T w e n t y S i d e d

Behold! The first-ever episode of Spoiler Warning you can watch in glorious 60fps. To be honest, it looks the same to me. But people with younger eyes and faster brains will probably appreciate it. This is probably the biggest step up in quality since we moved to HD during the Fallout 3 season. Thanks to everyone who is supporting Spoiler Warning on Patreon. That money goes to Josh, and he spent it on the PC upgrades to make this happen. So we all win, really.

Or would be, if we weren’t playing this game.

I know we’ve been faulting this Hitman game for not having enough man-hitting, but the game isn’t very strong even when it finally stops screwing around and allows for the hitting of various mans. It’s been a while since I played the other games (and as I’ve said before, I’ve never finished any of them) but the hits in this game come off as infantile and patronizing. Just wander around and pull all the levers you find, move all the objects, and sabotage all the things. Your targets will kill themselves without you needing to think or plan.

But savor these hits, because it’s going to be a long time before we get any targets again. (And longer still before we get to interact with anyone germane to the plot.)

On the upside, this game is a lot more fun to mock than it is to play.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I made fun of the game for having a gunstore willing to put firearms on display when they have these massive suppressors attached. That was a silly thing to comment on. There are so many egregiously wrong things with this story that we really don’t have time to waste on tiny trivialities like that.

But it does sort of make me wonder about the use of suppressors. I’ve used firearms a couple of times in my life, and boy howdy are they loud. Even with proper ear protection. Movies don’t do them justice. If movie shootouts were at all realistic, everyone would stand around after the fight doing this.

So I wonder why more people don’t use suppressors on the firing range. I’m well aware that in the real world they don’t magically make a handgun sound like a blowdart, but even shaving off a few decibels would help a lot. Maybe it’s the expense. Maybe it’s the legality. Maybe it would interfere with the ballistics too much. Maybe it’s just not practical. I honestly have no idea.

Anyway, I’m totally fine with suppressors being 100% legal, easily available, and supernaturally effective in the Hitman universe. This is absolutely the type of compromise my brain is willing to make. On the other hand, having “The Agency” be a massive paramilitary force with thousands of soldiers, massive funding, no accountability, with a control room that looks like NASA? Not so much.

So the bossman demands 47’s head on a platter. Jade responds that maybe they should look for the girl. Boss replies that that’s not needed, because 47 will “know where she is.” But… didn’t you just gave the order to kill him?

Did the writer have some kind of short-term memory damage?

Why is the town of Hope stuck in the 50’s? 50’s cars. 50’s music. 50’s haircuts. Letter jackets for all the gang members. They’ve even got a huge barbershop that would have been too big for a town this size even when places like this were in their heyday. In another game I’d assume this was a stylistic choice, but here I’m going to assume it’s for the same reason that nothing makes sense: The writers really didn’t know or care.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.