Hitman: Absolution Message Board older than one year ago

The Hitman: Sniper Challenge is ending soon so make good on lost time with our Challenges guide. Post your scores in the comments!

#watchthis Weird? Yes. Also awesome? Yes yes. More »

#hitman The new Hitman game probably has the right difficulty level for you. After all, it's got five of them... one for the person who likes to shoot first and sneak sometimes, one for the person who doesn't want to bend one blade of grass en route to murdering his virtual prey, and three for the rest of the world. More »

So many bodies stuffed into closets, so many innocents caught in the crossfire, so much blood on my hands. Out, out damn spot. Oh no, wait I was wearing gloves the whole time. Everything’s fine. Hitman: Absolution is best played without a conscience for its pleasures are of flesh punctured and perforated. I’ve killed in many ways as I played through the game’s opening missions and after the early elation of having the piano wire back in my hands, I’ve had a long think about the best and the worst of the experience.

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If killing is an art, then I'll be playing as Jackson Pollock. Lots of splatter, little discernible meaning.

We’ve seen quite a lot of Hitman: Absolution in the run up to its November launch. Some of it has been downright brilliant. As for other bits, well, the less said the better. But ultimately, the core of Agent 47′s exceedingly snazzy murdertimes (or exceedingly murdery snazzytimes, depending on your point of view) remains: you kill people, but in clever, conspicuously inconspicuous ways. That’s what today’s reel of footage is about, and it also includes a very important lesson: Disco’s not dead. In actuality, it was the killer all along.

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#hitman One of the coolest (and okay maybe kinda darkest) things about Hitman games is the fact that you can kill your targets in any of a dozen or more possible ways. More »

Hello. Hello you. Did you go to the Eurogamer Expo this weekend? Did you have fun? Because I couldn’t go, so I couldn’t have fun. My bitterness could destroy worlds. Fortunately, I can catch up with at least some of what I missed, as Eurogamer have posted videos of a great many of their developer sessions. Valve! Hitman! Molyneux! Tomb Raider! Assassin’s Creed! DayZ! Remember Me! WARFACE. I’ve embedded those I am personally most interested in below, selfish twit that I am, but you can see the whole lot over here.

Valve’s Chet Faliszek:

Peter Molyneux’s ridiculous meta-game about compulsively clicking on a box:

Hitman: Subtitle:

Crytek on level creation in WARFACE

I would add the DayZ vid too, but YouTube has had it stuck on ‘processing’ for several days now. Let’s all shout at Tom “Tom Bramwell” Bramwell until it’s fixed.

My relationship with Hitman and his latest subtitle is one of love at fifth sight. It hasn’t been a whirlwind romance, instead starting with something more like a few gentle but malodorous gusts of disappointment, but now I think we’re just about ready to snuggle again. The Contracts mode, with its freeform hits, could have been designed to twang at my heartstrings and with David Bateson’s back on vocal duties whispering sinister somethings into my ear, I’m ready to be impressed. I wrote about Contracts in a hotel room, eschewing offers of German beer in favour of typing excitedly about simulated murders. Here’s an eighteen minute video very similar to what was shown at Gamescom.

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Here's the fine print on Hitman: Absolution's contracts mode, delivered in an 18-minute video. Developer IO Interactive considers contracts a very important component of Absolution, giving the mode co-billing with the game's single-player on the title menu.

These hippies' flower power is no match for Agent 47's Sig Sauer power.

Marketing is a funny old thing, by which I mean it’s the sort of amusingly affable codger who will tell you anything you want to hear if you give him a handful of coin for his troubles. Conversely, sometimes he’ll be hawking something awesome, say an actual magic carpet, but he’ll insist on unpicking some of the ancient weave in order to stitch in a crude simulacrum of a woman, 80% chest, 20% backside. If you ask him why, he’ll tell you such unsaucy sauciness is the only way to sell something as mundane as a mystical object. What I’m trying to say is, after the Contracts mode reveal, I’m happy to soar through the sky on Hitman’s back no matter what Mr Marketing might say. Here’s a new trailer.

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#hitman This "Tools of the Trade" trailer makes a point of showing us all the different things that Agent 47 can turn into deadly weapons in the bald death-dealer's return to consoles and PC. Some of these implements make sense, like the pistols, submachine guns and sniper rifles that the camera lovingly lingers on. More »

Find out more about the villainous Blake Dexter.

If you aren't using this mode to troll your competitors into doing the goofiest, most ludicrous stuff available to you, you're not doing it right.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Hitman: Absolution has won me over. I was pretty distraught at how Square-Enix were representing the game: it didn’t look stealthy enough, it looked overly linear, and there were sexy hitlady nuns. It felt like one of my favourite series was slipping away. But it seems there was a Hitman game there all along, and the closer we get to release the more interesting it looks. I really enjoyed the Sniper Challenge pre-order level. So I’m happier showing off this trailer for the new ‘Contracts’ mode, where players get to design their own hits and upload them for friends to complete.

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Compete with the world to be the best killer in the business.

Here's the clip from Gamescom detailing Hitman: Absolution's recently revealed asynchronous multiplayer mode, "Contracts." Playable at the German mega show, Contracts allows players to make their own scenario of Agent 47 marks and challenge their friends to do better.

The murderer was Agent 47, in the hotel room, with the scissors!

I’ve doubted, I’ve cursed and I’ve hoped. That it’s taken this long for Hitman’s new subtitle to reveal the glory of an older subtitle has given me good reason for the clip full of cynicism I’ve often been tempted to level at its gleaming tessellated cranium. But witnessing today’s announcement of the Contracts feature has filled me with a sort of giddy glee. It’s a creative murder-mode that seems to capture everything I’ve ever loved about the series.

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One of the best things about working with a vibrant and productive community, such as the one attached to the Hitman games, is that you can learn a lot by just watching people play. Going back to the previous games in the Hitman series, we’ve always enjoyed watching videos of how the fans tackle the different levels; both in terms of strategy and approach to the emergent systems within the game but also in terms of how they change the rules by going against the core of the level.

A great example is when we see people trying to set up mission parameters all by themselves. The previous games didn’t really support this – you were supposed to play a level in one of several different ways but targets always remained the same – but the fans pretty quickly started setting up conditions for completion themselves. Kill everyone with a particular weapon. Don’t get spotted by anyone. Only wear the chicken outfit. Kill that waiter in the bar at the Meat King’s party. Sometimes these conditions would be extremely hard to fulfill but equally satisfying when they did get completed. So for Hitman: Absolution, we decided to formalize a lot of that. The result – Contracts mode.

In Contracts, players get to create challenges for themselves and others through the creation of custom hits. All a player needs to do is choose a level, an outfit and a load-out, and, as he or she plays through the level, tag and assassinate up to three different targets – chosen from anyone within the level. The player is free to use any weapon or disguise brought in or found in the level but he must be able to complete the contract himself in order to save it and share it with the world. Contracts, then, is first and foremost a play to create experience where a player can play, create and share a hit and enter into competitions and tournaments (official or unofficial). Players can continually try to one-up their rivals and fight for the top slot on the global, local or friend leader boards attached to each individual contract. Because it’s asynchronous, Contracts can be enjoyed across time zones, and it isn’t dependent on having friends online.

By playing and completing contracts, players will earn in-game currency (amount depending on performance in each individual contract), which can be used to unlock more disguises, weapons and upgrades for specific weapons. IO will set up a number of featured contracts, select ‘best of the week’ contracts and feature those through the in-game notification system, and drop in once in a while to create some fun IO-made contracts as well. But what we’re really excited about is seeing the flood of user-made contracts as people start to wrestle the systems in Absolution to bring out some real brain teasers for us all to enjoy.

So, we’ve basically sat down and looked at how players were crafting new missions out of the ones that already existed in the game, and we’ve built the tools to let them do this in a formalized, organized and rewarding way. It’s going to be a grand experience seeing how much creativity the players can inject into the game once it comes out.

IO Interactive is showing off Contracts at a special event at Gamescom, and later in the week we’re releasing a trailer showing how Contracts works. Hitman: Absolution is out on November 20th, 2012.

Hitman: Absolution will feature an asynchronous multiplayer mode known as "Contracts," IO Interactive revealed at a Gamescom event. Players make their own scenarios, targeting any three characters on a given level with any weapons, and challenging other players to complete the contract in less time (and for more money).

For example, in the oft-seen library scene where Agent 47 is trying to get away from a group of cops, it is now possible to make an original kill scenario. Players take out a target, choosing a specific weapon. Then they can do that to two other characters, then escape the scenario - and upload that to the contracts server.

Developer IO Interactive says there will be weekly contracts. Earned money can be used to start scenarios with weapons and disguises. For example, if you know a specific costume helps you blend in a certain level, you'll be able to start the level wearing it to reduce time. The mode will be playable at Gamescom and IO will release a video detailing the new mode tomorrow.

There's no question that Agent 47 will smoke some dudes. The only question is how.

People kept telling me this would happen. I first saw Hitman Absolution doing its thing at the Eurogamer Expo last year and expressed some concerns. It was just one level, I knew that, but it was the level chosen to represent the game to the public and the press. Then, nuns. Still, the man on the street (I think his name is Billy Crumpets) would chuckle as I passed: “I’m sure there are plenty of disguises and stealthy suffocations. Marketing is ever a fool’s game.” Whatever, Crumpets, just move away from my driveway. But perhaps he’s been right all along and here’s the evidence.

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#hitman Enjoy a developer-guided playthrough of one level—called The Streets of Hope—in Hitman: Absolution, shown at this year's E3. More »

The Streets of Hope playthrough lasts for 17 minutes and introduces a new level featuring five hits and one kidnapping.

It's nice to see a mainstream actress be totally authentically excited to be in a video game and not just feign enthusiasm for the whole thing. Oh, wait...

Yes, they're really called The Saints. The hot ladies in fetish nun costumes are in the game. This is all really happening right now.

#hitman Hitman's E3 trailer, which showed a squad of sexy ladies dressed as nuns being slowly and methodically beaten to a pulp, created a bit of stir. More »

Immerse yourself in a deep storyline brimming with gameplay choices in the latest chapter of the Hitman series.