Hitman (2016) - Episode 38 - We Are The Watch_Dawgs

Another day, another Elusive Target. This time: The Chameleon.



This is another video where, like The Chameleon, I had the right general idea, but didn't execute correctly because I had lacked situational awareness.

Hitman (2016) - Episode 37 - A Critical Eye

Let us talk about Elusive Targets, the internet, and Hitman as we take on The Food Critic.

I spoke in the episode of The Guru about how the Modern Lethal Syringe isn't the completely worthless item that I originally thought it was, but only outside of story missions. It is a silent weapon, so no noise will be generated when the player uses it. It's faster than choking someone out and snapping their neck. Furthermore, poison kills are treated as accident kills, if the body is discovered later, it will not count as a body being discovered for the purpose of calculating the final score. This makes it possible to get Silent Assassin without having to worry about hiding the body.

Hitman (2016) - Episode 36 - Remember the Evidence

I was so *close*...



What kills me most about this target is that I very clearly had the Silent Assassin solution thought out, but I just missed a few details.

#110: The Disappointments of 2016

As I said in my highlight reel of 2016, this has been one of the best years in gaming in quite a long time. That said, no year is free from games that didn’t live up, and this is no exception.

The same rules as last year apply. Just because a game made this list, doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily bad. All it means is that when I played it, it had significant problems that really hampered my enjoyment of the overall experience.

So without further ado, my disappointments of 2016 are…

Hitman (2016) - Episode 35 - Happy Holideaths

I know it's late, but now's still an excellent time to celebrate the season of hitting, with Hitmas!



One of the things I love about Hitman, and its the same reason a mission like this can exist, is that it really doesn't take itself seriously. And because of that, it's completely willing and able to play around and poke fun at both itself and others.

Hitman (2016) - Episode 34 - Out of Touch and Time

And now, we finally kill a sweet old lady!



I admit, when I looked up the solution to see what I was missing, I kicked myself for not realizing that the soldiers would move on their own if the player just let's them talk. This is something that I probably would have known if I watched/played more Marrakesh play. I've never cared much for this map, so I don't know as much about it as I do the others.

As I mention in the video, it's very often that getting Silent Assassin has almost nothing to do with the player's ability to execute their plan. Usually, the steps to get a Silent Assassin rating are pretty easy to perform. The tricky part is usually in figuring out what exactly the solution *is*. It's often very deceptively simple.

If I had stuck to my original plan, this contract would probably been over in a single episode. I saw the differences between the normal map and the variant for the target. At the time, I even knew about the pipe, and how to use it as a way to sneak up to the roof silently. The only thing I didn't realize was that letting those two guards talk would give me the opening I needed. And that comes strictly down to map knowledge.

There's always a way. You just have to find it.

#109: The Highlights of 2016

If you talked to a bunch of random strangers on the street today, they’d probably tell you that 2016 hasn’t been a great year. There are all sorts of reasons why that might be, but gaming isn’t one of them.

No matter how crappy everything else was, 2016 has been a fantastic year in gaming. So many great and wonderful games game came out this year that we gamers were drowning in really good experiences throughout.

As usual, this is a list of games that I present in no particular order (it’s decided by a random number generator). And just because a game doesn’t appear on this list does not mean that it is a bad game. All it means is that either I didn’t play it, or it didn’t leave a strong impression on me.

With that said, my highlights of 2016 are:

Hitman (2016) - Episode 33 - Old Lady Spy Novels

Today, we lay the groundwork to kill a harmless old lady.



The more I play these Elusive Targets, the more I realize something I'm not sure I like. They do a great job and being the closest thing one can get to being a Hitman. There's no denying the thrill that comes from making your attempt and knowing that if you screw up, it's over. I won't deny that in the slightest, and I overall enjoy my time attempting them, success or failure.

That said, the large opportunity cost for failure, where you can no longer attempt the target if you die, and cannot restart once objectives are completed, discourage players from playing the game in the way that is the most fun.

I have a problem I spoke of earlier in stealth games, where I restart the moment I am detected and try again. I'm trying to break myself of that habit for a good reason. A lot of the fun of playing Hitman comes from letting a mistake occur and just rolling with it. The game's systems encourage players to improvise and figure out how to take a bad situation and salvage it so that they can still kill their target.

The Elusive Targets, as brilliant as they are, severely discourage this kind of play. When the player is detected during an Elusive Target, they have every incentive to immediately restart and make a fresh attempt. You see this occur several times in this episode alone, and it's partly because the high risk discourages any form of risk-taking. The fact that bonuses are awarded for Silent Assassin kills during Elusive Targets further disincentives it, because you cannot even be detected when going for that ranking.

I'm not sure how you solve that problem either, because the draw of an Elusive Target is that it's such a high risk environment. At the same time, this high risk prevents Hitman from being the tense and exciting game of improvised murder that it wants to be at its core.

Tough problem. Worth thinking about.

Hitman (2016) - Episode 32 - Personal Space Invasion

In this episode, The Chef's goose is cooked.



If you're curious about the Elusive Target suit rewards, IO published the below chart regarding how to unlock each one...