3) Elusive Targets

3. See above. I can see issues with online unlocks and elusive targets, but I don't see it as something that would make or break a game sale for me.

4) 5 maps for 60€

4. That's a weak argument, because I rather view it as how many hours of content total you can get out of those maps. As I said previously, 5 maps that are really good and have a lot of replay value is worth more to me than 20 shitty maps that have little to none.

By having two shitty games before that of which one was episodic shit.

I've found that the majority of people that think that Hitman 2016 is bad haven't even played it. You sound like one of them.

1. I don't care. It's not my problem who paid for it. It's hurting the game and doesn't do anything.
2. Probably doesn't make or break any sales now, but it's an inconvenience and will surely break sales when in 10 years the servers go down because IOI went under and you can't play the game anymore.
3. Elusive Targets by themselves are not a problem, but with them comes attached unique time exclusive rewards. I've read multiple occasions of people interested in the (TM) games but once they find out they can't get the coolest rewards (the suits) anymore, they immediately lose interest.
4. Value is a weak argument? It's the most potent one of them all. If Blood Money was released today it'd cost 120-140€ for the base game using IOI's logic.

5 maps that are really good

Nice one, except not all 5 maps are really good. For example in Hitman 1, 3 of the maps range from complete shit to okay (Colorado, Bangkok and Marrakesh). The only value in modern hitman games is the 5-6 kill scenarios per map that are always entertaining, but after that the ONLY thing left to do in maps is the autistic busy-work challenges that give complete garbage rewards (who the fuck wants a fucking machine gun or shotguns in hitman?) or messing around with AI.

 

[Dzupakazul]

3. Elusive Targets by themselves are not a problem, but with them comes attached unique time exclusive rewards. I've read multiple occasions of people interested in the (TM) games but once they find out they can't get the coolest rewards (the suits) anymore, they immediately lose interest.

(who the fuck wants a fucking machine gun or shotguns in hitman?)

Idk, man, I'd rather attempt something like the Silent Assassin Shotgun challenge than fret much about what a suit that I only look at from behind looks like. One adds to actual gameplay, the other is a feel-good cosmetic.

Nice one, except not all 5 maps are really good. For example in Hitman 1, 3 of the maps range from complete shit to okay (Colorado, Bangkok and Marrakesh). The only value in modern hitman games is the 5-6 kill scenarios per map that are always entertaining, but after that the ONLY thing left to do in maps is the autistic busy-work challenges that give complete garbage rewards (who the fuck wants a fucking machine gun or shotguns in hitman?) or messing around with AI.

Even if you don't enjoy the brand of replay value Hitman games provide, I still figure you should get your money's worth just from the 5-6 kill scenarios per map.

 

[Sentinel]

Idk, man, I'd rather attempt something like the Silent Assassin Shotgun challenge than fret much about what a suit that I only look at from behind looks like. One adds to actual gameplay, the other is a feel-good cosmetic.

I'd agree here, except Hitman combat was, is and will always be shit. So adding loud options is just a complete waste of everyone's time.

Even if you don't enjoy the brand of replay value Hitman games provide, I still figure you should get your money's worth just from the 5-6 kill scenarios per map.

I do enjoy the brand of replay value, the problem is that there isn't enough replay value because the game lacks maps.
If you seriously suggest anyone to just "do the kill scenarios" they'll finish both (TM)1 and 2 in 6 or 7 hours each. If to you that's "your money's worth", then your definition of money's worth is probably as wide as your asshole from all the IOI cock. I envy you.

 

[Dzupakazul]

If you seriously suggest anyone to just "do the kill scenarios" they'll finish both (TM)1 and 2 in 6 or 7 hours each.

If you suggest anyone to just "do the kill scenarios" in Blood Money they will also finish that in 6-7 hours. Hitman gameplay is fast, the games themselves are short, and the amount of time you spend on each level is fairly little. Considering that at this point Hitman 2016 is bundle fodder and had released a lot of levels for free to everyone, I'd say, yeah, like 15$ for a 6-7 hour experience at the minimum is pretty par for the course in this industry. Except there's obvious potential to play more. Even when I really disliked Absolution and couldn't bother to 100% it and it was a chore to even finish it, I still had about as much value from playing the Contracts mode.

 

[Sentinel]

If you suggest anyone to just "do the kill scenarios" in Blood Money they will also finish that in 6-7 hours.

And in that same amount of time will have seen more items, game systems and levels than in either TM1 or 2.

Considering that at this point Hitman 2016 is bundle fodder and had released a lot of levels for free to everyone, I'd say, yeah, like 15$ for a 6-7 hour experience at the minimum is pretty par for the course in this industry

Except TM1 & 2 costs 60€ at release, not 15€.

 

[Vibalist]

Who the hell buys a Hitman game just to play each level once?

 

[AwesomeButton]

Who the hell buys a Hitman game just to play each level once?

Why, retards, dumbfucks and edgy tryhards, of course.

 

[agentorange]

If you suggest anyone to just "do the kill scenarios" in Blood Money they will also finish that in 6-7 hours.

And in that same amount of time will have seen more items, game systems and levels than in either TM1 or 2.

Please list the items that will be used in the average first play-through of Blood Money. Define "game systems." If the player will see more levels in their 7 hours with Blood Money than they will in Hitman 2016 then it stands to reason that the levels in Blood Money are smaller and less involved thus taking far less time to finish.

 

[Sentinel]

If you suggest anyone to just "do the kill scenarios" in Blood Money they will also finish that in 6-7 hours.

And in that same amount of time will have seen more items, game systems and levels than in either TM1 or 2.

Please list the items that will be used in the average first play-through of Blood Money. Define "game systems." If the player will see more levels in their 7 hours with Blood Money than they will in Hitman 2016 then it stands to reason that the levels in Blood Money are smaller and less involved thus taking far less time to finish.

Blood Money has upgrades to weapons, so even if you don't care about the new items, you can buy upgrades for the weapons with the money you earn.
Another thing - this isn't about first playthrough items. It's about useful rewards. (TM) has none. The least they could do is add a challenge to wipe out the map if they give you machine guns or something (thank fuck they didn't add that).

If the player will see more levels in their 7 hours with Blood Money than they will in Hitman 2016 then it stands to reason that the levels in Blood Money are smaller and less involved thus taking far less time to finish.

A common complaint about Hitman 2 I've read is that the maps are way too big and most of the time is spent sprinting through corridors than actually playing the game, so I'm not entirely sure big = better.

 

[Agame]

I have briefly had a look at the season 1 upgraded, after downloading the freebie prologue. Gotta say the graphics comparison is awful, for some reason they decided to splerg out on postprocessing effects, there is so much bloom, DOF, etc. Overall the lighting is MUCH darker, levels look really gloomy now, and when you transition between differently lighted areas you get that ridiculous over saturation of light vs dark. I much prefer the brighter but flatter look of Hitman 2016 so this is a massive downgrade. This video gives a great direct comparison of lighting changes:

Spoiler

Glad to see they changed difficulty selection to easy/normal/hard. Now cameras actually function as they should on normal mode, eg alerting guards. A little bit annoying that all progress was wiped, and obviously the challenges are the same, though they have changed the rewards and items you receive. This is ok for me as I will finish the 2016 game on normal mode, all SASO, then I was planning to switch to Professional and redo all challenges. Now I can switch to the new game on Master difficulty instead and get the upgraded gameplay.

 

[unfairlight]

Blood Money has upgrades to weapons, so even if you don't care about the new items, you can buy upgrades for the weapons with the money you earn.

But you are going to max out the two guns that matter, the Silverballer and the WA2000 after completing the game once. "But the SPAS, MP5 and M4 is there." Sure, but as you yourself said:

who the fuck wants a fucking machine gun or shotguns in hitman?

It's about useful rewards. (TM) has none.

I'd consider breaching charges, proximity explosives, proximity tasers, remote triggered explosives, various poisons with various ways of using them, various distractions, suppressed sniper rifles and weapons that pass frisks quite useful.

A common complaint about Hitman 2 I've read is that the maps are way too big and most of the time is spent sprinting through corridors than actually playing the game, so I'm not entirely sure big = better.

I literally have never heard that complaint once.

 

[unfairlight]

I have briefly had a look at the season 1 upgraded, after downloading the freebie prologue. Gotta say the graphics comparison is awful, for some reason they decided to splerg out on postprocessing effects, there is so much bloom, DOF, etc. Overall the lighting is MUCH darker, levels look really gloomy now, and when you transition between differently lighted areas you get that ridiculous over saturation of light vs dark. I much prefer the brighter but flatter look of Hitman 2016 so this is a massive downgrade. This video gives a great direct comparison of lighting changes:

I think that some places look better while others look worse. Sapienza is definitely worse, but I think Bangkok being less orange is great. I think that the new bloom effects can look great, but they still should tone it down a bit. Gives me Elex flashbacks.

 

[Sentinel]

Blood Money has upgrades to weapons, so even if you don't care about the new items, you can buy upgrades for the weapons with the money you earn.

But you are going to max out the two guns that matter, the Silverballer and the WA2000 after completing the game once. "But the SPAS, MP5 and M4 is there." Sure, but as you yourself said:

who the fuck wants a fucking machine gun or shotguns in hitman?

It's about useful rewards. (TM) has none.

I'd consider breaching charges, proximity explosives, proximity tasers, remote triggered explosives, various poisons with various ways of using them, various distractions, suppressed sniper rifles and weapons that pass frisks quite useful.

A common complaint about Hitman 2 I've read is that the maps are way too big and most of the time is spent sprinting through corridors than actually playing the game, so I'm not entirely sure big = better.

I literally have never heard that complaint once.

Pretty much all of those were in Blood Money. But I'm not interested in discussing BM vs (TM). This is completely beside the point and I'm not a nostalgia fag that thinks Blood Money was without flaw.

My assertion is that the (TM) games have very little content, and this is inexcusable when BM had some 13 levels with way more variety. The new Hitman games struggle to justify their launch pricetag to a normal informed person.

Maybe IOI is waiting for Rockstar to put them out of business with their espionage/stealth game to realize the monumental fuck up and missed opportunity they had.