The Game Preview

Month: January 2021

  • Hitman 3 Review

    Hitman 3 Review

    Thank you to IO Interactive for the review copy on Xbox Series X.

    The Story In Four Sentences:

    Hitman 3 has one of the best stories that we have seen from the Hitman franchise in a long time. There will be no story spoilers here so it is going to be kind of vague, but Hitman 3’s story is a lot more emotional and personal. It is focused more on Agent 47, rather then the bigger picture. Cutscenes are a major step up from Hitman 2 which helps the game deliver a satisfying storytelling experience and proper conclusion to Agent 47’s story.

    Gameplay:

    Now this is something that I can talk more in depth about without ruining the game for you. Just like in any other recent Hitman game, there are many ways to complete a mission. Think of the map like its one giant sandbox for you to play in. I obviously want you to be able to discover some of these murder sequences for your self so I am not going to mention every highlight but here are two in particular that I thought was awesome. Have you ever wondered what Knives Out would feel like in a video game? I never did until I saw Dartmoor where you have the opportunity to become a detective. This level looks and feels so much like the mansion in the movie and has multiple references to it. Now obviously, you can become the detective and take out your target when you get her alone for a few seconds or you could spend an hour solving a murder mystery by gathering clues and evidence throughout the mansion. After you solved that murder mystery, you can go kill your target. Same result, but just a new way of getting there. On a different mission, I eliminated a target by having an AI fire different employees in an order that would cause a chain of different events to occur leading to an explosion.

    Baseball Right Next To Open Window Easter Egg

    Essentially all of the maps are open (besides the last one which acts as more of a conclusion to the story) which allows tons of replay value. There are shortcuts which act similar to something you would see in Demon Souls which can end up saving you time when you replay the level. Maps from the first two games of trilogy have been ported into Hitman 3 which can give you even more gameplay (I do have a few problems with this that I will talk about later in the article).

    From a technical standpoint, the game runs amazingly. As stated above, I played on the Xbox Series X and had a solid 60 fps while at native 4K. Other reviewers did mention that there was one spot in particular with a ton of flowers that caused some dips but they were very minor and only for a small part of the level. I personally never walked through the flower field because it is a tiny part of a much larger map. There is a very good chance that they have fixed it by the time you play it so you may not even realize it.

    The Flaws:

    Some of these issues are major and a decent amount of them are minor but here are all of the flaws that I found through my time with the game.

    • There is anti-consumer friendly pricing for DLC. The standard edition of Hitman 3 retails for $59.99, while the deluxe edition retails for $79.99 on consoles and for some reason $89.99 on the Epic Games Store. The deluxe edition includes 3 outfits, extra escalations, a digital artbook, a digital soundtrack, and a commentary video for the intro of the game. I have no problem with that price. The problem that I have currently is with the price of the upgrade. If you buy to upgrade from your standard edition to a deluxe edition digitally via your Xbox, IO Interactive wants $35. I can’t say I agree with charging someone an extra $15 for DLC because they decided they wanted to wait for getting the extra content until after purchasing the base game.
    • The other problem I have with the DLC pricing involves the Hitman 2016 and Hitman 2 content which is playable in Hitman 3 with some enhancements. Now this is an awesome feature for people who bought Hitman 3 on the same platform where they got the first two games. However, that wasn’t my case. I played Hitman 2016 and Hitman 2 on Steam, but played Hitman 3 on Xbox. This was not a major issue for me. I was going to purchase the levels for a second time on console just because I was enjoying Hitman 3 that much. Here is where the problem comes into play. The Hitman 3 Access Pass for Hitman 2 Standard costs $59.99 and includes the base game locations. The Hitman 3 Access Pass for Hitman 2 Expansions costs an additional $39.99 for people who want to play the DLC that was released for Hitman 2. You could also just buy the Hitman 3 Access Pass for Hitman 2 Gold which bundles the previous two items together. Now for my friends who got the game on Epic, you get the Hitman 2016 content for free and can currently buy the Hitman 2 maps on sale for $19.99. However once that sale ends, you will need to pay $99.99 if you want all of the Hitman 2 maps. So to summarize for anyone who is just as confused as I was: It can cost you up to $194.97 (prior to tax) if you want all of the content in the game. You can save $15 if you buy the deluxe edition upfront rather then buying the standard edition and then the deluxe upgrade after the fact. This gives me major flashbacks to when I had to look a graph to see all of the versions of Anthem. Even if you disregard how confusing it was, I still have problems with it. Charging MSRP for content from an old games screws over digital consumers. Anyone who has a console with a disc drive can go to their local store and buy a sealed copy of the standard edition for $19.99. They can then get the free upgrade to Hitman 3 by just putting the disc into their console once. So why is IO Interactive charging their digital fans three times the price? A digital copy of the game costs them less money to sell compared to a physical version that they are selling at stores.
    • Now exclusivity isn’t something that is going to affect the score I give Hitman 3 but it is something I want to mention to consumers who care. First, Hitman 3 is exclusive to the Epic Games Store on PC. Second, VR is exclusive to PSVR. I personally didn’t see a problem with the Epic Games Store deal this since Hitman 2 had a ton of financial problems throughout its development. At the end of the day, its a free download (and I know some people still won’t download it and that is perfectly okay). What did tick me off was the PSVR exclusivity especially when VR files have been found in the PC version of the game. Having console exclusives is one thing (Xbox vs PlayStation). Having PC exclusives is another (Steam vs Epic). Having VR exclusivity tops everything. There are so many platforms and the average consumer isn’t going to buy all of them when a lot of times they cost more then next-generation consoles. Off the top of my head, I can think of 6 major VR headset developers that support bigger budget games (Valve, Oculus/Facebook, HTC, Samsung, HP, and Sony). Out of all of those, Sony has the worst one. On top of that, Hitman 3 requires you to play with the PS4 controller rather then motion controls.
    • On paper, there are less mission stories. In Hitman 3, only 4 out of the 6 levels have mission stories with 3 each for a total of 12. Hitman 2016 had 64 total mission stories. Hitman 2 had 34 with an additional 10 coming from DLC. It is worth noting that there are a decent amount of hidden mission stories (such as the legendary exploding golf ball). This might be a positive for you because I know there are people out there who like less hand holding in games but I still prefer the option to know how many of the mission stories I have experienced. I don’t want to be walking around the map searching for another mission story if I have already completed all of them.
    • On a certain level, you can make a ton of wine flood a room. I am not sure if this was a visual glitch but all of the containers were still full with wine even after leaking it all over the room. On top of this, walking in a giant puddle of wine doesn’t cause any red footsteps (I get it, I am really nitpicking here but it would be cool if Agent 47 would have red footsteps for a few seconds after walking in the wine.
    • There are quite a few visual bugs. As mentioned in the point before, there was the wine that may or may have not been a visual bug. Here are a few additional ones that I recorded. There was a missing shovel during this cutscene (no major spoilers, you can see the target name but they are all new characters who you meet at the start of each level). There was weird zoom in glitch when climbing on the ledge of a building. There was a missing cigarette but smoke was still coming out of their mouth. There was this random lady standing on a desk for no reason. Are all of these things immersion breaking? Yes. Are they at anywhere near the level of visual glitches that Cyberpunk 2077 had? No where near it so I guess I can’t complain that much.

    The Score: 8/10

    I loved my time with Hitman 3 and I don’t want to “punish” the developers by dragging down the score due to certain decisions that they couldn’t control. But when reviewing a game, I need to account for both the quality of the game but also the decisions of the publisher. All things considered, it is a 8/10 in my eyes which means it is still a game that I recommend buying. Now should you go and pay almost $200 on the game to get all of the content? No. If you are someone interested in playing the Hitman 2016 and Hitman 2 content, I would recommend grabbing a physical copy or waiting for a sale on the digital versions.

  • Spiderman Miles Morales Review

    Spiderman Miles Morales Review

    Okay, I get it. This review is really late. This review got started, and then sat in my drafts because Cyberpunk 2077 kept me very distracted in the little bit of free time that I had. But now, final exams are finished and I am on winter break finishing this up at two in the morning. So, what is this new entry of Spiderman about?

    Spiderman returns back to New York City but this time we are playing as Miles Morales. For those who didn’t play Spiderman 2018, Miles is a teenager who befriends Peter Parker. Miles ends up getting bit by a spider and you can guess how the rest plays out. When the game starts, you can watch a summary to fill you in on all the events from Spiderman 2018 involving Miles but I would recommend trying out Spiderman Remastered if you never played the original. It is way too good of a game to skip. But you didn’t click on this article to find out if Spiderman 2018 is any good. So how is Spiderman Miles Morales?

    Story:

    As always, I won’t be diving deep into the story to avoid spoilers but I will give you the bare minimum. The story of Spiderman Miles Morales throws you in the middle of a war between Roxon and the Underground. Roxon is the Tesla of the Spiderman universe and the Underground are a bunch of rebels who have no business being as well trained as they are. As Miles, you do your best to protect New York City while dealing with the challenges of being a teenager. Overall, the beginning of the story is just as good as Spiderman 2018. However, the second half of the story starts to feel weaker. One particular spot is when Miles trusts someone to watch a person of interest (who I won’t name), even though minutes prior he said how he needs to keep an eye on this person because he knows that they want to harm this particular person of interest. You could catoragize this as bad writing or just Miles being naïve but either way it doesn’t make much sense besides wanting to push the story forward.

    This may sound like I’m caring too much but I believe that attention to detail is important in these big budget games. In the 2018 game, Spiderman works closely with the police throughout the main story. In the intro to Miles Morales, both Spidermen work with the police. However, midway through the main story, the police disappear. During one mission, Miles discovers an enemy base filled with money and weapons. If this was Spiderman 2018, Peter would contact the police and they would usually be seen arriving as you swing away from the crime scene. However, Miles just swings away like nothing even happened, leaving the door wide open so that any child could just walk in there and grab a rocket launcher. Another example is a major main story plot point so I don’t want to spoil it, but there is a need for the police at a certain emergency at the end of the game and they are no where to be found. It’s like the police are there for the first half of the game and the side missions but they forgot about them for the final half of the main story.

    So to summarize: The first half of the story is really good. The second half had a lot of moments that felt so poorly written that it made me pause my game so I could write about them in my notes. I should all emphasize that when I say poorly written, I mean poorly written compared to Spiderman 2018. That game’s story set my standards really high.

    Credit: Insomniac Games

    Gameplay:

    At first glance, you would think the gameplay would feel pretty identical to Spiderman 2018 considering that there hasn’t been much time between them for them to evolve mechanics. This is fairly true but there are definitely some changes. The combat is the same idea but with a lot of new moves and animations for Miles. The most notable is the use of venom which is a form of electricity that Miles can use during combat to take down enemies. There is a decent amount of side content in Spiderman Miles Morales but it felt lower quality compared to what was in Spiderman 2018.

    If you are playing on the PlayStation 5, you do have some new things you can check out. First off is raytracing. Insomniac Games does a really good job with it but there was no going back to it after I switched to 60 frames per second mode. Swinging around the city with that smoothness is incredible. It is worth noting, that Insomniac Games added a 60 frames per second with ray tracing in 1080p mode which is how I probably would have played the game if it was available back at launch. The PlayStation 5 controller also showcases their adaptive triggers when you swing through the city. While it is a nice touch that adds some immersion, I thought they could have done more with it. Astrobot’s Playroom set a very high standard for how developers should use the adaptive triggers and haptic feedback.

    Bugs:

    Early in the game, a character spills some food on a carpet (think Kevin Malone and his chili from The Office). Instead of going to the bathroom for cleaning supplies, he goes to a computer to do some work and then makes his way to the bathroom after you grab another item. That was the only notable bug. It was a very polished experience.

    Credit: Insomniac Games

    Conclusion:

    I still stand by my original thought that this game was not needed (I felt that there was no need for a smaller standalone game since we just had Spiderman two years earlier). A fourth DLC releasing with Spiderman 2018 Remastered or some flashbacks in the next mainline Spiderman game (which is rumored to have both Peter and Miles as playable characters) could have easily told this story without some of the filler. However, this was still a great Spiderman experience. Miles was an amazing character. Seeing New York City around Christmas time changed up the map enough to make it not feel overly repetitive. The gameplay evolved much more then I expected it to (mainly thanks to the 60 fps enhancement). This game really made me think about how in the world Insomniac Games is developing so much at once while keeping it at the highest quality.

    Final Score: 8/10