f13.net

Finally getting a non-epic PC launch on 20th January.

https://www.ioi.dk/hitman-3-year-2-reveal/

The level design in these games is amazing. And they are leaning into it with 'roguelike' random campaigns and building off of the elusive target system to provide a looser 'one shot at this slightly easier target and use your knowledge of the map to take them down' experience. As opposed to the more puzzley main campaign and achievements systems.

They already had this with elusive targets, occasional time limited targets you get locked out of if you fail. 'Freelancer' sees to be a fairly ambitious way to generate lots of content by combining random challenges and targets.

As a way to drive players to discover more about these absurdly well designed maps, this seems great.

Seems kind of odd calling something "Hitman 3" with the amount of Hitman games there have been. But ya, they are damn good games. I wish I had the kind of mind needed to really enjoy them.

In VR, even.  Probably a must buy.

It is the third in a series since 2016, the prior games act as DLC for this one and to my mind they are the three that deliver on what hitman was promised to be since the start.

Anyway it'll be on XGP so nobody buy this shit

Except that the Xbox Game App is the shittiest of shittiest game launchers ever created.

It's also the best value in gaming ever, so like, I'm fine with the launcher not being great.

yeah well it's also from microsoft and not tencent so

Microsoft is harvesting a crapton more data about you than Epic Games is. And the Xbox Game app won't work if you've turned off Windows telemetry. I spent weeks bashing my head in trying to figure out why, after working fine, it stopped allowing me to install games. Turns out some recent update made it so it won't work if you've disabled some aspect Windows telemetry though I have no idea which part.

Cool, Id still rather give my data to Microsoft than epic and china

Also, I have 11s telemetry turned off and it works fine as far as I can tell.

That’s cause you aren’t turning it all off.

This has finally launched the roguelike game mode that starts you with no gear and has you work through randomly generated missions in the existing maps.

It's pretty great.

This series has never been what I imagined or wanted. I doubt that will have changed. It always feels like an ersatz puzzle game where I'm guessing what the devs want me to do rather than an actual procedural game with real randomness. I just can't believe that's changed.

I picked up this one on a recent sale pretty cheap, though I rarely make it very far in these games. Always seems to fiddly, as if it's tons of freedom to do what you want in our very narrow prescribed ways. I've played the yacht mission starter a bunch of times and can see where it would be cool but something just doesn't click. On paper I should really dig it.

But I remember playing the demo for Hitman 2 when it came out and really enjoyed the stormy coastline vibe of that mission. Maybe because I wasn't always fighting the camera to see if someone is around to witness what I'm up to constantly?

Yeah, on paper I always think "I will love this" and then I never do. I never feel like I'm improvising, I feel like I'm playing a 2d platformer where you have to hit the jump button at exactly the right moment or fall into the lava, or I'm playing coin-op Dragon's Lair and spending a roll of quarters to learn the sequence of lever pulls in various directions.

The core game is more this - but the 2016 on trilogy really went to town on level design and expanded the number of challenges to a ridiculous level, there are so many scripted kills and a whole pile of skill challenges on top of that. I've not seen anything ever that has level design on the same level.

The freelancer mode is very different and very procedural with all the ups and downs of that. Whereas in the main game you reload if something goes even slightly wrong, here the game is more about how you deal with the screw ups. But it would be very hard to get to a competent enough level to have fun if you haven't played enough of the main campaign enough to be able to visualise the maps and grok what is likely to be possible.