Anyone else looking forward to this game? It's from one of my favourite game series of all time. I've played all the games dozens of times over and have never gotten sick of them. The non linear way of passing levels always stood out. The characters were great for what they represented. Music was always a fantastic feature thanks to the brilliant work of Jesper Kyd. The new game is taking place with a brand new game engine and a much better atmosphere to make things so much better. Here's a list of features from Wikipedia:
There's a bit in that list that doesn't make me happy about the game:
First of all for what reason was David Bateson removed from the game? The guy being the model and voice helped make the character what it needed to stand out. His baratone voice gave such a great cold feeling that made us know who we were playing as almost immediately. His look was as generic as they come which is something you'd hope to see with an assassin who wished to remain anonymous in his missions with his only distinguishable feature being the barcode put on the back of his head by his creator. Giving him a new voice seems like a defamation of character. His voice while sounding aggresive is also very reassuring. Bateson not being involved in the game and it just makes me wonder who's gonna be voicing him now? Nolan North? He's seemingly voicing just about every other video game protagonist these days. If you want to see him come back then there's an online petition located Here.
I'm a little bummed to hear that the game will only be set in the US as traveling to differant parts of the world and noticing the differant surroundings has always been something that Hitman has excelled in. I'm not too worried as I'm sure they will still be great.
The new "Instinct" mode doesn't sound at all appealing and rather unnecessary. I know that the previous games had a map that showed the location of all enemies and where they were/how many of them they were but this seems to reveal too much. It'd make this game much more interesting if it were to not have this or it's map but rather to have the player think about what they're doing and plan from there. It'd present a good challenge and be something new that hardcore gamers could see as good.
Why has Jesper Kyd been replaced? He has always been one of the best things about the Hitman series! It's one of the things that made him a common name around the video game industry. His music has been one of the things that took the Hitman series that one step further. Hell I still have his version of Ave Maria on my iPod. It's a real shame about this as I've only ever liked his work in Hitman as I think his style of music doesn't fit any of the other games he's done like Assassin's Creed. His work with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra has always been so magnificent and IGN were right when they said that The music of most big budget action movies wont move you like the music of Hitman 2,. It's truly a damn shame but hopefully the soundtrack will still be good.
I really don't want to see the game get a useless tacked on multiplayer. Hitman is simply not a game that should have a multiplayer. That being said, even if there is an online multiplayer then I won't lose sleep over it and won't play it like I did with Dead Space 2.
Other than these small quarrels the game looks amazing and the new game engine looks really good. Here's a 17 minute gameplay video which I'll post my feelings on sometime later.