Not my HITMAN!!!!

I've put off writing this for a couple weeks now, but I'm highly concerned for one of my favorite game series.

Hitman

I think I'm the only one on this blog that's played any of the games so I'll give you all a snippet of the game and how it plays.

Basically you're a clone assassin. You're raised to be totally ruthless and have zero care about anything, but the job. Agent 47 is a killer and he's the best. While this sounds extremely cliche the games pull it off very well. While 47 is totally ruthless he's very "likeable" in a Riddick antihero kind of way. His style and absolute dedication to his work make him someone that's very interesting to play and watch. I know I've told Amateria numerous times that there's nobody I'd rather have out to kill me than 47. He's scary as hell, but he's absolutely my favorite game character ever.

All of the previous 4 games have played similarly and that's why it's developed such a cult following. The game lets you play however the hell you want and rewards you for your work. I personally always went for "Silent Assassin" ratings at the end of each mission. That means no bodies were found, no alarms were sounded and you never blew your cover. You got in, did the mission and left. It's very difficult to pull off and requires total dedication to the game. You have to learn the entire level and read all the info you have on your target so you know their habits and what they look like. The game requires patience and it's attention to detail is staggering.

In one of my favorite missions ever I was tasked with killing an opera singer. I could have just hid in his closet and snuffed him out in his dressing room and left. Instead I hid in his closet and while he stepped out of his dressing room I swapped his prop gun with a real one. His costar shot and killed him on stage. Then I blew up the supports of a giant chandelier to kill the opera singer's gay lover. It was awesome. Please keep in mind that I had to put in a lot of work to get to the dressing room unnoticed. Where are you going to get an outfit that doesn't raise suspicion? Where are you going to get the real gun? How the hell do you get there?

Ever since the second Hitman game I've fallen in love with 47. Not just his particular brand and style, but also because the developers really seem to have a dedication to the kill themselves. Do it how you want and be as creative as you want.

I'm writing this post because I'm very afraid that with the newly announced "Hitman: Absolution" they are going to kill my beloved 47. Here's the announcement trailer and to be fair I think it's awesome.

47 killing dudes and if you're a fan of the series you'll see many many hints at what the game will be like. Also, if you're an astute fan you'll realize who the woman in the shower is.

While the trailer is cool it shows the exact opposite of how the games have been built. All out action and hand to hand combat. The trailer shows what looks to be "improvisation killing" (my term) like drowning people or pulling cords out of walls to strangle people. Using what you can find his has always been the case with Hitman, but THIS IS NOT MY 47! This is too actiony! This is too SPLINTER CELL: CONVICTION!

The old games let you use anything you could find. Kitchen knives were actually my favorite weapon. With all the tools I had to kill I preferred finding a kitchen and using a butcher knife. I know that sounds sick, but it was my modus operandi. I got that into these games.

I saw some gameplay footage come out of E3 which is even more disturbing. It seriously looks like the new Splinter Cell being played with an Agent 47 skin overlayed onto Sam Fisher. Hell it even looks like Batman: Arkham Asylum! Seriously, here's the gameplay footage.

I've read reports that the new imposter 47 is going to have an "Instinct Mode" not at all unlike Batman's Detective Mode where he can see guards and even the paths that they walk! Unreal!

Compare the new videos I showed you with an old trailer for Hitman: Blood Money. Sure there's a little shooting, but the trailer shows tons more about who 47 is and is a much stronger trailer in my opinion.

I guess I'm just an old school gamer who likes a challenge that's worried about one of my favorite series going down the drain with Sam Fisher.

Two other sad notes. The new game WILL NOT use either my boy Jesper Kyd for music OR the original voice actor, David Bateson.

Is no series immune to this?

Music in gaming

I've always really enjoyed hearing a quality piece of music in a game. However, I often don't even realize how good a soundtrack is when I'm playing a game, though, due to all the sound effects and dialogue drowning out the music. I remember playing through Castlevania: LoS and enjoying the music but not thinking it was that great. Well, it turns out that the soundtrack for that game won "Best Original Score for a Video Game or Interactive Media" from the International Film Music Critics Association for 2010. Good one. That'll teach me to listen more carefully, I guess. I've been listening to the soundtrack on YouTube and I have to say it's pretty awesome. Here is my favorite piece from the game, along with a handful of my favorite songs/themes from games from my childhood and from more recently.

Belmont's Theme - Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

Mega Man 2: Dr. Wily Stage 1 - kind of a "Let's go!" vibe

Contra 3: The Alien Wars final bosses - you against the world

Final Fantasy VI Magitek factory - industrial and wacky at the same time. Unique.

Super Castlevania IV trifecta of bosses before Dracula

Halo 3 intro to the Ark stage

Gears of War 2: Armored Prayer - plays during the head honcho's speech to all the Gears as they're mobilizing to attack the Locust on their own turf. Awesome.



I'd like to know of anyone else's favorite game music. It can be from old school games, or current ones. Whatever. Post it up, I want to hear some good stuff.

Admittedly, I'm a bit of a Valve fanboy, but it's hard to bash on free games!  Team Fortress 2 is not free to play through Steam.  Anyone with a Steam account should be downloading this right now if they don't already have it, and anyone without a Steam account should set one up.  I'm looking forward to this.  I even downloaded a custom driver for my Mac to run my wireless 360 controllers with, so I don't even need to give up my comfy console controller (even if it is superior to the elite PC controls that make my wrists hurt)

I am looking forward to this massively large download finishing though.  I've always wanted to play TF2 with the PC community, since the Live players don't seem to understand cooperation.  Hey 3N3MY, maybe we'll finally win a game!

Also, if you haven't seen the latest update to Valve's incredibly impressive character videos, Meet the Medic is now up.  If you haven't seen the other "Meet the Team" videos, do so.  Well worth your time. 

Best analysis of the gaming industry I've ever read.

Stumbled across this article on accident and couldn't stop reading.

This guy doesn't sugar coat it!

We're goin' mobile!

This blog is now enabled for mobile phones. Nothing has changed specifically, but viewing the site on a mobile phone works much better now.

I tried using a few different apps to make it easier to view, but this has been my favorite so far. I'm posting this through the Blogger app, but Android users who create a shortcut after bookmarking the website should get the same effect if they don't want or like the app.

The future, is now!

How's bout some more Wii U venom?

Wii U may possibly only allow 1 controller per system and they can't play DVDs or Blu-Rays.

Are they trying to lose it for themselves? I know that splitscreen isn't what it used to be, but the idea of a one controller system boggles my mind.

I can understand no Blu-Ray support, but not even DVD? The PS3 and 360 have been marketed, successfully so, as multimedia machines. They've tried to build an all-in-one machine of entertainment and it's worked really well because my PS3 does everything I want and need it to.

Does this make sense to anyone else? Does anyone even use stand alone DVD players anymore?

Starhawk

Starhawk is different from Warhawk. Warhawk is primarily a flying multiplayer game released several years ago for the PS3.

Starhawk is a 3rd person shooter with elements of Warhawk built in. To me, the game looks like a more front lines version of the old school RTS. Build buildings and bunkers and bases and destroy your enemy, but in this you are on the ground fighting.

You can run around on foot, in vehicles and even control Mechs that can, on-the-fly, turn into airplanes.

This is a video taken just over a month ago of 8 vs 8 CTF of Artists vs Designers and it looks like a TON of fun.

I don't know why, but it gives me the original HALO Blood Gultch vibe and that's never a bad thing.

Good news for PS3, bad news for WiiU

PS Vita to PS3 Connectivity Was Driven by Developers, Could Mean Wii U Style Experiences for Sony's Console - Kotaku

I know this seems like we are just all beating down Nintendo on something that we don't really know anything about, but truthfully it is just because it gives us something good to finally discuss. Something that we all have an opinion on.

Anyway, this article could spell bad news for Nintendo's new, "revolutionary," and "unique" controller. Yes, there may be a couple of specific features that it maybe cannot duplicate, but you know full well that since Nintendo has let the cat out of the bag about this controller, Sony will definitely put some resources into this connectivity. Yes, it will obviously mean you have to purchase an additional system, but Nintendo has yet (as far as I've read) stated that this new controller is even included with the system. For all we know, it might be an additional purchase.

Still, thought this was a very interesting read and I especially knew that 3N3MY would enjoy it.

Keep an eye on this one.

I read about this game, "Payday: The Heist" just a couple weeks ago and here's some footage of it.

It's a PS3 exclusive and it's basically a 4 player co-op game where you're bank robbers doing your thing. Complete with endless replayability and randomization.

Sounds very L4D and that's okay with me. When I read about it a couple weeks ago I'm pretty sure I remember it's supposed to be only $40 bucks.

Check out those videos and leave your thoughts, but it looks great to me!

Ho....ly....Crap....

13 minutes of gameplay for Skyrim with commentary by one of my heroes, Todd Howard.

My excitement has gone from 8.7 to 14.5 on a 10 point scale!

Wii U, Pii U and WTF?!

Here's a breakdown of the Nintendo conference.

What are your thoughts on the new Nintendo machine? I was really pretty excited to see what they would bring out and they showed an HD Wii that plays the games my PS3 does as well.

I was watching the Live Blog on Kotaku and when they typed it was called "Wii U" I was waiting for the punchline because that's the worst name I've ever heard. Virtual Boy is better than Wii U! Game and Watch is a better name! Wii U?!

Admittedly, it looks like it can do some neat things, but those neat things can't possibly translate into a core game that's multiplatform! Get ready for inventory screens!!!

Also, who cares that I can play the game with the screen on the controller? I'm a grown man and can use my TV when I want to.

I also can't see that controller being comfortable....at all. It took some getting used to when switching from the ergonomic 360 controller to the PS3 DS, but I love that controller now. The Wii U remote looks like the original Xbox controller and an iPad had a baby. If there's one thing the Dreamcast controller taught me it's that the sides of the controller that you hold should not be parallel. They need to be angled to avoid wrist pain.

Game journalists are already jizzing their pants and it's cool that it'll be supported by major 3rd party publishers with new games, but besides Nintendo exclusives there's still no reason to own this thing.

Reading that the next Super Smash Bros will work with 3DS and the Wii U compatibly in play goes to show that Nintendo won't push the graphics any further than they are....except they'll be in HD.

Too little, too late and still, from Nintendo's angle, too casual. The only core games you'll be getting are from 3rd party publishers.

Who's ready for more Mario Kart?

Sony NGP/PSVITA

Anyone excited? I was looking at it with interest, but wasn't slightly considering a purchase because I figured the price would be through the roof for all it offered.

As it turns out it's the same price as a 3DS and has significantly more to offer.

This could turn up on the Christmas Wish List.

I want this....don't judge.

I've been keeping my eye on the PSMove since it launched and now I want it. I know that goes against most everything a lot of us believe on this blog, but I remember back to when the Nintendo Revolution (Wii) was announced.

They promised a new way to play shooters without a controller. You could aim more like a real gun. It was going to revolutionize gaming. I was very excited.

Once the system launched and I played Call of Duty 3 on it, I realized it was a lie, but Nintendo did pave the way for a motion controller that could actually work. On a system that could power HD games that I would actually want to play.

At Sony's E3 Conference last night they brought up this. I'm excited about it and I'm preordering that bitch.

If I bought the camera, wand, nav controller, sharpshooter and the game it would be over 210 bucks. This bundle is a marketing push by Sony to get guys like me that have been on the fence to come and play.

It's working.

Mass Effect 3 With Kinect

As a sales representative of many things video games, a common question asked is when the good stuff is coming out for Kinect.  Microsoft brought it to the table this year at E3 - Star Wars finally coming out (finally arriving is the important thing, not the quality),  Kinect Fun Labs (which is essentially all the fun from Kinect Hacks in a playable format), a couple of other more intense titles (as if Dance Central wasn't intense enough...) and most importantly, Kinect implementation into Mass Effect 3.

Mass Effect's primary strong hand is the immersive storytelling.  Although there are a few different perspectives to this idea, it is generally accepted that investing more into your character and choices leaves you feeling more effected, both positively and negatively, by your game.  Having the opportunity to make that immersion a little bit more like a conversation is a pretty cool step in the right direction. Have a look...

Ok, so it isn't quite as immersive than having a direct interaction with another live person, but it is a really great use of the tech.  Originally, I conceived that this technology would make the game seem more like a conversation... The kinect would use the ability to listen to you and see your face to determine any variety of things - lying, fibbing, confidence, anger, etc...  A lot of that is well beyond the grasp of maximum technical limitations, and I have a feeling that if the AI ever got that sophisticated we would probably be more worried about a Robot uprising, but it's still fun to dream.

In any case, I think Microsoft's showing at E3 this year really deserves some strong marks.  Kinect may not be the gamer's choice of platform, but that sort of immersion always needs mention.  I don't have a Kinect and really wasn't planning on ever getting one, but if titles like Mass Effect believe that the experience can be enhanced, then I'll definitely be taking it a little more seriously. 

Prey 2

I had to post this trailer.

I think I'm the only one here that played Prey and I loved it. It didn't live up to it's potential, but it was a hell of a good time!

The gameplay between Prey and Prey 2 is drastically different, but I greatly appreciate the subtle continuity in world and setting.

In the first Prey there's a section where you ride an elevator to another floor on a spaceship and you look out and there's a giant airliner crashing into the ship. Prey 2 starts on the airliner!

You're a US Marshall that basically ends up living on an alien world and you take up residence and a profession as a bounty hunter. The game is supposed to have parkour (Mirrors Edge) elements to it and is supposed to be somewhat open world.

Consider me pumped!

L.A.Noire Review

I finished up the game a couple nights ago and after dwelling on it some, here are my final thoughts. I'm going to restate some of the stuff I already wrote in my impressions just to get it all in one spot. Final play time was 18 hours, 48 minutes, 45 seconds. That includes all story missions and 20/40 side missions.

You play as Cole Phelps, WWII hero from the Pacific, husband and father. You start out your career with the LAPD as a Patrol Officer, then move on to Traffic, then Homicide, followed by Ad Vice and finally Arson.

THE GOOD

-Sound, sound effects, and music. They really did a great job with the sound design. Sirens wailing in tunnels, echoing sounds spot on. Voices sound different in alleys and museums. Footsteps echo cleanly on the marble floors of the Hall of Records. Gunshots are appropriately loud and accurate. Shotguns are noticeably "boomier" than handguns. BARs sound like BARs. The music is well-composed and varied, with the typical trumpet and piano solos aplenty complemented by more punchy stuff for the action scenes.

-Motion scan. The technique results in the most accurate facial "animations" in video game history. There's more detail in the faces than I've ever seen and they just look more "real."

-Interrogations. You gather all the clues you can find and then grill your witnesses to try to get some more answers. You ask them a question and then, judging from their answer, decide whether they are telling the truth, whether they're hiding something, or whether they're flat-out lying. If you do accuse them of lying, you have to have hard evidence to prove it or else they'll clam up and make the rest of your case more difficult. It's fun but it's not really a perfect system. I feel like sometimes when I chose "doubt" he would just go a little too far with his accusation/come on a little too strong. It was like he and his partner were doing "good cop/bad cop".....without the "good cop" part.

-The city of Los Angeles. It's recreated pretty darn well here. It's only a portion of the city, but it's still a pretty huge section of land to play around in. You can drive from one end to the other with no loads or anything, either. Pretty neat. Your cases will take you to wide variety of locales, too. One that comes to mind right away is the set of the famous film "Intolerance." Also, the Tar Pits, Griffith Park, Grauman's Chinese Theatre, and the "Hollywoodland" sign is ever-present in the background.

-Voice acting. I found it to be pretty solid throughout. There was ONE character that bothered me. I didn't think it would be too big of a deal, but he ended up playing a larger role than I thought he would. He just has one of those fake southern accents that sounds vaguely like a British accent mixed with a Cajun one. I'm pretty sure nobody ever talked like that and it's just a Hollywood creation. A really annoying one, too.


THE BAD

-The controls. Number one on the "bad" list MUST be the controls. I've harped on it enough, but here it is again: the controls in Rockstar's games SUCK. While on foot, it feels like you're trying to steer around an elephant on a skateboard. It's terrible. There is no reason why I should have to hold or tap one of the face buttons to get my character to move around faster or slower. A simple tilt of the joystick is all it should take. Move it a little bit to walk, full tilt to run. I haven't read any other reviews of the game so I don't know if this is an issue to other gamers. I would hope so.

On another note, the cover system and the shooting mechanics are also absolute garbage. For whatever reason, they decided to make L2 aim and R2 shoot. Anyone who plays a lot of PS3 will tell you this is highly unusual for a shooter on the platform. Also, R1 gets you into cover. Much like RDR, I'm STILL not even sure how to get out of cover. Do I press R1 again? Just pull the stick away from cover? Push "circle?" Aiming is very sluggish again. Combined with the already- mentioned terrible movement system, getting into firefights in this game is your worst nightmare. Try moving quickly from cover to cover and see how that works out. You'll be riddled with bullets from a Tommy gun before you can say, "The controls in this game suck golf balls through a garden hose."

-The vaseline filter. This one is pretty minor, but it bugged me nonetheless. You'll often see flashbacks of Cole and his platoon in the Pacific and it looks like they smeared vaseline all over the camera. I get that it's a flashback, but couldn't they just use a grey filter or something?

-The "Law and Order" effect. By that I simply mean that we spend a lot of time with our main character, but we know almost nothing about him. We know he was in the war and has a wife and a kid (maybe 2? See, I don't even know) and that he is very dutiful. I'm calling this the "Law and Order" effect because I feel like that TV show, much like this game, is well-written and pretty engaging for the most part, but we know very little about the detectives in the show. ALL the focus is just on the cases and one case is not related to another, just like this game. Maybe if anybody watches that show they can correct me, but I think I'm pretty accurate with this.

-Dangling thread. There was one MAJOR plot point left dangling and it really irks me. You do a lot of work to nail a certain criminal, but once you do, it's revealed that he is "related to somebody high up in the government," so the truth has to be kept under wraps. At the time, I thought, "Oh, this is kinda cool. Certainly it's going to tie into some massive conspiracy at a later point in the game." Nope and nope. What a disappointment.

-The story. I guess this is really the biggest fail for me. I thought they did a great job setting everything up. The first half of the game is essentially a warm up, but once you get to the Vice desk, you get cases that involve drug trafficking, real estate fraud, corruption in the government and everything is slowly revealed to be related somehow and I think it all worked really, really well. Then at the end you just end up having to go through a couple of huge firefights (terrible, of course, due to the controls). In the interest of avoiding spoilers, I'll just say that there's a silly "reveal" and much of the work you did in the second half of the game is rendered pretty much useless. It was such a let-down for me. I mean, I know sometimes things don't always work out exactly right, especially in the "Noir" genre. I think this is a huge difference between games and movies, though. If I had seen this as a 2 hour movie, I might have enjoyed it. But I sunk almost 19 hours into this thing and that's the ending they give me? I put a lot of work into this game rather than just "passively" watching a film. I wanted better. I feel like I deserved better. Am I wrong in thinking this?

FINAL THOUGHTS

The motion scan is obviously a cutting-edge new technology that adds more "realism" to the game and I hope it gets implemented into other games more in the future. The cast looked great and sounded great. Driving around 1947 L.A. was pretty cool. However, I find it pretty difficult to even recommend due to the immensely frustrating controls and how the story builds up so nicely only to come crashing down in a heap of ashy mortar and green lumber.

Decisions in Games: Mass Effect vs. GTA IV

I finished up L.A. Noire last night and was somewhat disappointed by the end (I will expound on this in my review - coming soon!). As I also disliked the end of last year's Red Dead Redemption, I decided I would look up a plot summary and see how GTA IV concluded (I've never played it and I'm not going to) just to see if I dislike all of Rockstar's game endings. Anyway, I came across these 2 articles concerning decision-making in Mass Effect and GTA IV.

Basically the argument is that BioWare makes too much of an effort to keep you, the player, happy, instead of taking risks to tell a surprising story that keeps you on your toes and that Rockstar improved that with their ending in GTA IV in which they kill off the character that you've shown you're more attached to. And now that I think of it, there's a similar scenario in inFamous, where you're given the choice to save a group of doctors or your girlfriend, but it turns out that whichever one you go to save is actually the one that gets axed.

I just figured I would post these up since I know we have a few Mass Effect lovers on here, as well as a few GTA lovers.

The articles are sort of lengthy, but well-written and interesting.

Mass Effect article

GTA IV article

Too funny

Watch all the way to the end so you can hear his final line.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrn4JMxsN_o