I not only payed money for a game it was a single player online only episodic game. I broke every rule for this one, just like a movie hitman. the episodic shit actually works for the game though because the levels are meant to be replayed, (acknowledged in the game by two guards having a conversation about the multiverse theory) instead of you just running through the entire campaign and telling yourself you’ll have to retry that one level again and never doing it. each level has “challenges” which are basically like achievements. there’s different kinds, ones for assassinating targets certain ways, getting certain disguises, etc. completing them gives you points that go towards you “mastery” of that level. you don’t have to 100% a level to get the highest mastery level. but what mastery does is unlock items and disguises and starting locations and hiding spots for you to use in the planning screen for each level. the items you unlock also carry over to the next level, you don’t just start from zero equipment wise each one.
the planning screen
staring a level as a waiter
There’s also opportunities. These are a little more scripted than people might like but what can you do. You overhear conversations or find some items or something and the game kind of guides you with prompts (that you can disable, or just tell the game to immediately start guiding you through one at anytime, almost like a tutorial you can switch on anytime to get a feel for the level) through the opportunity, they usually lead to getting you alone with one of the targets. Things like disguise yourself as one of the models in the fashion show level, or as a private detective or whatever. These are more about the game giving you ideas on how to set up situations and offering ways to pull the targets off their routes.
There’s escalation contracts, you get a target and then there’s like five rounds and each one adds different limitations, like a time limit, or hide all bodies in 30 seconds, or certain doorways are wired with explosives and you just have to get around them or disable them somewhere in the level. they’re pretty good about teaching you to get through levels more efficiently. Usually by the 4th round I end up doing some completely different approach than what I tried til then.
And there’s elusive contracts. these are the big deal. the show up on a time limit, you can only play them once. if you die or mess up that’s it, the contract is gone forever. what happened to that one kid who wanted every game to delete his save, this is for him. the target is some unique npc and they don’t show up in your special hitman vision so you have to find them. these are nerve wracking as hell, they’re great. I should maybe do a twitch stream thing for the next one but I don’t really know how to do that and the game doesn’t run all that great on my videocard.
“this white man shows great murder potential”
The tutorial is a ICA training facility that’s literally a dressed up set filled with actors to test you. That was pretty good. This hitman game is definitely going for a spy movie type deal. and aesthetically it’s a lot more clean and sterile than compared to absolution, or contracts horror atmosphere.
these games are about 47 managing the chaos around him to achieve his objectives, here he does so by taking to the runway.
