HITMAN 3 | First impressions (after 50 hours) 

Correct. Berlin was like a Hitman Contracts mission in it’s seediness. And I think Hitman works better as noirish vs having gadget spy elements.

If there's one person whose opinion on Hitman I wait for, it's you Kotti. Thanks for the info

God I'd kill for a version of this trilogy that was offline, with elusives not time limited and a store to buy things to bring into the next mission over the mastery dictating random equipment unlocks.

I feel like features like the camera are there just for IO to say they added something.

I was waiting on this. I literally didn’t care about any other review. I wish IOI would see this video. Some of these issues could honestly be solved with a patch.

One thing I like about the keypads is that inputting codes while speedrunning makes you feel like a menuing god.

The reasoning for not being able to change camera shoulder is weak to say the least, and it's the change that bugs me the most. Never even felt like something depended on the camera angle, aside from my OCD :p Watch my muscle memory still furiously tap V whenever I want to get a better angle. Great video! I agree, the game is far from flawless, but it's enjoyable.

the first point you made is something i didn't ever think of

The removal of the shoulder switching was supposedly because of casual players accidentally switching it by mistake, and apparently it makes lining up specific things hard for the devs. Seems to me like making it a toggle option in the menus would be the ideal compromise.

Good to have this kind of video from true expert

I think my least favorite thing is the fact that you simply cannot use items for a melee attack on stairs, it automatically does an unarmed attack.

I really hope these games don't stay online only. Would suck to have them as rentals basically.

They really shouldn’t have removed dual silverballers it’s too iconic to agent 47. Also why can you not garrote someone when they are sitting down and why can you not drown someone in a sink?? Idk there are many good things but I feel like they are still missing what should be core mechanics :/

You discussing the monotonous mastery unlocks and the lack of unlocks for challenges, maybe they should of put some of the mastery unlocks as challenge unlocks instead, love the content dude :)

Hey there Kotti, long time appreciator of your Hitman work. I am very glad that you give your impressions on this one. It means a lot to us.

As someone who played Hitman 2 just before Hitman 3 released, the level focus really made H3 play better. Some of the maps in H2 feel bloated to the point where exploration was overwhelming or a chore. The humour throughout H3 was on point too, especially the NPCs in Dartmoor. Also, does anyone know why the game will sometimes just crash to desktop? There's no error message or anything, the game just locks up and quits. I think it's sometimes a "too much going on" situation, but there's no indication from my PC that anything is topping out.

I hope they will be bringing back the ghost mode from Hitman 2. It was fun to play with others in Hitman and try to beat each other.

The keypads are similar to persistent shortcuts, in a way.

I think the keypads are interesting ways of persistent shortcuts. Normally the shortcuts are shortcuts from farther in the level to the beginning and vice versa, and usually are very convenient. I think the keypads take this further, as no longer do you need to find a key in a level more than once. The busy-work is gone and you can just go and unlock the door straight away, and I appreciate that.

I've been waiting for this video.

Making a single player game online only is the weirdest gaming trend

thanks for your interesting points! i hadn't even considered a lot of these.

*Shhh, here's the Lockpick Mk III. No need to mention all those negative aspect of the game ;)* - _Hakan Abrak_

something that I noticed pretty much instantly is how much performance has improved in comparison to the previous game. all the framerate issues that I had in crowded areas (e. g. Makarresh's marketplace) are now gone and everything feels much smoother overall. ditching directx11 was a great decission. signing an exclusivity deal on the other hand...

I think hitman 3 had the best consistency of maps out of the trilogy. Not one of the maps I would consider bad, which I can't say about the first two games

All great points!!

It's really shame how bad IOI continues to manage their IP because it's actually a good game. 90 euros for an always online singleplayer experience (60€ for the base game, 30€ for the deluxe for the escalations) with epic exclusivity thrown on top so they really couldn't have ticked more of the "I don't give a fuck about you, just give me your money" boxes if they tried with how blatantly anti-consumer they went with H3. Maybe this would have been an easier pill to swallow IF they didn't also fuck up the progress/H2 ownership matter but, alas. It's actually hilarious that I can't play my Sniper Assassin maps because I apparently don't have the mode unlocked due to "not owning" H2 even though I have unlocked masteries in them. I think it's the best modern stealth game there is yet I wouldn't recommend it to anybody right now unless they take a step back and someone tells their upper management to stop trying to tank the IP because they're acting as if each new title they release is the last one they'll make and they're just trying to squeeze some fast buck out of it.

Just a few minutes ago, they announced importing locations will be rolled out before the end of february.

Great FI video ! Agreed on all your points! Keep up the good work !

Oh wow a hitman 3 video!

I can’t help but feel this trilogy reached its peak with 2016 and has gradually deteriorated in quality despite its rise in popularity. 2016 had a lot of love poured into it - despite online, the rebrand and episodic move was bold, and some of the maps (specifically Sapienza) were perfectly brought to life. By comparison, H2 felt like a cheap recoup powered by a lot of hot air/bullshit aimed at potential new customers : more of the same, and brought out to keep money coming in to steady the tide after the split from Squeenix. H3 is playable - but for the most part it again seems rushed and more of the same. Did they want to just get this done to move on to 007 and as an exploitative cash cow to get the most out of a very loyal community? On some of the new maps, I got a strong feeling they were using H3 as a testing ground to see what could work in the new project, rather than concentrating on the evolution of this trilogy. I mean the actual story/narrative/script complexity is very poor; I feel sorry for anyone that invested in it, thinking it would develop into something substantial after 2016. Anyway, thank you for continuing to analyse and criticise the decision making and content in this game - it’s rare and appreciated.

I think that the elusive target suits for each map should be just mastery lvl 20 reward like it is with the newer maps. Elusive Targets could reward some other suits like blood money, absolution, etc.

Good video! As always.

I will wait for steam release.

my first impression was holy fuck where is my FOV slider

I look forward to seeing this in the next anthology.

I really hope there are good changes for the ETs. On one hand, the H3 suits are unlocked in mastery, meaning that H3 ETs could be different. On the other hand, The Deceivers ET has a limited time frame as usual. I personally just want all ETs to become special assignments that you can play anytime. They don't even need to their own challenge packs like the current special assignments, as long as they are always available, I'll be happy.

Hitman just needs level builder so the community can produce new levels. I mean 60 euro game for 6 missions is just..... empty.

Damn... they named a whole Escalation after you... and you still can't recommend the game.

"You need a mint, twat." I'm dead.

the keypads are kinda immersive destroying. a swipepad is better and still offers the same barrier. it also makes no sense that emps dont work on them

I'm just going to wait until the full release on Steam, I didn't really get that into Hitman 2 because I felt like I already played the game enough in 2016. But hey I reinstalled Hitman 2016 Pt. 2 so I'll get my fix through that.

this game isnt online only anymore. you can totally play it single player, offline only. no worries there. its good that IO made that decision, sure somet hings are tied to online play but you can deff play the base game offline.

I can’t agree more. My favorite game was Contracts and I was hoping H3 would be closer to that. The Berlin level reminded me of The Meat King’s Party and the British Chateau one sounded like my favorite level of all the Hitman games: Beldingford Manor So of course I was interested, but really nailed my criticisms.

Hitman Antology speedrun with this new game included when?

Nitpicks of my own: Romania SASO is unreasonably difficult (at best) from default starting location. Try it yourself Kotti. The timer HUD is intrusively big and sorta distracting when turned on Claw hammer wasn't reassigned an unlock. So if you didn't have it from h2, you no longer can acquire it. I was genuinely expecting Birdie, Victoria, Or Cosmo Faulkner from Absolution to have a cameo at the end, but that cliff hanger from 8 years ago is still there Requiem pack still isn't in my inventory Ica facility location was never revealed which bothers me

Also the soundtrack and artbook download was broken at release and still hasn't been fixed for all platforms

Thank you :) I feel completely the same and I haven't even bought H3 yet. After seeing and hearing so much I decided i wouldn't go for a third version of the same thing with all the trouble it comes with. I would even add some things to the negatives (even though I am a fan of the series) but it would take a long time... Appreciate your work!

Great evaluation! I agree with most of the things you say here. One way they really outdone themselves is the load times, they REALLY bugged me in the other games, especially Hitman 2. That with the file size, it's crazy how much IO has improved things that I thought couldn't be improved l!

Something I thought of was that if there were challenges with starting locations and weapon unlocks and whatnot, that it would be pretty cool if they were unlocked through mastery. Like if you hit level 11, you can now do two hard challenges to unlock, say, a starting location and a smuggle spot. Perhaps they’d throw in an item for free for that mastery tier so you don’t HAVE to do the challenges to actually unlock something for that mastery tier, but I think this would encourage more replayability, possibly offer more interesting or incentivizing challenges, encourage people to interact with the other challenges, and, since they’re tied to a mastery tier, iOi doesn’t have to worry about players not knowing a level enough to do a difficult challenge, and can create a nice difficulty curve with the challenges. A bit complex, but I think this would be a cool system.

I wish they remove the getting spotted ruining your SA system, especially for escalations where you’re likely to rush through and get caught easy. Also being able to save would make life easier

Your complaints were incredibly important and I appreciate them. It's easy to give praise but much harder and far more valuable to explain why something is bad.

Which are the best missions in the anthology and in the world of assassination trilogy for you ?

I would get it if it was on steam

I feel like having missions you can't do all the time is a good idea, but time-limited missions aren't the way. They should just have a selection of missions available every week. You can do the missions as many times as you like to practice, then you get one real attempt for score. Then after a week it rotates to new set, so after a month or two you've had a chance to play all of the missions and it rotates back to the first set again. When they're adding new elusive targets they'd just slot them into one of the sets and that's where they'd show up again in the rotation.

It’s finally here

I value your opinion Kotti HITMAN 3 didn't really match my expectations few missions were cool i enjoyed them but nothing really felt like the first world of assassination installment like Sapienza for example, hitman 3 locations didn't have that depth in story and challenges

very nice

Mastery, challenges and ETs have to overgrow their original purpose, but H3 as a whole is amazing. Berlin definetly is of the best we have seen in the franchise.

I'm still waiting for the Golden Shashka 33 from Santa Fortuna and the Goldenballer from Mendoza to be challenge unlocks.

This was absolutely on point. Now you should add the studio's abomination of a DLC that costs $30. I can't believe how we came from four extra maps in Hitman 2 to 7 escalation contracts in Hitman 3. It's just unbelievable.

Can you speedrun hitman 1 , 2 and 3 at the same time? (Talking about the new games tho)

You're awesome.

If there was just a way to remove bloom effect, the game would be x10 times nicer! Hitman 2016 at 5:10 looks much better in both shots.

A change that can seem small that I really didn't like is having to hold the button to put a body away. Being able to just tap the button was comfortable and easy and made some last-second things possible that now are way more tricky, especially since the prompt only needed to show up for a moment to be used, whereas now if the game decides the prompt to hide the body shouldn't be shown or work for more than a moment, because of another prompt or because of looking away, you're screwed. You have to keep looking at the place you wanna stash the body, and hope the game shows the prompt and keeps it there, and hold the button. It's small, but it creates issues where I had none before, which is pretty disappointing for a new game in the series.

i haven't played hitman 3 but i really do hope ioi realised that bigger levels don't mean more fun

What's your fav Hitman game

guess ill wait a few months then

pray for pc hm3 vr :O

I'm so spiteful about it being always online, I''ll keep my distance until it's cracked

thänkz

Apparently the import issue should be fixed by late February. Also, those who got the game in the first ten days got the GOTY Hitman 1 pass for free

Been a Hitman fan my whole life. It's too bad I can't support I.O by buying 2 and 3 after what I experienced with 1. It's a great game and series.

You need to increase the controller settings to.

solid points, sorry to just add to the echo chamber, but you really hit all the major features and issues in this game.

I wish I was able to play H2 locations on H3 on pc, I wasn’t able to fully play and unlock everything on H2 I’d love to go back and replay but it is still bugged right now

The worst part for me is that they removed challenge packs, WHY!?

i'm going to sound like a little bitch here but, why is the camera so bright, if I play chongqing at night it really hurts my eyes, the flash when hacking anything gets really annoying and lights up my entire room also apparently we will get the Hitman 2 maps imported to 3 by the end of february at the latest

Wow, I thought I needed to re-keybind shoulder switching. Didn't realize it just doesn't work. Agreed that the camera/hacking feels like a useless, tedious gimmick. The key codes are tedious to me, as well. I think there's just too much of that stuff, and I might appreciate it more if it was dialed back like 50%.

Hey, Kotti, I just wanted to say that you were right. I’ve been following your stuff since 2018 and while I thought that you were overly critical of H2 at the time, I now came around and have to agree with pretty much everything you’ve been saying for the last few years. But I would probably argue that your point about proximity based wine drinking is more than just a minor nitpick. It is indicative of the general design philosophy of this trilogy and the only bad thing about these games that is at the core of the gameplay (and not ancillary BS that we all got used to by now). I remember people complaining about stuff like this as far back as the 2016 beta. And yet, here we are, five years and three games later, still dealing with the same issues.

Hitman VR does not meet quality standards for "Normal" VR headsets, that is why it will never be released on them.

Hitman 2016 levels were huge, a lot of challenges, excellent writing of side stories and rare dialogues. I could explore them for weeks. Hitman 3 levels are small, less NPCs, less area, and you can complete like 1/3 or 1/4 challenges and discovery in the first run. Also kills via mission stories are way too easy, every time at the end of them the target will stay near a ledge and these stories don't feel genuine, well written or natural. H2016 is still the better of new Hitmans for me.

I can't remember the name of the level, but the one from Hitman 2016 at the hotel with the rockstar target and the lawyer Ken something, in the Hitman 3 version of that level, just stand outside on the Dock and witness the boats going past, apparently they like to turn upside down, and freak out, nice testing job IO.

imagine game being for solo player relies on being online to play the game. Total meme

Basic things from other hitman games : - double silverballers - people that speak the language they supposed to 😂 - gun variety - so yeah i think the game is good but they could have just paid a dude to play the old games and give ideas and the game would be 100% better - im not even talking about the import of levels from hitman 2 on pc because LOL io are such amateurs

I have the problem with the access passes on Xbox. It's annoying how you can transfer all your progress from the two games, but then it will tell you that you don't own either of them. When I went looking through the Xbox store to see if there was a add-on hiding somewhere, it said I have the access passes installed... But I still can't play any previous maps on Hitman 3. Hope this is rectified on other platforms too, otherwise they really expect people pay £50 for each game again I know you could just go on to the other games easily enough, but just seems counterintuitive for them to say you can play the previous games on the latest one, but only if you pay another £50

Love u kotti

Still can't play the game since there is no way to disable this useless lighting features they added which is not supported by my GPU. (Hitman 2 runs just fine).

I hope they listen to you, I really do. Your ideas are always objectively good

unfortunately doesn’t look great on my xbox one x

i felt kind of disappointed in the direction the hitman series was going. hitman 2016 had its flaws (the lack of accents, the james bond theme), but i believed it was the best game IOI ever made. it took the smooth controls and gameplay from absolution, and combined them with the classic hitman gameplay of blood money. hitman 2 is basically hitman 2016 with more maps, a few minor tweaks, a few new features (like being able to hide in bushes and crowds), and a lot more bugs. bugs that never got fixed. at least ghost mode was brilliant, but then they gave up on that too. i didn't enjoy sniper assassin, it's not fun to see guards raising the alarm on a freaking accident kill. diana constantly blabbering about whatever and infantilizing you is very irritating and now it seems like hitman 3 is basically the same thing with more maps. it's a bit disappointing. it feels like they haven't done anything to fundamentally change the hitman formula. it's just the same game. and they STILL don't have a solution for online-only i'm not getting hitman 3 until it is on steam with a big discount. i was gonna get the super duper deluxe gold edition, but the unfixed H2 bugs, the cutting of ghost mode, and the EGS deal really disappointed me.

I hate IQI removed many challenges in "Hitman 3" from "Hitman 2" and "Hitman". It's ok they removed some. But they removed the awards too. Many suits and tools are gone. I can't unlock them, because it's only possible in Hitman 2 and I transfered my account. I can only do it one time soo this option is gone too. 🙃

Is after 50 hours a first impression? 😂

Just get it, it’s a great game

can't stand epic games store and the always online three times in a god damn row it could be GOTYAY and those two reasons are enough for me to skip it forever

Hi Kotti

The lack of gore and bullet damage really brings this game way down for me!!! Nothing like blowing up a target with a exploding golf ball only for them to get tossed up 80ft in air and land without a scratch on them!!! Think of how cool it would be if arms and legs were blown off!

Once everything is unlocked is there really any reason to play in online mode? Aside from leaderboards ofc.

The story is way too "Bondian" and lacks in general, compared to the other ones in the current trilogy. Seems a bit uninspired, despite delivering from a gameplay perspective. I seriously don't get why it is behing heralded as some 10/10 game, when it should probably be a 7 or 8 out of 10.

I'm so glad i abandoned this series after H2016.