It’s funny that out of all the Elusive Targets we could go after for our first in the new Hitman, it would be The Deceivers. They were the last target I ever played on stream for Hitman 2, in a run that was technically a success.

Let’s see if we fare better in the second round.

It’s an improvement, if nothing else. Hopefully, as we do more of these Elusive Targets and Escalations again, my skills will continue to improve.

The fight against Truth continues, as he brings with him a legion on that enemy hated by both humanity and the Covenant.

That’s right: The Flood has made contact with Earth.

Out of all the Flood-related levels I’ve played in the trilogy up until now, this is definitely the best of the bunch. It’s paced well while establishing the threat and what it can do for those who haven’t played the first two games in the series. The new enemy types also give these encounters a much more dynamic structure than the monotonous slogs we’ve received prior.

My attention was also drawn to the fact that the Elites were finally fighting alongside us in order to defeat a mutual threat. It felt good to see the two sides cooperating as they realize there’s more to gain from that than fighting against each other.

Even 343 Guilty Spark has joined this alliance of ours. I fully expect him to betray us at some point, but there’s a distinct “Gang’s All Here” vibe that I’m getting from all of this.

It’s exactly what I would want to see from the finale to a trilogy like this.

You all knew that I wasn’t just going to stop playing Hitman just because the campaign had come to an end. While I enjoy the story in the World of Assassination trilogy, it wasn’t what brought me here. That was, and remains, the immersive sim gameplay which rewards quick thinking and improvisation.

The most recent patch added in two new escalations for those of us who purchased the Deluxe Edition of the game. What better occasion than that exists to return one of my favorite franchises of all time?

Thumbnail by Sam Callahan.

What I find cool about both of these escalations is how they progress over their stages, forming something of a story over the course of the contract. The Proloff Parable is a good example of this, where we start with a simple task of suiting up as the ninja, finding our sword, and using it on our target before moving on to the next stage.

Rather than expand on what we did in the previous stage, by adding a new objective or mechanic to what we’ve done, we look forward. Having already cleared that section of the train, our katana acquiring a thirst for blood, we now must sate it. It’s a race against time to run as quickly as we can through the bulk of the level, killing everyone in our path, leaving a trail of devastation in our wake.

But once that’s done, we ditch our blade to equip our sniper rifle to take out our next target, clearing the path ahead. Once more, the contact could choose to expand on our bloody conquest by making it even more difficult or introducing some new limitation. Instead, we proceed to the final stretch of our train invasion.

And this time, our aim isn’t to leave a trail of bodies in our wake. Instead, we must act with the stealth, grace, and precious of a shinob… master assassin. We can’t even pacify the guards, and we instantly lose if we’re so much as spotted.

With just this one 3-stage escalation, we’re treated so many styles of Hitman. Further, we get this interesting little mini-story of a ninja who took up a cursed blade with a thirst for blood, learned to control it through death and destruction, before mastering it and using his training to complete the job. There’s so many axes of engagement that most players should find something here to like.

I can only hope we start to get even more of these as the months go on. Next time, we’ll get the chance to take out an Elusive Target. It’s been ages since my last go (and ironically it’s against the same target), and I look forward to it.

It’s been quite some time since we last left Arby and the Chef, but the work remains unfinished. While we’ve shown the Covenant the error of their ways, their forces yet persist in their genocidal campaign.

There’s no one better equipped than us to stop them.* Indeed, it’s time to Finish the Fight.

Thumbnail by Sam Callahan.

*I’m told there are, in fact, many people better equipped than I to play this game.

I’m not surprised that Halo 3 didn’t get the full treatment that the previous two games did in The Master Chief Collection. It’s a logical choice given that Halo: CE and Halo 2 were original Xbox games and needed that kind of love. Once we hit the 360, games like Halo 3 were already native HD so they don’t need to have increased resolution for modern monitors. While some aspects, like the faces, didn’t age that well, the game still looks good.

What did surprise me was both how many chapters that we completed in this initial two hours. It seems both that we’re flying through the campaign and that we haven’t actually advanced the story all that much just yet, which concerns me a little.

Additionally, I thought that Halo 2 was a lethal game, but Halo 3 is giving me cause to reconsider. I’ve noticed my shields melting way fasting than I remember from either of the previous two.

As for new features, perhaps it’s because I don’t play much multiplayer, but I don’t see the bubble shield and all of those other consumable items adding too much to the campaign itself. While most of the new weapons seem decent, the only one that stands out to be is that Gravity Hammer. That thing feels so good to swing!

I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of what this campaign has to offer.

I am almost constantly on the hunt for new games to play on the Wednesday variety streams. Ideally, it’s a game that doesn’t have much of a story/campaign (those make more sense for my Sunday streams), and only need an hour or so to make meaningful progress in.

Looking through my Steam profile, I remembered that Monster Train was both a game I already owned and one that friends of mine had strongly recommended to me.

So let’s go for it!

This hits in exactly the same way that Slay the Spire does. It feels good to build up your deck by adding, enhancing, and removing cards until you’ve created a robust engine that can annihilate anything that stands in its way.

What changes the way this game plays out is the use of units and turn-based strategy elements on top of the combat system popularized by Slay the Spire. There’s a lot of tactical thinking that goes into positioning units to make sure they can survive wave after wave, while still dishing out enough damage to make sure the enemy dies before they can reach the top of the train.

And this VOD really highlights how different a smart run can be from one where I’m still learning the ropes. In the second run, thanks to some helpful advice from chat, we nearly blew away the final boss on the first, letting our units on the second floor mop him up without issue.

It’s exactly the kind of game I’ve more than eager to keep playing.

The ICA has played its hand, and it lost. Not only have we eliminated some of its best and brightest, but we only leaked the details of all its operations to the public.

It is an End to an Era, but only a single step in our path. Arthur Edwards is still out there, and Providence will remain a threat so long as he lives. Thankfully, an old friend has the perfect plan in mind to get us as close as we need to be.

We just need to help her out before she’s safe to return the favor.

For someone like me, who has played all of the Hitman games, seeing Diana Burnwood in a level, as an NPC we can interact with, is genuinely shocking. She’s always been a presence in the series, but she was always an offsite operative. Her role was to monitor and help Agent 47 remotely as his handler.

Even more unique is seeing Agent 47 act as his own handler. They tried something similar in Hitman: Absolution. Unfortunately, they game fell flat on its face for a whole multitude of reasons. Perhaps due to the fact that this story has been delivered to us slowly over the course of several years, it feels far more natural and believable this time around for 47 to grow into his own as a character.

Speaking of which, I’ve been playing in this World of Assassination since the first part of this new trilogy came out in 2016. This is the finale to a story I’ve grown invested in over the course of almost five years. I’m ultimately happy with the way it ends, wrapping up all lingering plot threads while still leaving room for future Hitman games. Though I won’t deny that it’s strange to not be looking forward to another sequel and set of levels in roughly two years’ time.

As a whole, this trilogy is one of the strongest set of stealth games I have ever played. While Blood Money is a legendary video game, the new Hitman games offer so much more in terms of level and mechanical design. Ever aspect of them has so much care and polish put into it that one cannot help but marvel at the complete package.

More than that, in an era where many major studios go for a gritty, hyper-realistic look and feel, a game that is unapologetically “video game-y” is such a breath of fresh air. I don’t want to say there’s no place for realism in-game. At the same time, I just want to disguise myself as a supermodel to walk the runway or drop a giant moose on an evil banker’s head.

We don’t need to shy away from the absurd. And often it’s a stronger statement to embrace and play with it.

PS: I wanted to call attention to this piece by Diego Arguello over at Polygon, detailing the care IO took into realizing his native Argentina in the Mendoza map.

I think it’s safe to say the Covid-19 has dramatically changed the way we go about our daily lives. To many of us, it has directly affected either us or people we know and care about.

In recognition of that fact, the developers at Ndemic Creations created a new mode for their cult classic, Plague Inc., where we aren’t eliminating all of humanity with a deadly disease. Instead, we take the role of an international task force charged with putting an end to the pandemic before it spirals out of control.

Additionally, The Cure was developed in cooperation with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) to help promote policies and strategies necessary to combat the ongoing crisis that impacts so many of us.

The thing that stands out most to me is how much this mode is centered around researching, producing, and then releasing the vaccine, to the point where it is the ultimate win condition of the game. Once it’s successfully out in the wilds, it’s only a matter of time before the disease is eradicated. It’s a subtle, yet powerful message in an era where anti-vaxxers and other misinformation is dreadfully commonplace.

I also can’t help but call attention to crucial it is in game to keep the population happy in the middle of the pandemic. If people are suffering because they’re quarantined and unable to work, they’ll start to ignore the safety protocols the player has already put into place. This stresses the real world importance of economic relief that so many world leaders seem completely unwilling to provide in the current climate.

The last element of The Cure that caught my attention was that vaccine production could begin even before research had been completed. This is why, in both games, our production was mostly wrapped up before our research was. While I couldn’t find any evidence that this is the case in real life, I imagine there is some truth to it. Otherwise, we likely wouldn’t have Covid vaccines developed at the speed we have in the reality.

Since the devs have taken the time to use their platform for a social good, especially since this update is free “until the pandemic is under control”, the least I can do is use my own platform to help spread the message.

The Providence Partners, scions to the three “great” families that composed the shadowy cabal controlling world events from the shadows, now lie dead. Only one target remains before the organization and all of its glory can be fully reduced to dust: The ever-elusive Arthur Edwards aka The Constant.

However, our actions have not gone unnoticed. The ICA has discovered that we’ve gone rogue and they have a mind to do something about it.

Fortunately, we’re more than capable of staying one step ahead of them. Let’s send a message that no one will soon forget.

Though I was not aware of the exact nature of the level in question, I knew that it was divisive. And I can understand why that is. There are many people who only play these games for the missions, and don’t care about the underlying narrative. For them, the segmentation between the two lets them ignore the parts they don’t care about to focus on what they do.

For me, I’ve been seriously invested in the overarching story-line with Agent 47, Diana, Grey, and Providence. Seeing that bleed over into the missions themselves was a cause for excitement for me.

It helps that the mission itself is thrilling enough on its own, especially for how it violates the established “rules-of-engagement”. As a Hitman player, I knew I was in for it when there was no briefing to introduce us to our objectives. That’s a signal that the devs are planning to mix up the formula.

Then came the prompt to identify and eliminate an unknown number of targets. While not the first time we’ve had to identify a target before in the World of Assassination, what makes it unique is that we had to do this on our own. No mission stories, no backup from Diana, just Agent 47 and our ability to read the map.

In this role, we’re less of an assassin and more of a hunter stalking prey. And yet, because the ICA agents are hunting us, they see through all of our disguises. It creates a unique dynamic all of its own.

I can’t wait to master this map.

PS: It is only a few days after this recording, when I’ve gone through the Berlin level a few times, that I realize the default suit for it is “Number Six” because it’s the suit Lucas Grey wears. Agent 47 is dressed in the clothes of his best friend in this mission as a tribute to him.

It’s such a beautiful, small detail.

We’ve once more returned to the lands of Runeterra. And this time, the power of Kpop can no longer protect us.

But that’s okay because we have our own form of protection: Barriers. By shielding our units, we can force some uncomfortable attacks and blocks to keep up the pressure.

As always, credit to Mobalytics for compiling the top deck lists, like the ones we use here.

Deck list: CECAGAIABENC2AYBAIQCWMIBAIAACAIDAADAGBABAAOSKMZUAIAQEEZFAEBQADQBAIAQAFJV

In concept, the deck is simple. We play high value units like Fiora and Rivershaper, that can accumulate card advantage through favorable trades or card draw.

And using creatures like Shen, or burst spells like Riposte and Spirit’s Refuge, to keep them safe by providing them barriers to survive combat. With Fiora, this will bring her closer to her alternate win condition. Meanwhile, Rivershaper will draw us a card to replace the combat trick we used to protect him.

If they keep a defensive posture, or force us into a painful block, we have fight spells like Single Combat and Concentrated Strike to take care of the units involved before they deal serious damage.

The trick is to avoid overtaxing our mana and make sure we always keep up enough to have some of our tricks at the ready. If we do, we can keep our opponent off balance by tricking them into making moves that look safe at first glance.

It’s a deck that allows the pilot to play reactively, which usually bodes well for the odds of success.

Agent 47 has once more come back into the limelight. Picking up from where we left off, the trail to Providence grows ever more visible. At long last, we’ve uncovered enough hidden truths to locate our quarry.

Welcome back to the World of Assassination. This is Hitman 3, and we’re going in blind.

Thumbnail by Sam Callahan.

As per usual, this is also an Improvisation Run. What that means is that while I’m not doing an Ironman playthrough, save scumming is heavily discouraged. The idea is basically to live with the consequences of my actions until doing so is no longer worth it.

It’s certainly a bold decision to open with no tutorial, delving right into the action. For me, there couldn’t be a better way to get started, except I’m also an enfranchised player who had the basics instilled in me from my combined over 200 hours with Hitman (2016) and Hitman 2 (2018). I wonder what that mission might feel like for someone who didn’t play either of the other games in this trilogy. There probably should have been a prompt to check to see if I wanted to play the ICA Facility tutorial before I got started, but that’s admittedly a minor criticism. I can’t deny that starting out with that view from the tallest building in the world is a statement.

As for the other map, it’s exactly the kind of gimmick that I adore. Those of you who know me personally might know that I’m a sucker for murder-mysteries. So when I heard that I had a chance to solve one while committing my own assassination, you better believe that I jumped at the chance.

Admittedly, it’s not a terribly difficult mystery. We figured out who the killer was in a matter of minutes, but still needed to obtain the proof to present our case. It’s not perfect, but to be honest it was more than I expected. I appreciate that they retooled the intel screen for the map to accommodate the need to know what people we’ve yet to interview and what places still need to be explored. When one considers that this is just part of a larger Hitman mission, rather than a fully-fleshed out detective game, they have to commend IO from trying.

What I won’t commend them on is the rollout for Hitman 3, particularly when it comes to enfranchised players, and among those, the ones of PC, like me, got the worst of it. Considering that all progress from Hitman 2 was connected to an IO account, I am shocked that all of us returning players needed to use a utility to manually schedule a transfer, instead of just having to link our accounts to synchronize progress between the two games.

Additionally, I still don’t have access to the Hitman 2 maps that I was promised would transfer over when I pre-ordered the game. They’ve stated that they’re working on it, but I need to see results before I trust that will happen. I might have to take advantage of that sale if it takes much longer.

A shame, because where IO should be celebrating, they’re instead having to deal with the fallout for not quite living up to their promises.

Update: Before this goes live, but after I wrote what I wrote above, I spent time achieving map mastery in both maps. While completing the challenges for Dartmoor, the mystery turns out to be significantly more interesting than first impressions might seem. Emma is certainly the killer, but given that our ultimate goal is to see Alexa dead, there are several intriguing interactions that spring from the facts we uncover (some of which I didn’t find in the run above). I can say no more without spoiling it for you all, but trust me there’s so much more to it.