Hit The Man.

Its an odd feeling, finally finishing all this. I mean, I'm still gonna complete some escalations, some Elusive Targets, more puzzles to unfold, and I have an entire new game mode in Freelancer to push through (which I'll cover in a World of Assassination log if it makes a good impression on me). But for the idea of new Hitman levels and new Hitman storylines, this is essentially the end.

I would never claim that the story is why I go to Hitman, its ridiculous clone plotline and spy games broadly sort of fill the needs of gameplay. But I also genuinely think that this franchise is incredible at weaving its narrative into the gameplay and level design. Dubai places you on a skyscraper that extends into the clouds. You kill men who can only think of themselves, unable to give a dime to the "little" people down below. Dartmoor focuses on a more grounded perspective, facing off against a woman who sacrificed everything for her family, never realizing that she's burned up any familial love around her she could have enjoyed. Dartmoor is an incredible level, but I admit to feeling a little cold. Dartmoor is regarded as a series highlight, but that also means it struggled to match the expectations I unwittingly put it up against. And with how arduous I found it maxing out my Mastery in Dubai, I was sincerely starting to worry that 3 would be a major let-down. There felt like so much less content than other maps. Fewer mission stories, fewer variety in kills.

And then I hit Berlin.

There's so much wonder and excitement once the level gimmick is revealed: one Agent 47 versus 11 different assassins. Its kind of sad when subsequent playthroughs start highlighting all the potential Targets, instead of letting you run around blind, investigating everyone for yourself. Its Berlin that really teaches you how much trust the series has in your skills by this point. There's fewer Mission Stories because the game expects you to discover the possibilities by yourself. Berlin completely removes any guides to your target, giving you full reign to demolish 5-11 fellow assassins. And since the game expects you to have all the skills you might require, it feels more free to experiment. I found new joy in Dartmoor and Dubai, and I recognized all the ways its switched up the framing.

While Chongqing might be more traditional than Berlin, it really takes time to show off how expertly IOI weaves storytelling into its environments and dialogue. The opening narration hypes up how technologically advanced the China Municipality is, leaning into Cyberpunk imagery in a way that prepped me to feel concerned. Hitman has been hit or miss with depicting non-white cultures. But I think what makes Chongqing so compelling is how it depicts a "cyberpunk" city: miserable. All these grand expansions in tech are hidden away in towers and fancy buildings. What we encounter initially as a player is the homeless population, wandering through the streets, brains and bodies broken from the various experiments the elitist tech geniuses have utilized against so-called "weaker" elements of society. Hitman has heavily leaned into class tensions as its major framework, but its perhaps at its best here. As Agent 47 has developed a genuine ideology and genuine interest in fixing the world, he's forced to confront how his former allegiance to the ICA benefited these existing social structures. The ICA claims to be neutral, but it profits from the subjugation of the lower class just as much as Providence. 47 is given more personality, more sincerity, as he takes a dramatic step away from just working for pay versus working for a purpose.

And finally, he arrives in Mendoza.

More than anything, Mendoza feels like the last hurrah of the Hitman franchise. Maybe the series will return someday, but you can truly feel that IOI was ready to take a step away from the bald goober. 47 has been important to their company, but everyone's ready for a change. So, one last rich party. Dubai, Dartmoor, and Berlin were experiments. An ode to the parties of Silent Assassin, Blood Money, and Contracts, an ole to all the rich morons you've gotten to kill over the years. It doesn't feel as densely packed as other maps, but it just makes me happy to be there. To overhear conversations, to follow NPC paths, to just soak in the mood. Its a level that just screams Hitman. Its everything you want these games to be.

The final narrative beats of Hitman are strange feelings. 47 is never a character I necessarily need to be a real person. He's a cartoon character. He's Bugs Bunny. He's a little mischief maker. Its certainly compelling when 47 wonders if he's just an emotionless tool or if he's capable of more. But I don't know if I need him to give big heroic speeches about responsibility and power. It feels too much like he's talking to them in their rich monster language. Confirming their beliefs of a Special Person to Decide for Humanity. I don't need 47 to speak about the virtues of humanity, I want him to deliver cold, hard data points for why the Targets need to die. To hammer homes to these people that they don't actually matter. That defeating them isn't a great moment in history- its just calculated pest control. I don't play these games for 47 to be a character who says hero lines, I play them for 47 to make rich people look like dumb idiots who die before he turns to the camera and goes "ain't I a stinker?"

I say all that, but there's one moment in all of Hitman that really stuck out to me. Chongqing, arriving on a Bridge. A woman worries that her friend hates her. 47, listening carefully, suddenly speaks up to offer sincere advice. Your friend is meeting you at 2 am, in the rain. That must mean she cares. If now you worry about being selfish, why don't you pay for dinner? Its a short, cute, optional moment. But its the most sincere kindness 47 has ever offered. If the franchise returns with Heroic 47, that might be the version I want to see. A 47 who can actually connect to the world around him.

Because more than anything, the World of Assassination Trilogy truly felt like a world. Every game built an incredible clockwork mechanism, with little pieces moving to their cues to deliver goofy, hokey lines. But each piece moved with such charming purpose. For a series that prided itself on being a Video Game Ass Video Game, each corner felt so well realized. The hundreds of hours of incidental NPC dialogue, building storylines from the large and complex, to the small and personal. Even as the game embraced the fact that you were playing a video game, it made that world feel real through its artificiality, rather than in spite of it. I see myself walking through the entire series again if I want to, just to drop myself into all the incredible effort and care the devs put into this franchise.

I thought I was gonna be harsher on this when I started. But I just got so swept up with the memories of joy and discovery, all my gripes melted away. I love these stupid games. Whatever the future of IOI holds, I'm there.

Time Loop games still work for me. Its a genre that's maybe been overused, but it works because the very act of a video game is a loop. Building information, gaining knowledge, determining your pathway. For that narrative to remain entertaining, the gameplay has to remain compelling enough to keep player retention.

I'm wary of Start Again expanding into a larger release, because the two hour "prologue" tells me so much already. There's a sense of a vast history we aren't privy to, a whole life to these characters that's locked off to us. They've finished their arcs and are off to fight the final boss. Sif's narration even notes this idea. "This is where the hero has their darkest moment and doubts themselves. You know that's what you're going through. But if you can't keep the smile on your face, that proves you're not supposed to be the Hero at all."

I think more than the time loop narrative, I'm interested in the recovery narrative it suggests. Sif is already broken by the loop, most memories outside this dungeon lost to time. What life waits for them if they can even escape this nightmare? How can they explain to their friends that the 30 minutes was a thousand years? Its that emotional complexity that pulls me in, that makes me willing to wait for the devs' full game.

As long as there's a good emotional core, these kinds of stories can still work. Making each moment of the loop mean something is where the spark comes in.

Genuinely surprised I didn't review this for how much I think about it.

The core tension in Jenny LeClue is the metatextual war between Jenny and the author Arthur. Arthur wants cozy, conflict free mysteries. He wants missing keychains, lost puppies. Everything is a misunderstanding and no one is hurt. Jenny the character, while never directly interacting with Arthur, clearly chafes in this cozy little world. She wants thrills, villains, bad guys she can outsmart.

What really aids this divide is how much of an asshole Jenny is. She's the smarmy know-it-all, with sarcastic quips and gotchas. But in the cozy town of Arthurton, those quips just become mean put-downs. When she interacts with a trio of mean girls, she crosses the line way too quickly with a ableist insult that disgusts everyone around her. Jenny is not the cool underdog she thinks she is. She's just kind of a jerk.

As Arthur is forced to include a murder in his story, Jenny is forced to reckon with the idea that her desire for a thrill comes with an actual human cost. If she wants to solve a murder, someone has to die. Loved ones have to live in misery. Wanting that for a story is one thing, wanting it to happen in your community is another. At the same time, these tragedies force Jenny to be a normal person, who can socialize and consider the feelings of others. And putting Jenny in those perilous situations he was so scared of forces Arthur to improve as a writer. It forces him out of his comfort zone and into uncharted territory. The meta narrative works because it has so much to say about the personal creative process, rather than the genre at large.

Its just a bummer that the game's not done yet. Its an ambitious kickstarter game, hurt by the fact that its ideas are too big in scope for what its trying to do. They couldn't quite edit their imagination down to one experience. You hope to see them fulfill their ideas with a sequel, but I worry the disappointment in a cliffhanger hurts the profitability in the long run. Its tough out there.

The 2020 indie game Hero Hours Contract fills a sort of broad "cozy" idea about magical girls existing under late stage capitalism. Magical girls have no trouble unionizing, characters spend time between missions building up social links, the levels work as sort of basic puzzle gameplay loop. The story's not particularly in-depth, with successes coming easy and the conflict being fairly effortless. Its a perfectly fine journey, just a bit easy wish fulfillment.

Life After Magic struck me with its similarities early on. Much like Hero Hours Contract, it focuses on magical girls in their 20s figuring out their lives both socially and financially. There's vague references to generic monsters of the past. Broad genre comedy. Things like that.

Its not particularly fair to make those comparisons, given how different they are beyond that.

Life After Magic centers primarily on retired magical girls. The journey is over. They've moved their separated ways. Lost connections, struggling to make rent. Life struggles. The game generally keeps a light tone, but there's a real sense of the weight of time. How these disparate personalities do try to maintain contact, but things just don't work out. Everyone has a complicated relationship with each other and how that dynamic plays out is always fascinating to unpack.

The two most interesting of the dating routes are ARA and KJ. ARA offers more than a little resentment to how Akiko the MC lead the Sentinels. She likes to think of herself as the Cool Big Sis of the group, but at this point the cast can only remember all the bickering she instigated. She can't play Big Sis to full grown adults. So, she outs herself as a magical girl. She goes corporate idol, figuring she can market herself and donate the proceeds to charity. Being a magical girl is too important for her to really let go of, but its that same desperation to be useful that ends up driving away the other Sentinels. Her friendship ending where she becomes a mentor to young idols is probably the best fate she can get after everything.

KJ was my favorite for a lot of reasons, many of them obvious. Formerly the "shy computer geek", KJ's got a lot of issues with their old identity. They've found enormous euphoria in a punk nb lifestyle, rocking tattoos and motorcycles and the whole she-bang. But it also builds this intense dysphoria when confronted with the magical girl life. Being a "magical girl" shoves them back in the closet, shoves them back into a gendered identity they want nothing to with. That's coupled with messy family drama, bouncing aimlessly between different jobs, and the general fear that the work for their identity will never be complete. KJ and ARA butt heads so frequently because their feelings fundamentally cannot work together. ARA needs her magical girl identity to feel a purpose. KJ needs to avoid that identity to feel like themselves. ARA strutting around as an idol adds this intense fear that KJ's past could get outed, while ARA sees KJ's aggression as a sign that she's not allowed to reinvent herself either. They have perhaps the most in common out of the team, but they have no possible route of reconciliation. Its a great character dynamic.

The broader story works well as a companion to this mini stories because it fits the game's themes. A purposeless former hero lashing out and struggling to find new connects in the adult world. Relying on the corrupt modern institutions they've surrounded themselves with rather than employing their powers for positive means. The powers can't do much against the wider problems of the universe. You just have to sit and stew in what to make of your own circumstances and hope for the best.

Neat little thing.

Technically played this under the World of Assassination Trilogy, but I'm largely marking it here to cover my replay of the Hitman 1 and 2 sections on the PC.

Really turned around on Hitman 2! While I found the maps of 2 to be lackluster on my previous playthrough, I was really won over by the sheer versatility of options. Most people are anti-Mission Story, but I find them to be useful tools for someone like me when I'm still learning the map. Yet I was wowed by all the depth to the non-Mission Story plotlines you could uncover, hidden behind various chance decisions that only become apparent with enough exploration.

But this was also the playthrough where I finally locked into the Hitman 2 DLC levels, which really stunned me. As fun as a big map is, I really appreciated how tight and comfortable a smaller map ended up being. It adds wonderful variety. Bank heist, rich people islands. It all works for excellent murder locations.

On top of that, my greater understandings of the maps really helped me excel in Featured Contracts and Escalations. The sheer girth of bonus content is daunting, but endlessly exciting to unravel.

After being slightly worn out by my original Hitman 2 playthrough, Hitman on my laptop felt so much less restrictive to me. I certainly clocked a lot of hours into the PS4 version, but I feel more free to just clock onto Hitman for 15 minute chunks. Drift into a low commitment puzzle. I feel like I could be using my computer storage for other hefty games, but Hitman is just such a constant pleasure to sink time into. Moving onto Hitman 3 and Freelancer mode adds a special thrill to my bones, because I know there's so much more fresh murder waiting for me. It shouldn't be a cozy game for me, but it absolutely is.

Edit: More specific thoughts I forgot to add.

Playing Hitman 1 in the Hitman 2 system is a huge change. The ability to hide in bushes shouldn't change much, but it transforms the first game's Colorado map from a nightmare zone into a viable mode of play. It helps elevate the original game into something even better. Hitman 1 is a slowly escalating challenge, but Hitman 2 feels more experimental in variety and tone. They know what works and just love to show off at this point.

To that end, I also warmed up on the Columbia map I originally disliked. I think levels are at their best when they say something about the targets you're killing. The way the Delgado mansion is almost a museum to his ego works wonders for his character and the contrast between that ego and the reality that the community lives with is fascinating.

I think in general, I learned to focus less on how the targets impact the level and how the people of the level feel about the target. The New York bank level has dartboards of the target hanging in offices, bitter employees everywhere. The Mumbai level creates a real sense of fear that the locals live under, that the three targets control the city on a horrific scale. Its excellent for world-building as you dive into the belly of these beasts. I was just really charmed by how the level design has shifted over time. it all works for me.

Farming games kind of stress me out. Don't know why. So this was never gonna be for me long term.

But I do think there's a malicious brilliance in how the game operates. Its not enough that you're building a town for Disney characters to live in or the fact that you get to talk and play with them. The shockingly strong writing for the Disney characters definitely helps, but that's not the brilliance.

The brilliance of the game is in its narrative of rebuilding your home with the Disney characters. With the cast suffering from slight memory issues, no one gets into any specifics. But it establishes that you, the player, had some kind of kinship with these characters. And that plot beat allows the game to eventually build to this line:

Ariel: "Oh, its you [player character]. You've grown so big!"

Its one line. They don't lean into it too hard. But that line captures the core experience of playing the game. Its laser-targeted as nostalgia in a specific way. That mental brainspace of being a child and thinking of Disney princesses as your friend. Its a brilliant, almost dangerously evil tactic. But I kind of respect it. It'd be easier to hate it and the whole Disney franchise model if the game wasn't charming. But unfortunately, its charming, so its easier to give a pass.

When Octopath Traveler 1 came out in 2018, it was kind of a big moment for pixel rpgs. The "HD-2D" art-style was a stunning graphical wonder. There was some broad criticism by some people who considered it ugly or "lazy", but like most of the endless online discourse, it faded away once there was something else to focus on. But within the last five years, the HD 2D style has shown it might be here to stay. It encouraged Square Enix to consider bringing back lost pixel RPGs that players are still invested in. After several poor remaster attempts, the Final Fantasy Remasters have been really positively received. Bolstered by that, the Live A Live HD-2D remake was released to rave reviews across the seas. I think there's an argument to be made that those re-releases wouldn't exist without the existence of Octopath 1.

Still, the first game was burdened with some major problems. Despite its marketing around 8 party members, the cast virtually never interacts with each other across the entire game. The "travel banters" where they did interact was exceptionally easy to miss content. The game also became notorious for its exceptional difficulty, making progression daunting for new players. Even finding the final boss of the game was locked behind various obtuse, unmarked side quests. The game sold a million copies, but the actual story didn't seem to leave much of a cultural impact.

Its why its kind of sad to me that the initial sales of Octopath 2 don't seem too hot, when I really do think its something special.

It took me a long time to fully decipher the mechanics. The overworld and battle mechanics aren't entirely well explained and it was one of the reasons I bounced off the first game. I'd say it took me 15-20 hours into the system to grasp its fundamentals. But once the system clicks with you, it connects together in a really crunchy way. Balancing the job systems, the special skills, and all the other layers makes for a truly gripping combination of systems and gimmicks.

One of the major criticisms of the first game was how little the cast interacted with each other. In 2, the Travel Banters are easily collected in your journals to view any time, even the ones you missed. It helps you get a good sense of each character's dynamic. This is expanded upon in "Crossed Paths", where two characters pair up to their own sidequest and bounce off each other more directly. Not only does it alleviate the concerns of the first game, it also helps flesh out the cast. How they act around different people and how their behaviors change in circumstances. It helps them feel more real and defined. And that's crucial for the kind of story Octo

The core theme of the game, as with many rpgs, is this idea of lightness versus darkness. Straight-forward enough. But how the game delivers that message is through this idea of the overwhelming horror of violent history. The cycle of betrayal, heart-break, corrupt systems, and how they make future seem so horrifically bleak. Its a hard topic to really deliver if the writers don't fully understand those systems. But for the most part, I think Octopath threads the needle. Its in the stories themselves

Castti the Apothecary

I don't often go for healer girls or amnesia stories. Healer girls are often a bit too soft for my liking, a bit too deferential and "traditionally" cute. So much of what makes Castti work is how tired she seems beneath the surface. She's treated as and performs as the "mother hen", fussing over the other characters. But she's old, she's seen things. A nightmare sequence features her chased down by all the people she's failed to heal. All the blame she places on herself for those deaths. It makes her decision to keep working all the more powerful and heart-breaking.

There's a narrative beat about the Book of Night. It appears to detail the worst of history, every nightmare-ish act of human villainy ever written down. Most characters go nuts and decide to burn the world down after they read it. Castti's just like "...yeah? And?" She's seen the worst and doesn't care. That's just more people to heal. She signed up for that. Seeing the worst and building something better comes with the job description. Its the kind of characterization the game needs for its core theming to work.

Throne and Agnea

I liked Primrose in 1. But, there was weird stuff too. Her "Seduction" mechanics as the Dancer just felt uncomfortable when paired with her history. Trafficking, exploitation... it doesn't mesh well.

Primrose's main traits are diverged into two characters. Agnea is the Dancer and she's portrayed as a joyous inspiration chasing her dream. I never quite fell in love with that story, but its a nice way to balance the game's darker tones and its a much better characterization for the Dancer type.

Throne gets the bulk of the darker storytelling. For the game's narrative of "finding hope in the future," they need a story about someone who seemingly has no future. No control. No options. The Blacksnakes are a team of criminals who are kept in line with their poison collars. The Mother and Father of the guild can activate the poison any time, killing their unruly children. So Throne's goal is simple. Kill her "parents", unlock the collars, gain freedom.

Through this darkness, we dive deep into the idea of freedom and control. What it means to fight for something everyone else has, discovering your identity when your identity has been determined since birth. What you have to sacrifice to win that fight. Its bleak, but its perhaps the most thematically interesting of the batch. It swerves into so many fascinating directions, none of them quite what you'd expect. How it establishes the systems a parent sets up for a child, what that child grows into, and all the complications through it all... its such a fascinating picture. The darkness works here. Its pointed and purposeful. I adore it.

Hikari

Takes a lot to sell me on a Royal Prince Must Win story. But Hikari's story really works for two reasons.

1. The nation of Ku has subjugated and massacred its neighbors for generations. Its a horrific place. Hikari is the only political force with the support to rework it into something better.

2. Hikari's power doesn't come from his royal bloodline. It comes from his humble roots. While the Ku family mocks him as part-royal/part-lowborn, his connection to the average civilian gives him a perspective the nobles lack. While the Ku Family embrace this weird demon power that encourages bloodshed, he can actively resist it by knowing the consequences of such violence on the average person. Its great. Its a good hook. Hikari's a good kid.

The thing I really had to let go of while playing this game is the wider political ideas of Ku. Hikari's goal to return to power kind of dances around the idea of what the public sentiment is. Ku massacres any dissident, yeah, but it never quite examines if there's a major political body that likes the murders. People kill because the royal family orders murders. Once Hikari's in power, everyone will happily not murder peasants anymore. That's the only logic we need to follow. Trying to overthink it past that? Not what the story is about. Sometimes, you just gotta accept what the story's doing.

Ochette

Ochette's just fun. In the midst of these darker tales of depravity and corruption, here's a shonen protag. I love it. Good tone balancer.

Osvald and Temenos

These are pretty good. Osvald's story is gripping enough, even if it just checks some boxes in my eyes. Dead family. Get revenge. Find a new way to live.

Temenos' story is probably the most connected to the Overarching Plot of the cast, which makes his murder mystery plotline a little difficult to follow at times. The narrative has to hide some of the cards for the finale. What you're left with is a Twink Church Cop who dances his way through some murders. They try to balance out the whole "I'm an inquisitor for the church chasing down heretics" tension with the characterization that Temenos himself doesn't... really care about religion. He likes to solve crime. Finding "heretics" is how he does that. Since the people that hate the Church in this game miraculously end up being murderers, it works out. Weird tension there. Hard to grapple with it.

More than anything, both of these lads just really excel as Travel Banter characters. Osvald is the grumpy straight man, gloomy and miserable and baffled by the wackier antics of the other characters. Temenos is the perpetual tease, needling others, getting under people's skin. For the dynamics to work, you need these guys! Essential for a large party! If everyone gets along too well, they become less interesting. With a grump and a jackass, you get good variety. Its perfect.

Partitio

A Kentucky-fried traveling salesman decides to end poverty with 1. the planned assassination of oil barons and 2. department stores.

Its weird.

Don't look to media for politics, its never a good idea. But its hard not to look at Partitio's weird balancing act between loving and hating capitalism. The villains use the word capitalism. They spew off hatred for worker's rights. The villain's final monologue involves proclaiming "money is meant to be hoarded by people like me!" The game's very intentional with this! The industrial revolution and its impact on society is the key center piece of what this story path is about. There's no denying that.

But I think fans who put Partitio as a socialist king are sort of missing the mark of Partitio's character. Because honestly, I'm not even sure the game knows what Party's beliefs are. Partitio likes trade and he likes money. He's fervently in favor of the industrial revolution and generally seems to like capitalism. But he wants a nice capitalism. An equitable enough capitalism. Fair wages and good bosses. Its a really specific needle the story is trying to thread and I can't say they succeed. Cause at the end of the day, Partitio's plan is to be a Good Billionaire. The only path out of capitalism is Good Capitalism. Its a really odd piece.

But he's fun. He says goofy folksy quips. He... offers to buy Throne's poison collar and find a way to make a "good" version of it, which seems like a loaded concept to drop casually in a travel banter. But he's fun. The charm overrides most of the head-scratching.

Ultimately

This kind of game has a lot to prove. Investing time into a huge rpg, especially right before Zelda ToTK release, is tough. And I think a lot of people passed on this for so many complicated marketing reasons. But despite my reservations on some story aspects... the game really hooked me. I dedicated a whole month to this monstrosity, after I expected to drop it from the first 10 hours. It grabs you. Its exudes charm and passion. It grows from the first game in such smart ways. And more than anything... I want more of these games. I want the Octopath franchise to keep growing and improving. They've got so much to show off and I think they have a lot more stories to tell. I loved this game. I hope to see more of it.

The PS360 era was a strange beast.

Absolution was my first interaction with the Hitman franchise, although I never actually touched it at first. I fixated on it primarily through various edgy youtubers I was subscribed to at various points. I’d smuggle the 2013 original trilogy into my house the following year, and I’d actually play half of Absolution in 2015, with my college purchase of my first laptop and the Steam account that soon followed.

This 2023 replay was done under a bit of a time crunch. I had a flight in 48 hours and I didn’t want to carry 22 gigs of a mediocre edgeboy-core game onto my travels. My thoughts are sort of being compiled as I travel via plane or kick back in my partner’s apartment. So, I’ll admit some trainers were utilized for over half the levels to get through the game as quickly as possible. I wanted to get an accurate experience, but I also had like, life plans to get through. So I couldn’t torture myself as much as might be ideal for the game.

Still. Strange beast.

Much has been made about the game’s structural issues. In its attempt to focus on 47’s characters, the game cuts back on the gameplay that made Blood Money so beloved. In the game’s 20 levels, 3 are placeholders to find costumes and weapons, and only half seem to involve actual assassinations. Dev reports seem to suggest most of the assassinations were late additions to the game, after negative initial responses to the trailer.

Primarily, players engage with the world through linear maps. Experimenting with or without trainers forced a unique realization: I was exploring more while I was invisible rather than moments where I was fully visible. The disguise system takes cues from Silent Assassin, but in odd methods. Disguises allow you to enter new zones without being a trespasser, but it also places you in further danger. People wearing the same outfit have an easier time clocking you than they would opposing outfits. For example: entering a kitchen as a chef might not get any second glances from security guards, but fellow chefs are gonna be constantly suspicious. This might make more logical sense, but it’s often a frustrating gimmick to interact with. The only way to hide from these opposing guards is through the instinct meter. This lets you get a lay of the land, track enemy movements, and hide yourself from enemy guards. But the meter runs out when you’re hiding from nearby guards and it mostly ends up adding more stress to the experience. It might even be more worthwhile to just go Suit Only and dodge around everyone’s movements. The disguise system becomes a hassle instead of the core gameplay feature. And again, when the disguises don’t provide you with meaningful new places to go, the goal becomes to get to the exit rather than test out the areas.

The assassinations themselves, as well as the various challenges paired with each level, can be fun! You can see the prototypes emerge for Hitman 2016, the devs figuring out how to make the engine work to their benefit. But every now and then, the 100% Level Complete challenges are labelled with a weird description like “So Many Ways to Kill!” in a way that feels a little desperate. Knowing that the assassinations were a late addition add a weird layer to these comments. Those achievements could just be “you really liked torturing that guy!” or “Its time for the greaser era to end.” But by faux-bragging about its options, the game feels less confident in itself. Less assured of its vision. The team already knows this game isn’t gonna react well with its core audience and has to desperately hope that appealing to the mass market will fix up the losses.

Its especially a shame because some of the level designs are really neat ideas. I’m not inherently opposed to the game’s focus on Hope, South Dakota. I think playing up the danger of disguising yourself in a small town, gun heavy environment is actually a novel idea. Breaking into a courthouse and impersonating a judge is one of the funniest options the game gives you, and its all towards the effort of just progressing to the next level. The prison itself is a great gimmick for an assassination level too, and its not utilized in the slightest. I think using that kind of premise for one of Hitman 2016 levels would have been great fun, but its been left to rot with the cemetery and the wrestling arena (also great level ideas).

Hitman has always relied on stereotyping to do its narrative heavy-lifting, but it’s a true oddity in this one. Half of the game punts the narrative into Hope, a company town owned by weapons manufacturer Blake Dexter. He’s an easy folksy villain, announcing “I’m not a Yee-Haw kind of guy, but this is a Yee-Haw moment” at one point. You can overhear passerby discuss how someone must be putting on an accent to seem cool, because no one really is that stereotypical. With a charming self-aware humor, those passerby immediately start indulging in some phrases like “hootenanny” or “and that’s true” that the rest of the game has leaned into. The writers know what this is. But it also means there’s not a lot of narrative heavy-lifting they can do. They’re depraved jerks. Mr. The Hitman will kill them. That’s the plot, spread out across a dozen hours.

I think its within the stereotyping that the real theme of this game emerges. The central fear, the crux of the matter, the anxiety resting within the very center of the game.

This is a game about masculinity.

47’s motivation as a character comes down to “protect girl.” There’s some broader motivations involving his clone history or the hope that no one will live his pain, but its not the kind of sympathy he’s extended to other clones before. He is Man. He will Portect Girl.

The villains all broadly hurt women in some way or generally show some “failure” of masculinity. Blake Dexter is a slimy pig who delights in being awful to women. The game’s 10th mission exists entirely within one desert area and Dexter’s son Lenny. Lenny has a stutter, a limp, and is depicted as a whiny failure who you can test out any kind of murder scheme onto. Dexter’s lackey, Sheriff Sturkey, is heavily involved in the BDSM scene, and his delight in punishment is shown as another depraved “failing” compared to 47’s stalwart manliness.

The incidental NPCs all seem similarly fixated on their masculinity. Men posture with each other, throw around slurs, assert their confidence or failed confidence. Sometimes these men will share a sincere conversation, but more often than not it ends with some “lol what are we WOMEN” joke to brush it off. I can’t recall more than a few women on a map at a time, and most of them are flirting with the male NPCs. On the strip club map, the instinct system lets you make out women’s entire chests in a way that feels more voyeuristic than the outright nudity in Hitman Contracts. And the central assassin girl, Victoria, who the whole plot revolves around, is forever shunted off to be kidnapped again, only getting to use assassin skills once as a shocker than never again. No more violence, child. Let the Hit Man handle this.

Yet there’s also something fascinating about the sheer wealth of dialogue there is to overhear. NPCs talk over each other, they’re so eager to get to their lines. Its overwhelming, but it somehow feels like I’m peering into the 2000-10s headspace in such a specifically pointed way. It’s like how Scooby Doo Mystery Inc, for all that I love it, often feels like you’re listening directly to the all-male writer’s room of some insufferable nerds. It’s annoying, but kind of fascinating to watch unfold.

Absolution is a strange black sheep. Anxious, needy, chasing after shocking highs to keep up with the trends. It’s almost oddly endearing to me. Like babysitting a 13-year-old, desperate to be cool. It’s not a good game, I don’t think. But it’s a piece of history. Its more enlightening about the gaming trends to me than any of the more successful Call of Duty clones. I’m fascinated by it. Maybe there’s something to that. Maybe something positive.

But probably not.

July 2013, afternoon. My mind rotates around the suburban level. I’ve been planning out different roads and pathways, organizing guard movements in my mind. I know that the clown goes to drink in his car, just out of sight from the FBI guards. What I don’t know, because I’ve been playing with the sound almost entirely off, is that the target’s wife will follow the clown costume to a secluded area, giving me time to steal her necklace, the level’s secondary objective. Not fully
understanding that the target’s son’s birthday party is scheduled for later in the day, I wonder where the birthday party is hidden on the map. The world seems small, contained, but also vast in potential.

I finish up a series of summer activities Mom assigned for my brother and I. Little lesson books to ensure we’re keeping up with our studies. When I return to the basement, my mom is holding up the case for the HD collection of Hitman.

“What’s this?”

I came up with a lot of explanations for how a gun game could be in the house. I try to explain that its not really a gun game, its more about puzzles, and I’ve never even touched the gun. She just points to the cover, with 47’s two giant silverballers hovering beneath the title HITMAN.

Its hard not to feel some sort of vindication returning to this game. First person shooting has never been my forte. I will confess that in the exciting finale of the game, I relied upon godmode to try and survive against the onslaught of enemies. But luckily, as I pathetically defended as a young teen, the game’s central focus means guns are never a requirement. All the various puzzles and widespread maps provide an incredible freedom of direction for players. All the complex AI and how they work with each other is the game’s primary thrill. Watch it all collapse into a spectacle that you won’t soon forget. Combined with some of the most brilliant level design of video games, from suburban levels to Mardi Gras parties to Louisiana weddings, the game’s stylistic charm sucks you in so deeply into a delightful exploratory world.

The polish exposes some broader Hitman issues. Hitman is a video game ass video game: story shouldn’t really be its focus. The characters aren’t exactly expected to be complex. That’s fine, great even. But for its simplified story to work, its got a lot of stereotypes to fall back on. The Louisana Southerners is one thing. The Not Great depictions of race, carried over from previous games, is pretty rough.

Ol’ 47’s kind of a dick too. While 2 and Contracts touched on 47’s gentler side, Blood Money leans into 47 as kind of a thug. That’s a fine characterization to make, I don’t mind 47’s only interest being cash. But he’s a professional. He’s not going to kill random civilians unless they saw something they shouldn’t. Killing a mailman for shock value or calling Diana a bitch sort of flies in the face of who 47 is to me.

These moments are easy to brush aside when the game overwhelmingly kicks ass. The Opera, the Suburb, the Clubs, the Wedding… each level is so deliciously iconic and layered in so many fascinating ways. Contracts may remain my favorite for Vibes, but Blood Money is unmistakably their 00s magnum opus.

Hell yes.

The protagonist is a fisherman, living alone in the town of Pleonexia. The people of Pleonexia are perpetually fixated on the fish the protagonist can provide. They exchange some measure of pleasantries, but their kindness mainly goes as far as how much food the fisherman can provide. In the attempts to wean them off the supply, the fisherman even starts overcharging them, but its to no avail. They’ll pay anything for that fish. The fisherman himself as very little choice in the matter. As the only resident allergic to fish, he’s able to resist the supernatural grip it has on the locals. His son, not so lucky, was given to the mayor in the hopes of finding a cure to this craving, in exchange for the money the fisherman acquires. Mayor earns several thousand for a day’s work, the fisherman keeps about $50.

The core gameplay loop focuses deeply on this struggle of survival. The fisherman has to wake up, give fish, go fishing, get enough sleep. The longer a fisherman goes without sleep, the more his stamina decreases. Fish will escape more easily. The easier the fish escape, the more likely it is the fisherman can’t provide fish for the villagers. The angrier the villagers get, the more likely the fisherman is to get murdered in the night. So, you have to schedule naps, fishing, and the delivery of food in a delicate tightrope. Its an increasingly effective grind, cementing dread and paranoia into every interaction. Turning away a villager will make them angry, but answering the register at all only stokes their rage further. Even so, too many refusals and that same locale’s eagerness to kill you rises dramatically.

Probably the best realized of the fishing horror I’ve been looking for. A strong plot with effective imagery and aesthetics. Fishing mechanics that add a challenge, but not complete impossibility. An experience that does genuinely create stress, but not so stressful that the game is paralyzing. The entire game is astoundingly well-crafted and it’s exactly the kind of game I was looking for.

The story itself ends up fairly straightforward, but its flow is so satisfying that I delighted in each day. The game is a tight hour, maybe less if you find a good rotation between naps and fishing. I fell into a few deaths before I caught onto a solid strategy, and the game provides enough checkpointing that you don’t have to worry too much about a restart. Just survive each day and maybe you can escape this increasingly dangerous town.

Now this is some fishing horror!

Well, kind of. At the very least, its much more of a fishing game than the other indie games I’ve been going through. The gameplay loop is straightforward. Fish creepy critters. Sell for cash. Spend money to build up your ship. The better you build your ship, the less likely you are to get yanked into the water. The further out into the sea you can fish. The further out into sea you can fish, the better fish you can find. The risk being, if your ship isn’t strong enough, the fish is more likely to capsize you and dump your current cargo into the ocean. It’s a loop that does what it sets out to do and it’s addicting enough to fill out its hour long runtime.

There’s not much of a story building off that gimmick, but the game does a much better job of just capturing a Vibe. The PSX aesthetics, the chill music, it all feeds into the greater sense of unease and disquiet. The only character to talk to is the shopkeep and he’s genuinely quite friendly. The dark underbelly is more about the town trying to survive its hostile environment. Through that idea, the horror doesn’t quite land because the world ends up feeling shockingly warm. Because this shopkeeper is friendly, I’m sort of left to assume the town around him is friendly too. United together in a terrifying world, just trying to make it to the next day. Its not much, but its honest work. Its honestly kind of refreshing in a way to have the spooky town feel so nice to return to. There’s a lot I’m projecting onto the world given how small it is, but its how the game made me feel. You set sail, you get the work done, and you feed the town. That’s all we can ask for.

Decided to start chasing the specific idea of “Fishing Horror.” Isolation, strange creatures of the deep, all within the simple task of catching some fish. It’s a hyper-specific genre, but the hyper-specificity allows for some unique interpretations of how to go about that sort of premise.

Our Lady of the Drowned Lake, Zero Reporter goes for a folklore approach. Brazilian devs present the story of the Water’s Caboclo. A strange man who resides beneath the rivers, lurking about at his own leisure. Either a help or a hinderance, the Water’s Caboclo’s reaction to humans is sort of a roll of the dice. This is somewhat reflected in the game’s central mechanical structure. Each action the fisherman Bento can make is tied to the chance of annoying the Caboclo. Each attempt to reel in a fish get increasingly risky. Normal reeling in starts at about 20%, while a forceful reeling in gets about 40%. If you fail the gamble, your noise meter rises. Once you hit 100% noise… well, nothing happens right away. You have to fish once more before you get confronted by the Caboclo. Once you’re confronted, your fate is up to what you try to offer the Caboclo.

The actual fishing mechanics are not much to write home about. Wandering through the water is… unclear. I expected to bump up against a river-bank or a shoreline, but the actual barriers to sailing is largely made up of invisible walls. Finding the right fishing spots throughout the waves is sort of a mindless search. The largest disappointment is that there’s no real change to the endings. I enjoyed doing research and learning about the folklore, but none of that really came through on an actual ending. The mythology states giving Caboclo tobacco ingratiates him towards, you, but the ending visuals don’t really change. There’s a pleasure in learning about another culture and its folklore, but it doesn’t kind go deeper into them other than aesthetics. Its unfortunate, but its not enough of a dealbreaker to ruin my affection for the efforts.

I’m not super deep on the vtuber scene. I’ve watched highlights from time to time but I couldn’t name more than maybe two off hand. Even so, the sort of parody aspects of streamer/vtuber culture feel sort of shallow. Citri will vaguely sass the chat for being horny, but I think there could have been more emphasize on how that relationship plays out. Her scripted comments are largely relegated to swearing during a game over or saying “we got it this time!” The game’s final moments reveal its core plot twist about streamer girls in hell or whatever, but there’s not a lot of groundwork to “Citri robs from charity streams” that there could have been. Maybe a few times she could read off donation goals or insist that “the Children’s Hospital really needs this!” or little things that make it lean into that whole parasocial undercurrent of streaming culture.

But then again, this was a game jam game made in 72 hours. There’s not a lot of time to do a deep dive on streamer crimes unless you’re deep in that well, and that’s not a well I’d want anyone to be too addicted to. The graphic design is cute enough. The dev has two other games of note: Project Malice and Roseblight. The prior is a isometric roguelike and the latter is an adventure game. All these of these games just have a great pixel-art style and you can really see their style works well in so many other genres. The skill to work in all those kinds of game styles is similarly impressive and the reviews on steam and itch are glowing. Its nice to see!