The audio for the hitman 2 silent assassin and contracts segments in the original upload were messed up. This has the audio problems fixed plus has some new content in certain parts of the video like now covering the VR mode which wasn’t originally on PC
Funny thing one of the tabs I left open on my browser to watch later vids was the original hitman vid with audio issues and watched it anyway not noticing it was delisted. Welp time to watch again
Hitman 2 silent assassin will always be one of my favorite games, despite its flaws. It was my first hitman game, and the atmosphere was insanely scary for me when I was a kid. One of the best themes EVER, blew my tiny mind back then.
It was my first hitman also and it's uncomfortable to admit how horrible I was at it. Silent assassin is a hard one. And that japanese level can go play itself.
If there's one thing I like about Absolution it's that it helped lay the groundwork for the newer Hitman Trilogy. Playing it a couple years ago it was interesting seeing animation that were kept along with various gameplay things like challenges and player created contracts.
Mistakes were definitely made with Absolution, we're fortunate to see that they were learned from instead of expanded upon. Some things in Absolution DID work, while there were other critical things to Hitman being forgotten, so very smartly they just combined what worked across the whole series instead of desperately starting everything from scratch.
Exactly how I feel about Absolution today. Say what you want about its design, but it was the entry that took the "eurojank" out of Hitman for good. Tight responsive controls, modern UI, clear visual language. It turned level specific one-off gimmicks into clearly defined systems, it introduced a whole new way to play using pure hide-and-seek stealth without disguises. If instead of Absolution they made more of the same back in the day, I feel like the Hitman franchise wouldn't have the staying power it has today. I hope there is a "Hitman Contracts"-esqe classic level pack being worked on for WoA, I would love to revisit Lee Hong's Assassination or Meat King's Party in WoA.
What really makes the Freelancer great for me, is that it forces me to think out of the box to get the targets. You for example leading a shopkeeper away because he won't stop pestering you, is kinda hilarious i think :P It does take a little while to build up your loadouts, but that also forces you to explore and seek out crates where you can get poison and such. Great video btw! Kinda wanna go back and play the old Hitman Games now!
Yeah, not having access to a lockpick really makes you have to think outside the box in regard to navigation, and rewards knowledge of the map. Lack of saves encourages improvisation and playing through your mistakes. Freelancer as a game mode really feels like a perfect bow on the entire trilogy.
Hitman is one of my favorite franchises.. Blood Money is my favorite and the one thing I really really miss is how they rank you after every mission with a newspaper headline describing the crime… they need to bring that back
I think they could do much more with it in the modern day. For example, if you kill your target in an accident the newspaper will declare it as such, or if you massacre everyone in the level the newspaper will declare it a terrorist attack. In Blood Money they felt very formulaic in my opinion but I believe if this feature were to be modernized it would be awesome.
@@MerpyJoe oh 100% agree, I just like how they had that little tidbit to add to the gameplay... They could 100% go crazy with that feature in modern day. Id love to see it
Eh, idk. It was extremely formulaic and didn't add much. Even getting accident kills would get you called a "silent assassin" when they shouldn't know there was ever an assassin to begin with. It's one of the less important mechanics BM bought. The one I think is essential is the money and upgrade system from BM.
I kinda wish we got more games inspired by Hitman. The only real series I can think of that plays like it is Death To Spies. Contracts' beta ending actually had a cool speech by 47 that I wish the final game kept.
Naughty bear was basically a hitman knockoff, I didn’t like the theme and concept but it was more hitman. I think alakhines gun was a death to spies sequel but it was terrible and basic mechanics didn’t work
My intro to Hitman was Party Hard. Killing, escaping cops and using environmental traps in a 2D map. No disguises though, the only thing you can do is dance (the DLCs do give you a disguise powerup)
@@napalmkitty6686 it is a hitman knock off, targets disguises with methods to kill in a mini sandbox. I never said it was hitman I said it was a hitman knock off replying to a comment about someone wanting more games inspired by hitman
Hitman 2016 and its two sequels are such great games. Ant that's coming from a person that really isn't all that into stealth genre. I guess that kind of proofs the point that hitman's social brand of stealth is so unique and fun.
Because hitman's stealth is not pure stealth, it's a puzzle game, you have a game board with multiple props on it and you have to find a way to manipulate them and make them interact with each other
I am surprised you didn't mention that the install size for Hitman 3, including the entire trilogy, is only a couple gigabytes larger than Hitman 2016, and less than half the size of the complete Hitman 2. Which honestly has let me keep this game installed since it was first released on Steam.
I was always more of a splinter cell fan growing up, but man, the Hitman trilogy has been amazing with the locations and maps, can’t wait to see where they take it.. edit : it’s also fun how you said you missed the hideout in the first hitman remake, and they added it finally back with freelancer which is not perfect, but man what a neat update for free
Splinter Cell and Hitman were my favorite gaming series growing up. I'm glad we still got Hitman, but I hope they will revive Splinter Cell also into new games.
My introduction to Hitman, was H2: Silent Assassin for PS2. I was in third grade and my friend at school, Johnathan let me borrow it. I did everything I could to stall ever giving it back, it became one of my all time favorite games and I'd say it probably is what got me into stealth games. Taking disguises was the thing that blew my mind, as a kid I had this obsession with wanting to be on the side of the enemies, I hated having to be 1 vs 1000, lol I wanted to be apart of that 1000 and the disguises really fed that craving.
I know this is going to die in the algorithm because of the length and it's a reupload, but I appreciate that you didn't settle with good enough and put the effort to make the video better than it already was.
i'll watch this again and i'll say the same thing i said before in the comments. back when the original games came out they did not have the AI and animation issues. if you play the game locked at 30 and kind of 60 (60 is a bit too fast) the game functions correctly. i remember playing this back in the day on my GeForce 3 Ti 200 and Matrox G400 Max on my Dell Dimension 8100 Pentium 4 and not having any of those issues. 1024x768 or 800x600 on the Matrox and a totally doable 1600x1200 on the GeForce was great on a CRT.
Silent Assassin's AI jank has something to do with modern systems, not sure what it is, but I do remember it not having those bugs on Windows XP. On the other hand it was my first Hitman game, and I was like 8, so I just killed everyone on every level pretty much. Afterwards I tried to play "nicer" but nah, it was wrecked As for Absolution, I think it needs a total remake at some point. WoA mechanics, and improving the storyline. Less melodramatic schlock - we already know from other games and especially WoA that 47 does have some sense of justice and morality that Ort-Meyer simply couldn't get rid of. There's really no need for him to go full Max Payne here. You can put the very reveal that Travis is entangled with Dexter and betrayed the Agency right after the first level and have the entire game be this spy thriller-esque cat and mouse game with the ICA trying to put it's Morocco division in line and not even change many things fundamentally, except it would nicely explain some pretty idiotic things the latter does, like the nun-assassins and whatnot being interpreted as increasing desperation against a richer, more powerful opponent. You're initially put into a tricky situation, but as the game progresses, you start entering to a position of power. You can even put in some Codename 47-esque B-movie tier fun moments as a reference.
Played all the hitmans when I was a kid and played Absolution and hated it. So much so that I dropped the franchise thinking its dead. Had no idea the Hitman 2016 was good like the old times. I just thought it was more Absolution. Looks like I've got alot of Hitman to play now
@@terryhaircastle5702 Hitman 3 was awesome. Took me a couple weeks to finish the missions but yeah. Massive improvement over Absolution. Took me back to the older games. Just sad cause I want more Hitman content now
If you use 'Kim Bo Kastekniv' as your profile name in the first Hitman game, it will unlock all levels from the beginning. ''Kastekniv'' translates to ''Throwing Knife'' in Danish. Thought that was funny, seeing that the developers of this franchise are from Denmark.
Contracts was more the result of board pressure. They wanted a game fast, so we got Contracts. Like you said, it’s impressive what they made in 9 months. Also, the cop who shot 47 was actually an assassin dressed as a Policeman, and not Fournier (the police chief at the end of Contracts) great video! Really enjoyed.
I have to say that initially i was burnt out too with the hitman formula. 3 didnt blow me away or anything but the game oozes atmosphere and the berlin level was the peak of the game. This is a hot take but i loved the train level since i found it to be so satisfying to gun them all down. Also freelancer was the best game Mode they could have added and it made me wonder what the future could be if they flesh out the mode eaven further
Hitman Blood Money was by far one my favorite video games when I was growing up I really enjoyed the sandbox nature of the game and the sort of wonky personality of the ai and game mechanics that have always been sort of unique, I think it's good fun no matter how you slice it, I appreciate too that the Hitman franchise is sort of a dark horse of success and feedback and continued development and relationship, in terms of replay-ability especially when Blood Money released was amazing and it holds up well as a proof of concept in execution.
Someone who played hitman from day 1 on pc I feel your rant about absolution! That game absolutely destroyed my trust in hitman franchise so much that only last year 2023 I gave the latest hitman a go. Great video btw! Some great nostalgia moments from hitman 1-3
Honestly I like Absolution because it was my first Hitman game, and I was like 14 when it came out. (though I'd played stealth games before) So that "pick up and play" aspect of it and teh hand holding was appreciated
Codename 47, Silent Assassin, Contracts especially and Blood Money have amazing soundtracks. Love this series, certainly one of if not my favorite series. I love the originals.
Sorry to hear about your janky experience with Silent Assassin. I played on PS2 and experienced virtually none of that. So the game, including Japan's valley, are fond memories for me. H2 and Blood Money are my two favorites. The new ones are great, but the routine of the gameplay loop does get old fast. It also lacked some of the "edginess" of earlier Hitman. Those games feature Meat King Parties and Playboy Christmases, just a little more gritty and risque in tone. Sometimes the targets even fought with you- making them actually dangerous, whereas the targets in the new trilogy are helpless cowards, despite how the mission briefings hype them up. The World of Assassination trilogy is just squeaky clean compared to the classics. The maps of those games are the stars, though. Paris, Sapienza, Miami. brilliant And as for Absolution, I don't hate it as much as others. In fact I liked it quite a bit- I just don't think it should have been a "Hitman" game. It should have been a new original thing
the tone you talk about is also watered down with weak, hollywood-esque soundtracks. When the new Hitman comes I hope they work on making it a darker game like BM and add Jesper Kyd back in the team to create another masterpiece of a soundtrack
Nice Video! I would love to see every level of the series remade for world of assassination. I have so many memories on the old hitman games. Silent assasin and blood money are my favorites, and I loved the atmosphere in some of the levels in contracts,like the butcher mission or the rainy scottland mission. I hope they don't let the brand die.
My favorite video game newspaper is some of the ones in Volition’s Punisher game from 2004, specially the PC version, where you can see the words below the headlines are just excerpts from the game’s own design docs.
I've been gaming since I was 4 yrs old in 1986. To this day, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin (PS2) is one of my absolute favourite games of all-time, across all genres.
I have seen your channel before, I recognised your name. I watched your Fatal Frame and really like how you present it. It's well structured and but at the same time very friendly. I've now subscribed and will check out more of your videos later... including this one.
The sniper alerts in Hidden Valley and At the Gates are not counted as actual alerts by the game. It's why you can sound one off and still keep Silent Assassin. But yeah, its pretty much RNG if you get hit or not. In order to get Silent Assassin in the Shogun Showdown level you have to abuse the game's mechanics. You have to adopt a disguise and stay far away from the other guards (suspicion builds for each individual guard over time the more they are exposed to you and the suspicion level stays even when you leave their sight, culminating in them firing on you). Don't bother rescuing Mei Ling. Once you kill Hayamoto, you need to leave the castle while the other guards are at the entrance. You can walk past them and get Silent Assassin if they did not encounter you in your disguise before (as counterintuitive as that sounds). Floorboards also don't matter past the lower level where you first encounter them and can be used to manipulate the guards at the laser gate (near where you first encounter the floorboards) to move past them undetected with no suspicion building. Either that or you "point" them in the direction you want using the floor above and anesthetise them. Also, similar to the sniper "alerts", alerts by the katana wielding ninjas don't count against you for Silent Assassin.
Thank you for this video. I stopped playing after Absolution. My favorite will always be Silent Assassin but replaying Contracts and Blood Money brought me to the series and now I just dived into Hitman 2 and the gameplay is phenomenal
@@Cvit Yea, that's the Maxon app problem. Sometimes it disconnects you in the middle of a night render. You wake up the following day and see the render stopped 1 hour after you go to bed :)
This man said we didn't have internet "back in the day" when this came out, like forums and GameFaqs didn't exist. Protip: you can't use "back in the day" if you weren't there.
Nice video... but a small correction. Back in 2000 when this was released we had plenty of gaming sites with walkthroughs, cheat codes etc.. Games FAQ was up in the late 90'... so it was very easy to just look things up. The internet had been a fairly common luxury for most people at the time. It was the pre-1995 (Windows95) times where books, magazines & word of mouth was all we had ;-)
I've watched this retrospective a couple times now, both as background noise and actually watching it, and this watch is the first time I noticed you used a TheProfessional clip for your Blood Money segment lmao
Excellent video(s)! I recently downloaded the Hitman World of Assassination title on Xbox Game Pass (85 GB). I was almost instantly confused by wtf the bundle included and I then searched RUclips to find an explanation video and this popped up. 🤓
Cvit's RUclips account picture of Guts smiling as Griffith made me realize how badly I want to see an edit of that scene from the anime but with Guts smiling like Griffith at himself through the window in Wyndham.
Thank you for this review of one of my absolute favourite game series. Very good video, everything perfectly summarised, I always wondered why I didn't like Absolution, but now everything just makes sense😂
For the blood money segment, you noted some technical issues. A lot of what you mentioned has to do with high frame rates, which for whatever reason produces some game breaking bugs
Silent Assassin was my first Hitman game and has a special spot in my heart. I played the shit out of this game so much I can't even explain to you. SA all levels when I was only 14 y.o. (pretty confident that's illegal). And I'm sorry if that's the point of the video and I missed it, but most of the bugs you mentioned about it are probably because you are playing in a modern platform, because I never experienced most of them back in the day (I always played on PC). Hidden Valley/At the Gates/Shogun missions sound really painful as it is now, but back in the day I was amazed by the levels and was never bothered by the size and emptiness of it. I guess I was young and didn't knew better. I'm currently in another Hitman hyperfocus moment of my life, so your video was a treat to me. Thank you!
I've been checking out most of the games in your videos. I don't have enough time to play them all, but they're fun. Gonna play more of them once I beat my marathon of the Kingdom Hearts games.
The one recurring bug I've run into with Blood Money was a guaranteed crash in the opera house stage once the singing started. It was still possible to finish the mission and progress further, but the timing to do that is pretty tight.
I pretty much agree with all of the opinions on the individual games. I never played Hitman 1, but seeing how barebones and limited it still was, I never really felt the need to play it. I really liked 2, Contracts and especially Blood Money, I was disappointed by Absolution and then blown away by the "reboot" and then felt a little burnout by game 3. By now I made my peace with 3, went back to it, got the platinum trophy and hold it in higher regard, but I still feel like those last games didn't innovate enough from game to game. The biggest difference in opinion I have from the video is regarding the Freelancer mode, as I'm somebody who really loves rogue-like games. Freelancer has some flaws (especially the starting locations that put you right in the middle of an alerted zone without a disguise) but it's a fun challenge and I liked grinding away at it. Really curious about the James Bond game. I think we really lack "agent" types of games. It's a misfortunate genre, seeing how Alpha Protocol had potential, but could never quite live up to them, MGS and Splinter Cell pretty much being dead and Rockstar's "Agent" never seeing the light of day ... I need this genre to live!
IO will either make a Hitman: Son of the Hitman sequel. But I wouldn't mind a game set before 47 was born maybe, where you make and customize your own ICA agent and do missions all over the world.
I really don’t like the idea of games with established characters and personalities getting a generic player, the Witcher 3 would be nowhere as good if you played random Witcher bloke #53 While hitman inherently would fit the concept better it still wouldn’t make much sense
IOI is done with Hitman for a bit. They've moved on to James Bond and it may be even another 5 years after that before they were to release another Hitman game.
This video came out a month ago. Someone at IOI must have been watching: The Sarajevo Six are no longer Playstation exclusive content for Hitman 2016, but will be made available as DLC in the Hitman World of Assassination full trilogy release for EVERY platform!
Freelancer is kinda... Dunno, it's a thing with huge potential but it's still rough around the edges. I still love it, but I think second iteration of it is going to be vastly better. The main problem to me about it is the inverted difficulty curve. You start out with the game being the most difficult it's ever going to get, and then you just lower the difficulty bit by bit until at the end, you have full inventory available to use on every mission. Lockpicks, keycard scramblers, silenced weapons arsenal, and dart guns, with all the exposives you might want. You can do one-time difficulty increase by switching to hardcore mode, but it removes all your tools, all your money, and there's upside to doing it. You also then lose all the stuff in regular mode as well, so you don't want to do this unless you have completed your inventory in the easy mode, since losing progress in losing gear, actively increases the difficulty, punishing people who lose and constantly lowering difficulty for those that consistently win. It's a bizarre system. But aside from difficulty curve, it's a fun game mode.
not sure if the "dana white simulator" is a reference to power slap or him slapping his wife but its a low blow. its also hilarious. enjoy your content look foward to more
Beautifully told video, thanks a lot. I personally would like some visual reflections of what you say, rather than just background footage for everything. But of course that's easier said than done. Diagrams and pointers etc I mean. Excellent script though as said before, lovely audio quality too.
The WOA trilogy might just be my game of the decade. Thanks to Freelancer, Htiman is now literally a game I can play forever. I'm someone who has never enjoyed rogue likes either, but it has completely won me over and forced me to break out of my comfort zone and truly master the layouts of every map. Just hundreds of hours in this mode alone...it's insane.
37:52 you can get that minigun, you need the keycard from last level to open the doors ^^ also there are golden dual deagles to unlock somewhere if i remember well
I'm sure someones already said it, but I think most of the problems encountered on Silent Assassin are rather "new" as the game was not designed to run on modern systems and hardware. Back in the days, it was the only game I had on PC, and while the AI is definitely schizoid and on meth, the damn thing was still playable and the "silent assassin" rank was humanly possible in every level (well, except for that damn truck in that fucking tunnel). Great video anyway, time to go through SA once again more than 18 years later just to check it for myself.
10:32 That scene with the gun is actually in his hand if you play on an actual windows 98 PC. I remember thinking it was odd when it started happening on my PC way back in the day because it only started doing it when I installed windows xp
PREACH about trespassing areas. So many rooms in all three games where NPCs wouldn't give you a second glance if you stood right on the threshold, and then suddenly lose their collective shiz if you took one step inside. I wonder if the slightly 'meh' reaction to the story in 3 is because you keep discovering new enemies as you work through the entire trilogy, whereas if there was one consistent villain from the start, it might feel more satisfying to vanquish them at the end? Why should I feel excited about eliminating the Providence partners when I didn't know who they were until I was being parachuted into Dubai? Am I really delighted to bring down the ICA when I've spent a third of the franchise working for them quite happily? Even Arthur Edwards only appears at the end of 2. And as you say, why do I care as the player if the ICA exist or not, if Providence exist or not? The whole point of these organisations is that they are so secretive that 99.9% of the population will feel no effects at all whether they exist or not, which means that bringing them down is always going to be anticlimactic.
The Blood Money issues are FPS-related. Running the game above 60 causes all those glitches (gliding, invisible walls, broken AI timing, Requiem issues).
Was I the only person in the world who found the cliffside route around the Jaguar? Literally never did the guard sacrifice and didn't realize it was possible for years.
The audio for the hitman 2 silent assassin and contracts segments in the original upload were messed up. This has the audio problems fixed plus has some new content in certain parts of the video like now covering the VR mode which wasn’t originally on PC
fuck fine time for another go at it ty
Funny thing one of the tabs I left open on my browser to watch later vids was the original hitman vid with audio issues and watched it anyway not noticing it was delisted. Welp time to watch again
Why didn’t you talk about the movies, and comics? Their ain’t many.
Edit: he did review second hitman movie but he didn’t put the review in the view
For silent assassin it might’ve been the version you were playing because with the Xbox version it’s ran normal for me
24:12 The levels are India. Not Afghanistan. Just because they color graded it warm and the targets wear turbans, doesn't mean they all are the same.
hitman retrospective 2.8 final mix GOTY edition
Bro made a final mix of his hitman retrospective.
Wow so insightful and funny not just a shallow observation at all.
@@wiwysova you do know that was a kingdom hearts joke right? like you do know what a final mix is right?
Hitman RE:trospective Final Mix
@@locodesert2 you do know you're tasting my shit right now, right? You do know what shit is, right?
Re:True-spective
"He just slashes it with a straight razor like he's a member of the Akatsuki" had me laughing so hard it earned you an instant subscribe
Hitman 2 silent assassin will always be one of my favorite games, despite its flaws. It was my first hitman game, and the atmosphere was insanely scary for me when I was a kid.
One of the best themes EVER, blew my tiny mind back then.
It was my first hitman also and it's uncomfortable to admit how horrible I was at it. Silent assassin is a hard one. And that japanese level can go play itself.
If there's one thing I like about Absolution it's that it helped lay the groundwork for the newer Hitman Trilogy. Playing it a couple years ago it was interesting seeing animation that were kept along with various gameplay things like challenges and player created contracts.
Mistakes were definitely made with Absolution, we're fortunate to see that they were learned from instead of expanded upon. Some things in Absolution DID work, while there were other critical things to Hitman being forgotten, so very smartly they just combined what worked across the whole series instead of desperately starting everything from scratch.
@@queuedjar4578That's what all developers should know. We don't necessarily hate some game, we often just dislike some features of it.
I am not trying to argue but i think most things were taken from older hitman games
Exactly how I feel about Absolution today. Say what you want about its design, but it was the entry that took the "eurojank" out of Hitman for good. Tight responsive controls, modern UI, clear visual language. It turned level specific one-off gimmicks into clearly defined systems, it introduced a whole new way to play using pure hide-and-seek stealth without disguises. If instead of Absolution they made more of the same back in the day, I feel like the Hitman franchise wouldn't have the staying power it has today.
I hope there is a "Hitman Contracts"-esqe classic level pack being worked on for WoA, I would love to revisit Lee Hong's Assassination or Meat King's Party in WoA.
The Hitman Retrospective Anthology: Final Mix: Remastered: Reloaded: Special Edition (Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry series) & Knuckles
What really makes the Freelancer great for me, is that it forces me to think out of the box to get the targets. You for example leading a shopkeeper away because he won't stop pestering you, is kinda hilarious i think :P It does take a little while to build up your loadouts, but that also forces you to explore and seek out crates where you can get poison and such. Great video btw! Kinda wanna go back and play the old Hitman Games now!
Yeah, not having access to a lockpick really makes you have to think outside the box in regard to navigation, and rewards knowledge of the map. Lack of saves encourages improvisation and playing through your mistakes. Freelancer as a game mode really feels like a perfect bow on the entire trilogy.
Hitman is one of my favorite franchises.. Blood Money is my favorite and the one thing I really really miss is how they rank you after every mission with a newspaper headline describing the crime… they need to bring that back
I think they could do much more with it in the modern day. For example, if you kill your target in an accident the newspaper will declare it as such, or if you massacre everyone in the level the newspaper will declare it a terrorist attack. In Blood Money they felt very formulaic in my opinion but I believe if this feature were to be modernized it would be awesome.
@@MerpyJoe oh 100% agree, I just like how they had that little tidbit to add to the gameplay... They could 100% go crazy with that feature in modern day. Id love to see it
Eh, idk. It was extremely formulaic and didn't add much. Even getting accident kills would get you called a "silent assassin" when they shouldn't know there was ever an assassin to begin with.
It's one of the less important mechanics BM bought. The one I think is essential is the money and upgrade system from BM.
@@insertnamehere658It could be a great feature if it was brought back and expanded on, even though this implementation was underwhelming
I kinda wish we got more games inspired by Hitman.
The only real series I can think of that plays like it is Death To Spies.
Contracts' beta ending actually had a cool speech by 47 that I wish the final game kept.
Naughty bear was basically a hitman knockoff, I didn’t like the theme and concept but it was more hitman. I think alakhines gun was a death to spies sequel but it was terrible and basic mechanics didn’t work
My intro to Hitman was Party Hard. Killing, escaping cops and using environmental traps in a 2D map. No disguises though, the only thing you can do is dance (the DLCs do give you a disguise powerup)
@@DW51380 how tf was naughty bear like hitman? i just remember a really generic tps
@@napalmkitty6686 it is a hitman knock off, targets disguises with methods to kill in a mini sandbox. I never said it was hitman I said it was a hitman knock off replying to a comment about someone wanting more games inspired by hitman
@@napalmkitty6686 the second game, tropical paradise, in particular is straight up a hitman parody. The bear even starts off in a hitman-esque suit.
I just opened Hitman 3 for the first time in months and I found the 7 deadly sins in China and I'm loving it
Hitman 2016 and its two sequels are such great games. Ant that's coming from a person that really isn't all that into stealth genre. I guess that kind of proofs the point that hitman's social brand of stealth is so unique and fun.
Because hitman's stealth is not pure stealth, it's a puzzle game, you have a game board with multiple props on it and you have to find a way to manipulate them and make them interact with each other
@@riccardomallardo7779hahaha so scholarly 😂 I do agree though!
I am surprised you didn't mention that the install size for Hitman 3, including the entire trilogy, is only a couple gigabytes larger than Hitman 2016, and less than half the size of the complete Hitman 2. Which honestly has let me keep this game installed since it was first released on Steam.
I just remembered! That was kinda odd, wasn't it? A welcome oddity.
Odd for western developers to optimize their game/files@@TG-ge1oh
I wish they would do proper remakes of older hitman games
Wish for newer games not remakes.@@strafniki1080
I wonder what compression black magic they did with their glacier engine
I was always more of a splinter cell fan growing up, but man, the Hitman trilogy has been amazing with the locations and maps, can’t wait to see where they take it.. edit : it’s also fun how you said you missed the hideout in the first hitman remake, and they added it finally back with freelancer which is not perfect, but man what a neat update for free
Im very curious to see where their James Bond game goes too
Doesn't help the fact that Splinter Cell has been dead for ten years
@@KoylTrane what they did to that franchise is a disgrace
Splinter Cell and Hitman were my favorite gaming series growing up. I'm glad we still got Hitman, but I hope they will revive Splinter Cell also into new games.
@tony raproconi da don ravioli see? Different gameplay mechanics makes this though, whole different games and philosophies
My introduction to Hitman, was H2: Silent Assassin for PS2. I was in third grade and my friend at school, Johnathan let me borrow it. I did everything I could to stall ever giving it back, it became one of my all time favorite games and I'd say it probably is what got me into stealth games.
Taking disguises was the thing that blew my mind, as a kid I had this obsession with wanting to be on the side of the enemies, I hated having to be 1 vs 1000, lol I wanted to be apart of that 1000 and the disguises really fed that craving.
Lol dark twist
I know this is going to die in the algorithm because of the length and it's a reupload, but I appreciate that you didn't settle with good enough and put the effort to make the video better than it already was.
i'll watch this again and i'll say the same thing i said before in the comments. back when the original games came out they did not have the AI and animation issues. if you play the game locked at 30 and kind of 60 (60 is a bit too fast) the game functions correctly. i remember playing this back in the day on my GeForce 3 Ti 200 and Matrox G400 Max on my Dell Dimension 8100 Pentium 4 and not having any of those issues. 1024x768 or 800x600 on the Matrox and a totally doable 1600x1200 on the GeForce was great on a CRT.
Silent Assassin's AI jank has something to do with modern systems, not sure what it is, but I do remember it not having those bugs on Windows XP. On the other hand it was my first Hitman game, and I was like 8, so I just killed everyone on every level pretty much. Afterwards I tried to play "nicer" but nah, it was wrecked
As for Absolution, I think it needs a total remake at some point. WoA mechanics, and improving the storyline. Less melodramatic schlock - we already know from other games and especially WoA that 47 does have some sense of justice and morality that Ort-Meyer simply couldn't get rid of. There's really no need for him to go full Max Payne here.
You can put the very reveal that Travis is entangled with Dexter and betrayed the Agency right after the first level and have the entire game be this spy thriller-esque cat and mouse game with the ICA trying to put it's Morocco division in line and not even change many things fundamentally, except it would nicely explain some pretty idiotic things the latter does, like the nun-assassins and whatnot being interpreted as increasing desperation against a richer, more powerful opponent. You're initially put into a tricky situation, but as the game progresses, you start entering to a position of power. You can even put in some Codename 47-esque B-movie tier fun moments as a reference.
Given your playlist on the hitman games are my go to playlist when I'm busy, seeing it complied into one video is awesome.
Blood Money was really the Zenith! It has a charm to it that no other Hitman could replicate, even though i love them all!
I love Blood Money, but the new trilogy is easily on the same level.
I would say the same thing about Contracts.
@@schizzo8959the Trilogy is too Hollywood-ish.
I love that you gave instructions for editing ini files like anyone is going to go play the old hitman game
Loved all of Hitman, and I can not wait to find out more about the Bond game IOI is working on.
Same
Sweet it's back up! I was looking for this anthology a couple days ago and saw it got taken down!
Played all the hitmans when I was a kid and played Absolution and hated it. So much so that I dropped the franchise thinking its dead. Had no idea the Hitman 2016 was good like the old times. I just thought it was more Absolution. Looks like I've got alot of Hitman to play now
Well how's the hitman series going six months later ?
@@terryhaircastle5702 Hitman 3 was awesome. Took me a couple weeks to finish the missions but yeah. Massive improvement over Absolution. Took me back to the older games. Just sad cause I want more Hitman content now
Hey, the audio issues got fixed for phone users! Thanks for taking the time to fix it and reupload it.
If you use 'Kim Bo Kastekniv' as your profile name in the first Hitman game, it will unlock all levels from the beginning.
''Kastekniv'' translates to ''Throwing Knife'' in Danish. Thought that was funny, seeing that the developers of this franchise are from Denmark.
Amazing video. You can see how much work has gone into this. Was cool to see how the series has evolved.
Contracts was more the result of board pressure. They wanted a game fast, so we got Contracts. Like you said, it’s impressive what they made in 9 months. Also, the cop who shot 47 was actually an assassin dressed as a Policeman, and not Fournier (the police chief at the end of Contracts) great video! Really enjoyed.
You can drown the dentist in Codename 47 as well. All you need is the fibre wire.
I guess this is my sign to rewatch these retrospectives
Amazing Video, thank you so much for putting it all together!
Boy, were you cynical come Hitman III. Dartmoor is a standout in the WoA trilogy.
I have to say that initially i was burnt out too with the hitman formula. 3 didnt blow me away or anything but the game oozes atmosphere and the berlin level was the peak of the game. This is a hot take but i loved the train level since i found it to be so satisfying to gun them all down.
Also freelancer was the best game Mode they could have added and it made me wonder what the future could be if they flesh out the mode eaven further
Hitman Blood Money was by far one my favorite video games when I was growing up I really enjoyed the sandbox nature of the game and the sort of wonky personality of the ai and game mechanics that have always been sort of unique, I think it's good fun no matter how you slice it, I appreciate too that the Hitman franchise is sort of a dark horse of success and feedback and continued development and relationship, in terms of replay-ability especially when Blood Money released was amazing and it holds up well as a proof of concept in execution.
I love the story for World of Assassination. I'm sorry you didn't feel the same way.
Thanks mate. This saved me from going insane during work.
Someone who played hitman from day 1 on pc I feel your rant about absolution! That game absolutely destroyed my trust in hitman franchise so much that only last year 2023 I gave the latest hitman a go.
Great video btw! Some great nostalgia moments from hitman 1-3
Honestly I like Absolution because it was my first Hitman game, and I was like 14 when it came out. (though I'd played stealth games before) So that "pick up and play" aspect of it and teh hand holding was appreciated
Codename 47, Silent Assassin, Contracts especially and Blood Money have amazing soundtracks.
Love this series, certainly one of if not my favorite series. I love the originals.
2:13:10 I did not expect to hear "Haruspex is all alone" today. When it goes "weuweuweuweuweuweuweu" I feel it in my soul
2:16:03 you cant be doing this to me man, my name is Kane and i got startled.
Sorry to hear about your janky experience with Silent Assassin. I played on PS2 and experienced virtually none of that. So the game, including Japan's valley, are fond memories for me.
H2 and Blood Money are my two favorites. The new ones are great, but the routine of the gameplay loop does get old fast. It also lacked some of the "edginess" of earlier Hitman. Those games feature Meat King Parties and Playboy Christmases, just a little more gritty and risque in tone. Sometimes the targets even fought with you- making them actually dangerous, whereas the targets in the new trilogy are helpless cowards, despite how the mission briefings hype them up. The World of Assassination trilogy is just squeaky clean compared to the classics. The maps of those games are the stars, though. Paris, Sapienza, Miami. brilliant
And as for Absolution, I don't hate it as much as others. In fact I liked it quite a bit- I just don't think it should have been a "Hitman" game. It should have been a new original thing
the tone you talk about is also watered down with weak, hollywood-esque soundtracks. When the new Hitman comes I hope they work on making it a darker game like BM and add Jesper Kyd back in the team to create another masterpiece of a soundtrack
Nice Video!
I would love to see every level of the series remade for world of assassination. I have so many memories on the old hitman games. Silent assasin and blood money are my favorites, and I loved the atmosphere in some of the levels in contracts,like the butcher mission or the rainy scottland mission. I hope they don't let the brand die.
The Rotterdam mission in the rain and the one in the snow. Will be ingrained in my mind forever.
Finally a Definitive Edition of The Best Hitman Reviews A Blessing From God.
My favorite video game newspaper is some of the ones in Volition’s Punisher game from 2004, specially the PC version, where you can see the words below the headlines are just excerpts from the game’s own design docs.
just awesome collection of memorys of early an new version of Agent 47. Thx!
I've been gaming since I was 4 yrs old in 1986. To this day, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin (PS2) is one of my absolute favourite games of all-time, across all genres.
Always a thrill to rewatch.
I have seen your channel before, I recognised your name. I watched your Fatal Frame and really like how you present it. It's well structured and but at the same time very friendly. I've now subscribed and will check out more of your videos later... including this one.
Just wait until we get to Arc-V
I like the random Polish Subs when there are clips from interviews xD, over all really good retrospecive
The sniper alerts in Hidden Valley and At the Gates are not counted as actual alerts by the game. It's why you can sound one off and still keep Silent Assassin. But yeah, its pretty much RNG if you get hit or not.
In order to get Silent Assassin in the Shogun Showdown level you have to abuse the game's mechanics.
You have to adopt a disguise and stay far away from the other guards (suspicion builds for each individual guard over time the more they are exposed to you and the suspicion level stays even when you leave their sight, culminating in them firing on you). Don't bother rescuing Mei Ling. Once you kill Hayamoto, you need to leave the castle while the other guards are at the entrance. You can walk past them and get Silent Assassin if they did not encounter you in your disguise before (as counterintuitive as that sounds). Floorboards also don't matter past the lower level where you first encounter them and can be used to manipulate the guards at the laser gate (near where you first encounter the floorboards) to move past them undetected with no suspicion building. Either that or you "point" them in the direction you want using the floor above and anesthetise them.
Also, similar to the sniper "alerts", alerts by the katana wielding ninjas don't count against you for Silent Assassin.
Thank you for this video. I stopped playing after Absolution. My favorite will always be Silent Assassin but replaying Contracts and Blood Money brought me to the series and now I just dived into Hitman 2 and the gameplay is phenomenal
LOL. I was working on my CG work while watching this. and I thought 39:25 error showed up to me. I even checked my license hahaha.
FUCKING RED GIANT AND THEIR SUBSCRIPTIONS NOT REGISTERING AHHHHH
@@Cvit Yea, that's the Maxon app problem. Sometimes it disconnects you in the middle of a night render. You wake up the following day and see the render stopped 1 hour after you go to bed :)
This man said we didn't have internet "back in the day" when this came out, like forums and GameFaqs didn't exist.
Protip: you can't use "back in the day" if you weren't there.
Nice video... but a small correction. Back in 2000 when this was released we had plenty of gaming sites with walkthroughs, cheat codes etc.. Games FAQ was up in the late 90'... so it was very easy to just look things up. The internet had been a fairly common luxury for most people at the time. It was the pre-1995 (Windows95) times where books, magazines & word of mouth was all we had ;-)
I've watched this retrospective a couple times now, both as background noise and actually watching it, and this watch is the first time I noticed you used a TheProfessional clip for your Blood Money segment lmao
Excellent video(s)! I recently downloaded the Hitman World of Assassination title on Xbox Game Pass (85 GB). I was almost instantly confused by wtf the bundle included and I then searched RUclips to find an explanation video and this popped up. 🤓
I really love the newer hitman games
Cvit's RUclips account picture of Guts smiling as Griffith made me realize how badly I want to see an edit of that scene from the anime but with Guts smiling like Griffith at himself through the window in Wyndham.
Looking at this video now its scary how close the yakuza joke was
Thank you for this review of one of my absolute favourite game series. Very good video, everything perfectly summarised, I always wondered why I didn't like Absolution, but now everything just makes sense😂
For the blood money segment, you noted some technical issues. A lot of what you mentioned has to do with high frame rates, which for whatever reason produces some game breaking bugs
Silent Assassin was my first Hitman game and has a special spot in my heart. I played the shit out of this game so much I can't even explain to you. SA all levels when I was only 14 y.o. (pretty confident that's illegal). And I'm sorry if that's the point of the video and I missed it, but most of the bugs you mentioned about it are probably because you are playing in a modern platform, because I never experienced most of them back in the day (I always played on PC). Hidden Valley/At the Gates/Shogun missions sound really painful as it is now, but back in the day I was amazed by the levels and was never bothered by the size and emptiness of it. I guess I was young and didn't knew better.
I'm currently in another Hitman hyperfocus moment of my life, so your video was a treat to me. Thank you!
I've been checking out most of the games in your videos. I don't have enough time to play them all, but they're fun. Gonna play more of them once I beat my marathon of the Kingdom Hearts games.
I’ve watched the original videos and watched this whole video really good job!
The one recurring bug I've run into with Blood Money was a guaranteed crash in the opera house stage once the singing started. It was still possible to finish the mission and progress further, but the timing to do that is pretty tight.
I pretty much agree with all of the opinions on the individual games. I never played Hitman 1, but seeing how barebones and limited it still was, I never really felt the need to play it. I really liked 2, Contracts and especially Blood Money, I was disappointed by Absolution and then blown away by the "reboot" and then felt a little burnout by game 3. By now I made my peace with 3, went back to it, got the platinum trophy and hold it in higher regard, but I still feel like those last games didn't innovate enough from game to game.
The biggest difference in opinion I have from the video is regarding the Freelancer mode, as I'm somebody who really loves rogue-like games. Freelancer has some flaws (especially the starting locations that put you right in the middle of an alerted zone without a disguise) but it's a fun challenge and I liked grinding away at it.
Really curious about the James Bond game. I think we really lack "agent" types of games. It's a misfortunate genre, seeing how Alpha Protocol had potential, but could never quite live up to them, MGS and Splinter Cell pretty much being dead and Rockstar's "Agent" never seeing the light of day ... I need this genre to live!
I have never played a hitman game but this vid was baller !! great stuff :)
IO will either make a Hitman: Son of the Hitman sequel. But I wouldn't mind a game set before 47 was born maybe, where you make and customize your own ICA agent and do missions all over the world.
I really don’t like the idea of games with established characters and personalities getting a generic player, the Witcher 3 would be nowhere as good if you played random Witcher bloke #53
While hitman inherently would fit the concept better it still wouldn’t make much sense
IOI is done with Hitman for a bit. They've moved on to James Bond and it may be even another 5 years after that before they were to release another Hitman game.
This video came out a month ago.
Someone at IOI must have been watching: The Sarajevo Six are no longer Playstation exclusive content for Hitman 2016, but will be made available as DLC in the Hitman World of Assassination full trilogy release for EVERY platform!
Freelancer has no business being that good. It's the best Hitman game imo.
Freelancer is kinda... Dunno, it's a thing with huge potential but it's still rough around the edges. I still love it, but I think second iteration of it is going to be vastly better.
The main problem to me about it is the inverted difficulty curve. You start out with the game being the most difficult it's ever going to get, and then you just lower the difficulty bit by bit until at the end, you have full inventory available to use on every mission. Lockpicks, keycard scramblers, silenced weapons arsenal, and dart guns, with all the exposives you might want.
You can do one-time difficulty increase by switching to hardcore mode, but it removes all your tools, all your money, and there's upside to doing it. You also then lose all the stuff in regular mode as well, so you don't want to do this unless you have completed your inventory in the easy mode, since losing progress in losing gear, actively increases the difficulty, punishing people who lose and constantly lowering difficulty for those that consistently win.
It's a bizarre system. But aside from difficulty curve, it's a fun game mode.
not sure if the "dana white simulator" is a reference to power slap or him slapping his wife but its a low blow. its also hilarious. enjoy your content look foward to more
Hearing the tales of Symphonia music in the absolution part of the video was a welcome surprise
Beautifully told video, thanks a lot. I personally would like some visual reflections of what you say, rather than just background footage for everything. But of course that's easier said than done. Diagrams and pointers etc I mean. Excellent script though as said before, lovely audio quality too.
The WOA trilogy might just be my game of the decade. Thanks to Freelancer, Htiman is now literally a game I can play forever. I'm someone who has never enjoyed rogue likes either, but it has completely won me over and forced me to break out of my comfort zone and truly master the layouts of every map. Just hundreds of hours in this mode alone...it's insane.
37:52 you can get that minigun, you need the keycard from last level to open the doors ^^
also there are golden dual deagles to unlock somewhere if i remember well
I'm 19 and this video gives me too much nostalgia.
Great video! Though. I do love how you mix up “sanitarium” and “sanatorium”.
I'm sure someones already said it, but I think most of the problems encountered on Silent Assassin are rather "new" as the game was not designed to run on modern systems and hardware. Back in the days, it was the only game I had on PC, and while the AI is definitely schizoid and on meth, the damn thing was still playable and the "silent assassin" rank was humanly possible in every level (well, except for that damn truck in that fucking tunnel). Great video anyway, time to go through SA once again more than 18 years later just to check it for myself.
10:32 That scene with the gun is actually in his hand if you play on an actual windows 98 PC. I remember thinking it was odd when it started happening on my PC way back in the day because it only started doing it when I installed windows xp
I love the music of the new hitman games really spectacular
The king is back
As someone who used to be a devout catholic him calling a rosary a crusifix actually got to me, funniest part is im not even catholic anymore.
Does anyone know what that song at 2:14:26 is? I can't seem to find it in the desc.
It's the Yoshi's Story Theme
PREACH about trespassing areas. So many rooms in all three games where NPCs wouldn't give you a second glance if you stood right on the threshold, and then suddenly lose their collective shiz if you took one step inside.
I wonder if the slightly 'meh' reaction to the story in 3 is because you keep discovering new enemies as you work through the entire trilogy, whereas if there was one consistent villain from the start, it might feel more satisfying to vanquish them at the end? Why should I feel excited about eliminating the Providence partners when I didn't know who they were until I was being parachuted into Dubai? Am I really delighted to bring down the ICA when I've spent a third of the franchise working for them quite happily? Even Arthur Edwards only appears at the end of 2. And as you say, why do I care as the player if the ICA exist or not, if Providence exist or not? The whole point of these organisations is that they are so secretive that 99.9% of the population will feel no effects at all whether they exist or not, which means that bringing them down is always going to be anticlimactic.
Man that Yakuza joke sure had some foresight.
hitman 3™ was so good that it made you feel like 47 at the end of it
What's the song that plays at the intro to chapter 6? It's terrific
It’s from Mother Russia Bleeds. The track is called Coerced Battle
I always loved the way that if you wiped out everyone in the level in blood money you would get a good score 🙂
My first hitman game was contracts. And I really liked it and I still do
The Blood Money issues are FPS-related. Running the game above 60 causes all those glitches (gliding, invisible walls, broken AI timing, Requiem issues).
Fantastic video my friend.
The Sarajevo Six will be back in Hitman 3 this month, on all platforms.
Was I the only person in the world who found the cliffside route around the Jaguar? Literally never did the guard sacrifice and didn't realize it was possible for years.
House of Cards is one of the best missions in blood money 🤔. But still an amazing video so far 🙏🏽
Revisiting this, and man really predicted Yakuza with playing as kiryu on his death bed
35:19 had me crying
Which disguise makes you instantly fail a mission? Been playing hundreds of hours but I don't remember that