I fiddled with the PS2/Xbox era ones and they were fun if a little primitive. Reading reviews for Hitman III, which are great, and wondering if it's the gaming press that I shouldn't trust or if they're actually good. Should I bother picking up I & II before picking up III? Should I pick up III?
Edit - thanks for all the honest replies. I trust you fuckers way more than I do the gaming shills in the press.
Blood Money is probably my favorite game of all time. I have spent absurd amounts of my life playing it and have probably worn out one of my PS2s in the process.
I bought Hitman I when it was on sale a year ago and think it's a worthy successor to Blood Money. Has some good level design that reminds me of some of the levels in Blood Money, and the maps are quite large compared to the ones from the PS2 era. They also put a bit more emphasis on "accidents" than in the PS2 games and have more creative ways of causing them (like in Blood Money replacing the prop gun with the real one to kill the actor, except even more elaborate).
The demo levels for Hitman I are fun in and of themselves, though the maps are smaller (analogous to a PS2 map in size) if you wanted to try the game out.
They didn't get Jesper Kyd to do the soundtrack, so sound is a step down from the PS2 games he did the soundtrack for.
The only reason I didn't buy Hitman II was they didn't have a Linux port. I plan on getting it now that I have a Windows box able to play it since it looks very similar to Hitman I with some different levels. I don't know anything about III.
My main criticisms of the newer games:
Big leg up 2 has though it seems small is you can store things in briefcases. Doesn’t sound major but in actual affect on gameplay it’s massively useful.
And all the hitman games are basically just expansions with minor but logical gameplay improvements.
That's a good change. In Blood Money the easiest way to smuggle a weapon into the White House was to store it in a briefcase and throw it over the fence and retrieve it from the guard room.
Now that you mention it that's a feature I missed.
The new games are fantastic if you like Hitman games.
Wait on III because they're having a hard time sorting out the clusterfuck of Hitman III becoming an EGS exclusive. Many, many people are having issues with redeeming their one-time use tokens to link their Steam Hitman data with the EGS copy. If I were you, I'd wait until next January when Hitman III will be released on Steam and GOG. Unless you already have Hitman and Hitman 2 on EGS, then go for it.
Fuck IOI and fuck the Epic game store.
Hitman 1 (talking about the new trilogy) was pretty decent. Personally I'm not a fan of going through the same levels multiple times with minor variations but it was still fun to play through once.
Keep in mind that you can unlock the content of previous games in later ones, eg. 1 in 2 and 1+2 in 3. You either need to own the previous ones or buy DLC for 3. Not sure what the cheapest route is ATM. As I understand it you need the Hitman 1 Goty and Hitman 2 Gold to get everything before 3.
Some info: https://www.ioi.dk/hitman-3-pre-launch-guide/ (they still seem to be working on linking purchases of 1+2 on Steam to unlock them in 3 in the Epic store)
I've played 1 and thought it was fun, so I plan on getting 2 when it's on sale. Probably going to get 3 in a year or so when that's on sale. Right now the most economic way would possibly be to get 1+2, play in 2 and then import progress later on into 3. Shit's convoluted :D
The link above says they're working on unlocking content on Epic if you already have 1+2 (until they get that running you get Hitman 1 Goty DLC for 3 for free, at least for 10 days after release anyway). Technically Epic also has Hitman 2 as DLC for 3.
Fuck Epic
I’d pick up 1 then 2 and play those while you wait on 3 the games only really get good once all major content and patches have dropped. Other than that they are fun feels satisfying coming up with unique ways to kill targets outside the more hand holdy opportunities.
I haven't played 3 nor do I bother to follow the gaming press so I don't know what they're saying about it, but I like 1 and 2. The missions are big and complicated and have a lot of moving parts set in interesting locations or events, and that and the game design is highly conducive to replay, by not just including a lot of ways to do the main objectives, but allowing player-created replacement objectives and a rotating developer-designed "event" objective you only get one attempt at per cycle. You have a lot of options to move around in that space, plan what you want to do, and execute it, and that freedom inside a complicated environment is what hitman games excel at.
My biggest criticism would be the super-elaborate set ways to do the main objectives. Stuff like there's a guy who's attending a test of a new automated turret gun, so you can find a picture of the guy and use it to train the gun to shoot him instead of the dummy. They're kind of funny to watch I guess, but they're often really contrived setups and you definitely have to do exactly what the designers intended to make them happen. They feel less like you're using your own creativity to solve a problem and more like you're just walking down the path the designers made for you. This is made worse by the hint system they have built in to point them out, which really leads you by the hand to do these specific kills, but on the other hand if you turn that system off, they'll often rely on specific objects in kind of random spots that you'd be pretty unlikely to find by accident, like a bunch of circuit boards in a box in a tree that was dropped there by a crashed delivery plane- sure enough you hear the guys talking about the plane, but good luck finding the box in a random tree in the forest without turning guidance back on.
But that applies specifically to the elaborate story-based ways to kill the main guys, there are lots of ways to do it through your own inventiveness too, and that's the gameplay I play hitman games for.
So, yeah, I like 1 and 2, and certainly don't regret buying them. 2 is a minor improvement on 1 but they're definitely the same core game. But just try the demo of 2. The free mission is the smallest, most boring map and acts as a tutorial for the real game, but all the mechanics are in place, you can buy a single additional mission for $15 if you're still on the fence. There's no reason to play 1 or 2 first for plot reasons, since the plot in the hitman games is not what any sane person is playing it for and it barely exists in the first place. But on the other hand they're good games in their own right and, assuming 3 is a minor improvement over 2 like 2 was to 1, and 1 and 2 are obviously cheaper, there's no huge reason not to play them either. Considering you can even play the hitman 1 missions in the second engine if you own the right pack, that's the way I'd go.
I'd never played one until I got Absolution for free on Xbox 360 a few years ago. Pleasantly surprised with it.
Fast forward a couple years later, I got the new Hitman 1 and loved it. I even went for a ton of the challenges. It's a game I enjoy replaying to figure out all the weird different ways to get the kill. There's pre-set scenarios that are sort of guided and more difficult figure it out yourself challenges too. For example the last one I remember doing in Hitman 1 was to get all the kills in a ninja suit without being spotted or having any collateral damage kills.
I'm just now getting into Hitman 2, but I will 100% be buying 3 when it comes time to play it. I'll probably even replay the old levels in the new game, which is an option if you own the previous installments.
If you're just going to play through it once and follow the little scenarios then it will be meh at best, the fun is in going back and figuring out all the extras and that's what it's geared towards.
I havent played Hitman III yet but the new Hitman I & II (now that theyre past all the episodic release bullshit) are very good Hitman games. Very little has changed from the originals as far as mechanics go and have actually expanded in a few areas, mainly with what sort of accidental deaths you can impose. Each mission also has a large amount of replay ability with the incentive to do so (ie. do X to unlock Silenced Sniper Rifle in map drop. or new infiltration points and costumes) The graphics, especially on PC are stunning.
Worthy successors to Blood Money IMO
They're fun, but they're 'new' fun. Whereas the old Hitman games had smaller maps and was a test of patience and trial & error, the new Hitman games.. are not. You can see through walls and you can select which way you want to kill someone from a list and it will direct you to how to do that by having quest marker type things. You can turn this off though if you want to work it out on your own, and you're not locked into killing people in the ways listed in the menu.
The maps are far bigger than the old games, which is where the new guidance system doesn't feel too bad if you want to save yourself hours upon hours just running around doing jack shit. Having the smaller, tighter maps allowed for more progress to be made when you were dicking around, but now there's huge empty portions of the maps that don't appear to really be used at all.
In short they're still fun, but they're 'modern fun'. They're easier, the maps are bigger but kind of empty feeling, and you don't stumble onto something useful by just dicking around. 47 also talks more, a lot of people seem to have issue with this, they've tried to make him sarcastically funny with his one liners in some maps and sometimes it feels kind of forced.