Hitman 3 Trilogy Addednum.

Hi again everyone.

This is me with more Hitman 3 Trilogy gameplay experiences.

I feel that I need to address and expand upon some of the stuff I mentioned and some things that I'd like to add.

First off, when it comes to weapons, what I said as far as outright damage abilities is true.  However, that's at the upclose and personal range.  Assault/automatic rifles on a per shot basis do about the same damage as a .45 pistol shot.  However, range does come into play.  At longer ranges (say about 50 yards/meters), assault rifles will still deal a kill with 3 shots, and even at ranges further than that.  With a M1911 type pistol, that drops off to 4-5 shots, maybe even more, at those ranges.  And 9mm class pistols do even less damage at long ranges.

So for mid-range combat, the auto rifle is your best bet for stopping power and fire power.  Submachine guns, aside from full auto capabilities, I'd rate as roughly equal to pistols, as, after all, SMGs fire pistol ammo.  That said, they're still a fun gameplay addition when used properly.

There's only one true semi-automatic rifle in the game, and it's got the perk of making one shot kills, albeit at almost melee distances.  At most ranges, it does about the same damage as a normal auto rifle, though you can be a better marksman and conserve ammo with it.

Sniper rifles are best at long range, obviously.  This is not just because of their nature.  Until a patch comes out, most are a pain to use indoors or in low light because unless you point them at a light source, the scopes tend to cloud up unless you zoom in, which isn't really an option on the so-called scout rifles.  Speaking of which, I do consider in my own opinion, the scout snipers to be fairly useless.  They're good for heat shots at fairly close range, and they can deliver rapid aimed fire, but you can't zoom the scope, and they can sometimes take multiple hits to the body to take down an enemy, which does limit their usefulness.

There's also shotguns, which, as I said, generally do what you expect.  Great for close range combat, but performance and accuracy drop off essentially as expected.  Especially since they use actual shot, not shotgun slugs.

There's also two pistols known as the Striker, which is a magnum caliber Colt M1911 type pistol.  As you'd imagine, it's slow firing and not as easy to use as several of 47's customized pistols, but it's hitting power is hard to ignore for close range engagements.

And, this being a stealth-themed game, you have silenced weapons.  In line with real life, the use of suppressors reduce noise signature, though (also like in real life) at some cost to range and performance.  That being said, in real life if you fire full power rifle ammo though a suppressor, it'll muffle the sound somewhat, maybe to (barely) hearing safe levels.  But you still will have significant noise from the shot, let alone the crack made from the bullet breaking the sound barrier (same will also happen with supersonic capable pistol rounds fired though a suppressor).  But, again, a fun addition.

In addition, I feel I should comment more on the scenery of the game.  Which if you like scenery porn, Hitman's World of Assassination trilogy (which you get with the Hitman 3 Trilogy pack, as in all three games in one, though you may also have to get some DLC to get 100% content from all the games).  Among the locations you'll be visiting include Paris, a fictionalized city on Italy's Amalfi coast, Marrakesh, Bangkok, the plains of Colorado, an elite Japanese hospital, a New Zealand beach, Miami, the Colombian rain forest, India, a small town in Vermont, an Island in the North Atlantic, New York City, the Maldives, Dubai, the Dartmoor area of England, a dance club on the outskirts of Berlin, a secret facility run by 47's former agency in China, a vineyard in Argentina, and a train going though Romania's Carpathian Mountains.

 Each location has it's own atmosphere, from a Paris fashion show where seedy dealings are being done, to bright and sunny coastal Italy, to equally bright and sunny Miami, to Mumbai slums, to a rain forest, to secluded night club, to a Maldives beach resort, to a rainy, dark, English manor house (which if you do a side mission becomes sunny and cheerful), to a snowy train trip.  You also can gain mastery point bonuses for exploring each location that you're able to explore.  So in addition to globe trekking, you're sort of encouraged to explore to find locations and secrets.

 That's what I'd like to add to Hitman 3 for now, though I may find more things to talk about or elaborate on later.

Hitman 3 Trilogy

 Hi everyone.

For the past several weeks, I've been occupying my time with playing Hitman 3 Trilogy on the PC.  I've played Hitman 2: Silent Assassin for many years on the PS2, and more recently on PC along with Hitman Contracts.  So when I had the chance to get the World of Assassination trilogy on PC, I jumped at it.

Granted, these are the newest games I've played, being stuck in the PS2 era for so long.  But anyways, on to the games.

Needless to say, I've had fun.  The challenges that you can do are fun, though some of them are tedious (though at least not hard).  I did such challenges mostly to unlock weapons and equipment.  And what's there is good, though a little (IMO) threadbare in some areas.  And you can go globe trotting in various locations, ranging from bright and beautiful, to dark and stylish, in reflection with the game itself.

First off, full disclosure, I do play with cheats, mostly for somewhat aimless fun, somewhat in tribute to the original ultimate assassin and crime fighter, the Shadow.  For those who are familiar with The Shadow comics, he was a master assassin, fighting criminals by being a master of stealth, weapons, and evasion.  In the radio show, though, he used magic powers to "cloud enemies minds".  This, though, was to avoid tedious descriptions of where and how he was finding and exploiting cover (TVs, of course, weren't common until the years following World War II, and there was no Shadow film serial--an early predecessor to TV and streaming show series--either).  Agent 47, IMO, is kinda a modern version of the Shadow, though many of you are probably more familiar with the Shadow's most well known homage, Batman.

I do have to say that though not ultra-realistic by any means, the use of weapons and gear in the game is fun.  You get a good variety if you unlock enough stuff, though the amount of reskinned weapons in the pistol and sniper rifle categories becomes obvious after a while.  Also, by comparison, the automatic rifle, submachine gun, and shotgun categories seem threadbare.

However, since this is a modern PC game, stuff does get released in patches or DLC, or can be unlocked by completing new challenges.  The latter tends to happen in the form of elusive target contracts or escalation contracts.  Elusive targets can be accessed though the Elusive Targets Arcade mode, which is a semi-permanent and less challenging mode of Elusive targets mode.  Normally, such things are if you eliminate them, that's it, and if you fail, that's it, too.  In ET Arcade mode, they're a quasi-permanent feature, and if you fail, you can attempt again after a 12 hour lock out for that particular contract.

Escalation contracts are a series of missions that take place at a particular setting, where different terms and conditions get added for each level after the first (hence the term escalation).  These include stuff like hiding corpses, no knock outs, using a particular weapon/method to eliminate a target, etc.

That all being said, I just play the regular missions, for which there are various ways to play them.  The only way to fail, usually, is if you die during a mission, which, of course, gets aborted when you die.  Only one or two missions I can think of in the whole trilogy can be aborted by killing someone who you're not supposed to, and even then you get an achievement for it (IMO, oddly).

Of course, I already use a cheat engine to play the game so I can get immortality, stealth mode (the latter can interfere with some challenges that involve face to face meetings with people, though), infinite ammo, and, occasionally, no reloading for firearms and one shot kills.

Getting on to weapons, I mentioned that some categories seem to be overloaded and others seem to be relatively empty, though what's there isn't bad as far as overall variety.  One negative is that, relative to real life, some weapons are unbalanced.  SMGs deal less stopping power than pistols (which fire the same caliber of bullets), assault rifles also have equal stopping power to Agent 47's signature Colt M1911-type .45 caliber pistols, and combat/shooting is biased for close quarters action.  This doesn't detract from the fun factor, but if you're a stickler for realism, you may be a bit disappointed.  Or you can use that as an opportunity to use your imagination, too.  But in either case, if you use a Colt .45 semiauto pistol or the machine pistol versions, you're pretty much set for most things.

Shotguns, though, do what shotguns usually do in such games.  Get in close, ruin someone's weekend, and get out.  There's also sniper rifles.  The scout rifles are quick firing, but do limited damage at range and have fixed zoom scopes.  More versatile sniper rifles have 3, sometimes 4, zoom levels and are reasonably to very powerful, but tend to feature an animation for hit enemies where if you get a headshot or an upper body hit they get flipped over backwards.  This is unrealistic for the lower powered rifles, but can be amusing to watch.

Aside from some weapon re-balancing, the game's pretty good if you want to play it as a stealth oriented shooter, or just a shooter.  And when it comes to eliminating your targets, you can get creative within the game, which you get rewarded for, usually though challenges getting achieved.  Such things help with mastery points, and the more mastery you earn, the more things you unlock, be it weapons, items, gear, or mission starting locations.

Also, the game is pretty open world, and as I said, you rarely fail unless you die.  That means you can do anything from eliminate the targets, to the targets and their entourage/guards, to pretty much living creature on the map.  That said, the more non-targets you eliminate, the more your score gets negatively impacted if you want the Silent Assassin rating.

But in all, a fun game.  I wish there were more weapon options in some areas, and slightly more realistic, but what's there isn't bad and the game's being continually updated with monthly roadmaps getting released.  Hence, fan and community suggestions do get incorporated at times, quite frequently, in fact.