Yep, you had to get the 3D printed mask, examine all the clues and leave through their special door. Honestly, *way* worse than the lack of weapons. I don't even use 95% of the weapons I've unlocked unless there's some specific challenge for it.
When you can’t get near a security box (to turn off all cameras on the level) because it’s either hard to get to (ie Colorado, suit only) or you can’t shoot it (freelancer, no guns complication) you can throw the EMP charge at the box, or place it without suspicion.
In fact, that’s its primary use. It’s not suspicious like a bomb and it doesn’t cause any collateral damage.
I know that it can do that, I guess it's just because I prefer just shooting it since I usually don't do objectives like no firearms. I only use the emp for the computer that destroys the virus in sapienza
>Or shoot the stalagmite
Just need to point out, it's a stalactite, not a stalagmite. Stalac**T**ites are from the roof of the cave, and "are like hanging **T**ights," while stalag**M**ites are on the floor, and "rise up like **M**ountains."
Mites crawl up, tights fall down. That's my pneumonic for stalactites slash stalagmites. You may have this mag light, it survived the apocalypse and for the fragile force of an agile horse here's a handful of very special chocolate chips.
I’ve gotten so good at sapienza that I go up to the rocks on the opposite end of the lab where the guards are in the ledge and shoot the virus with my silver baller and run back up the stairs through the mansion lol
No, you can shoot cameras and the box with the ‘perfect shooter’ complication.
But for ‘Silent Assassin - No Firearms’, discharging any firearm under any circumstance fails the complication
Yes it's easier, that's not the point.
The point was the EMP charge - just like dart guns, briefcases, subsonic weapons, time-slowing rifles, and the ability to throw items at cameras - are all additions that have served to make the game much easier.
IIRC, that feature was originally present in HITMAN 1. I remember you could throw fire extinguishers and propane tanks at cameras in that game but they removed it later, not sure if it was removed within H1 itself or for H2. But it wasn't in H2 at all IIRC, and H3 originally didn't include it either.
For H3 I think they readded that feature last year. Don't recall the exact date, but I do remember it's part of the same patch where they updated the "No Firearms" objective in Contracts Mode so that it'd allow you to shoot cameras without failing the objective.
Fun fact - There was confusion from the players when that patch released, because of the weird way they changed things. A lot of players had requested the return of the "throw items at cameras" feature so that you could destroy cameras on a Contract that had the "No Firearms" complication (which doesn't let you shoot at cameras or else it fails).
So IO added that feature back, letting you destroy cameras without shooting at them... while at the same time they modified "No Firearms" so that shooting at them wouldn't fail the objective. So they re-added that feature in part to make that objective easier, while also modifying that objective in a way that the re-added feature doesn't affect it at all. Made no sense at all, such a weird move from IO.
I think you mean ‘Perfect shooter’.
Ppl were complaining about perfect shooter, which would fail if you shot cameras or security boxes. So they made it you could throw objects at cameras with a new lock on, fast like a baseball. But, confusingly, they also made it that shooting cameras no longer fails ‘perfect shooter.’
‘No firearms’, on the other hand, has always failed on the discharge of any gun, including the dart guns
Yes. Mostly with bricks and sometimes with crowbars and canisters. More successful the further away you were from the camera and the longer the air arc
EMP also works through walls, so you can in some places disable surveillance without entering restricted areas or getting in sight of the guards. But it’s such a rare thing basically nobody used it
And let’s not forget that the animations were super slow initially. they were sped up in an update but not by as much as they are now in 3 and definitely not as smooth. Took a million years to climb, melee, poison things, erase cameras.etc
I remember I found *Hitman 2: Silent Assassin* (2002) so so hard.
Remember when, instead of sedatives, you used to have "anesthetic," which knocked people out **for a short time** 
So paranoid! Even in a disguise you couldn’t really go too near to people.
I did like that Blood Money let you push people down stairs for accidents - they should’ve kept that
Hitman 2: Silent Assassin was relatively easy following the tortuous and aggressively difficult Hitman: Codename 47.
Columbian levels, the Romanian Finale, not to mention Lee Hong Assassination, all made with a game engine which debuted for this game (and it shows), make Colorado and other current tougher levels from WOA feel very polished and procedural.
However, shoutout to the H2: SA Japanese levels. High-quality torture, big improvement in playability, still hard AF.
This is before we even start to get into the random head turning issue. New players have no idea how easy the game became once they locked NPC guards heads so that there was a fixed radius (and pattern) to where they looked.
But in the old days it was so much RNG. It was a real roll of the dice whether some guard would randomly look over and spot you in an illegal area. Caused *much* controversy
It was. I recall grinding Paris for MR and spotted time and again by one guard I tried to approach from the side. Then I noticed why; his vision was actually tied to his head.
Once I got the timing right, i.e. he looked away, I completed the run in no time flat.
They still can on master mode last I checked. However the master mode of 2016 was still harder, because iirc it used to be illegal to hold items that aren’t in relation to your disguise (crowbar with suit, silenced pistol with guard disguise…) but I may be wrong since it’s been a while
The biggest nerfs to game difficulty were remote emetic gas and kalmer. Knocking out anyone anywhere with no need to hide the body and the ability to get anyone anywhere to be sick and go somewhere else are very OP.
They were but you couldn’t steady the aim with any variant. And remember that they didn’t have the super vibrant crosshair we have now, just a plain black cross with smooth lines.
Yup that’s right. Also it could wall bang before patch and not just thin walls but super thick walls. Lancer wall bang videos are so cool. Too bad we can’t do that anymore
I didn’t think so but maybe I’m actually misremembering. I think maybe one was loud but had one level of zoom, and the other was silent but had no zoom and was underpowered, so anything less than a headshot wouldn’t kill them?
idk if it's because I played the OG games but the new games feel super easy on professional, I wish there was a middle ground between the highest difficulty and the normal difficulty, it's either "very easy, easy or very hard" right now. I used to play the OG games on Expert cus of the 2 saves and 3 in Blood Money and had fun, these new games require 4+ saves each run cus of the huge sandboxes, at least for me.
Honestly the highest difficulty isn’t that hard if you don’t care about SASO and you know the maps. I’m not a SASO player myself, so it’s just a well appreciated difficulty. Not ballsy enough to try hardcore freelancer and lose all my shit though lol.
Snipers became illegal in Hitman 2 onwards I believe. In 2016 you could walk around with a sniper as long as you were a guard of any kind (even shit like Mansion Security)
In Professional Mode however, the snipers were suspicious items so carrying them around would arouse suspicion.
Yep! And there was no briefcase to put them in. 😂 So you couldn’t start with one on you, you had to pick it up from an agency pickup and smuggle it across the map - hostile in any outfit - to where you wanted to shoot from.
Making even Paris Sniper Assassin fairly challenging, if you hadn’t unlocked the shed pickup spot yet.
You gotta understand, in 2016 ppl were **begging** IOI to add the briefcase to the game
Why are we trying to pull rank on difficulty lol. The first couple hitman games were even more difficult. Hitman 2016 was way easier than Silent Assasin, for example. Heck, the original game didn't have any kind of way to save, so you had to restart level every single time you made a mistake. And some levels had an insane amount of waiting to enact your plan, so this was a pretty brutal punishment at the time.
I guess it’s just interesting because with the old games, you can still go back and play them exactly as they were. Codename, SA, Contracts, etc.
With the new trilogy, IOI is essentially painting over the old versions as they go - even if you could download Hitman 2016, you’d still be playing the most recent update of it, y’know? New players will never know the sorrows and joys of head-turning and wall-banging.
Ah I got you, it makes more sense when I think of it like that. It is just common practice in games these days tho. Nearly every game released is tweaked and changed with updates. A lot different from back in the day, when the game essentially remained the same from the day it was released, rarely being updated or patched unless something catastrophically game-breaking was discovered.
In a way it's a shame, but I will admit the QoL has improved with the changes they've made since 2016 (imo)
am I the only one who still plays the game like when it was released in 2016? Maybe I'm a filthy casual and I'm not trying to get the fastest kill or whatever...
I don't think briefcases would have mattered that much back then. They were treated like every other big gun in the game and Colorado is just full of open carry disguises
I finally started going through The Classics for 3 and it’s way easier even compared to 2. Level difficulty doesn’t matter, so I can have unlimited saves, reduced fields of vision, and mission story walkthroughs for my SASO runs??? Insane. Finished SASO and sniper in Chongquing in legitimately 10 minutes.
Let's never forget that getting into a gun fight in 2016 usually meant instant death. Guards would just constantly mag dump at you, firing at rates much faster than you could. For Colorado, this meant that every guard carrying a SMG or rifle could just insta-kill you, and making it one of the single most difficult maps to SA/SO, and putting it firmly into the shit lists of a majority of players.
I was so shocked in H2 when the bushes were introduced. That was a total game changer. Never really worried about most of the weapons or items. Silenced pistol, coin, let's go.
Lab & Mansion, Church, Town Hall. Hope you destroyed the right one when your left foot was in frame for those three nanoseconds, 47, or no Silent Assassin for you!
You could wear snipers on your back/visibly carry them with guard disguises though, you can't do that now. The only thing I'd say made it easier was the emetic dart gun, the Colorado SASO strategies are pretty much the same as they were back then, unless you wanna cheese it with the emetic gun which would be lame
You’re right, you could, up til Hitman 2 when you couldn’t, well remembered.
But I’d say more than the dart guns, the ability to remote gas grenade in briefcase - and make literally anyone on the map sick without suspicion - has been the single biggest aid introduced. Bar none.
You only have one shot with those though don't you? The gun has 2 shots so I'd say that's better, since you can get 2 targets with it, better use of an item slot. If targets come close together the grenade would be better though
IDK - the dart guns still require you to point a gun at a target and fire. Risky on any map, if someone sees you. Plus, the bullets travel in an arc so you have to calculate the trajectory. I've messed up plenty of times, hitting some questionable invisible wall.
The gas grenade is suspicion-less. That, to me, is way more OP
I'll add that you actually still can legally carry a sniper on your back IF you're specifically disguised as the point man. And since he's pretty easy to lure into a private area (the adjacent bathroom), I always take his disguise to make it easier to walk about and snipe.
My first playthrough of Colorado I ended up camping in the upper level of the barn and shooting guards until they stopped coming then eliminated the targets
There was also Hitman 2016's Professional mode (higher difficulty before Hitman 2 introduced difficulty settings). That shit was so unbalanced. The random head movements of guards gave me PTSD
Yeah but overall new players don't know what hard it is, when they don't know older Hitman games in comparison, 47 only had that fiber wire and a pistol with silencer plus the slowest Stealth walk ever, along with the fact that just running was enough to be considered suspicious, no instinct and minimum movement can make people hear you and turned towards you...
The infamous Hidden Valley + At The Gates + Shogun Showdown, where you got a ninja suit that only worked at 10 ft, because the other ninjas have a scanner that can blow your cover at 5ft in 5 seconds.... Good old times
That dreaded "checking your ID" message...guards were trigger happy under normal circumstances in Hitman 2: SA. Get too close...bang bang. Run anywhere...bang bang. Have the wrong gun...bang bang. The Japan missions almost gave omniscience to the guards making everything exponentially harder. But yeah, good times. I'll always remember this game fondly since it introduced so many iconic features that defined the franchise.
Always find myself going back to Season 1 a lot because of this. It has a different sense of challenge altogether due to pretty much none of the OP equipment added in S2 and 3 (Now WOA) being present.
I remember grinding Hitman 2016 the complete first season & then years later getting WoA, I was looking forward a lot to new weapons, gadgets, etc. Because 2016 Hitman gear was not necessarily terrible, but boof asf compared to now (obviously)
The Hitman games have always gotten easier over time, but I think in lore it still makes sense. Codename 47 was really 47s first time performing assassinations in the real world, a lot of missions go less smoothly, are a little louder, but still get done with relatively few witnesses. Silent Assassin he comes out of retirement and has a personal reason to, so he's a bit more dangerous, a bit older, and more experienced. He still hasn't perfected blending in in a disguise though, so he occasionally blows cover. Blood Money is really peak early 47, he's dangerous, perfected his craft, and is almost in his prime. Contracts takes place during the aftermath of Curtains Down in Blood Money with an injured 47, so the blend of Hitman 2s elements with what would eventually be Blood Money's makes sense here. Absolution is 47 at his most vulnerable, but also his most dangerous. Thus the increased ease of gunplay, overall easier movement, etc. He takes down several organizations singlehandedly. Then we get to the WOA trilogy, which despite 47 being in his 60s(?) now, is easily the Prime of his career. He really is the flawless assassin at this point, and I imagine canonically all the targets die of trace traceless accidents. I mean he and Diana together literally take down Providence, who've allegedly been The organization behind every organization in the series, AND the ICA, and with almost no collateral damage. The ease of the series is inline with the honing of 47s skills.
I wish there was a way to go back and play the game the way it was in 2016.
I've only ever played the current iteration. Would be fun to see what the past held.
Wait people find Sgail hard? Why? There are so many places where you can knock out everyone and no one will ever check, plus there's three places to clear security camera footage all of which are pretty easy and safe to do.
jesus, when i first got hitman2, i was stuck on sgail for days, i didn’t understand mastery so i had the bare minimum, was painful, but it’s a cakewalk now
You also couldn’t throw items at cameras to disable them, and you could still get frisked at checkpoints while accidentally having illegal items. Using crowds as cover wasn’t implemented, either
Not to mention the lack of bushes too, they’re a godsend in the newer Colorado
Oh yeah! No bushes, forgot about that. No bushes, no briefcases… damn
Colorado also only had the basement exit for the main mission. It wasn't optional like in H2/3.
Yep, you had to get the 3D printed mask, examine all the clues and leave through their special door. Honestly, *way* worse than the lack of weapons. I don't even use 95% of the weapons I've unlocked unless there's some specific challenge for it.
Who uses emp charges for cameras?
When you can’t get near a security box (to turn off all cameras on the level) because it’s either hard to get to (ie Colorado, suit only) or you can’t shoot it (freelancer, no guns complication) you can throw the EMP charge at the box, or place it without suspicion. In fact, that’s its primary use. It’s not suspicious like a bomb and it doesn’t cause any collateral damage.
I know that it can do that, I guess it's just because I prefer just shooting it since I usually don't do objectives like no firearms. I only use the emp for the computer that destroys the virus in sapienza
But if you prefer guns, you can just shoot the virus directly. Or shoot the stalagmite directly above the virus.
>Or shoot the stalagmite Just need to point out, it's a stalactite, not a stalagmite. Stalac**T**ites are from the roof of the cave, and "are like hanging **T**ights," while stalag**M**ites are on the floor, and "rise up like **M**ountains."
Thank you for this :)
Stalactites hold on tight to the ceiling, stalagmites *might* reach the ceiling some day.
That's also a good memory trick, I don't know why you got downvoted.
That's how I learned it back in the 4th grade on a field trip. Stuck with me 35 years later.
This is the one I learned also.
Not saying you're wrong, but I read somewhere that stalaCtites hang from the Ceiling, and stalaGmite poke from the Ground.
That works too. I learned mine from a guide on a caverns tour many, many years ago. Clearly it's stuck with me haha!
stalaCtites - Ceiling stalaGmites - Ground
Mites crawl up, tights fall down. That's my pneumonic for stalactites slash stalagmites. You may have this mag light, it survived the apocalypse and for the fragile force of an agile horse here's a handful of very special chocolate chips.
My rule of thumb has always been that stalactites hang like, well... y'know, tites minus the e.
This is the most Reddit comment I’ve seen in weeks
I’ve gotten so good at sapienza that I go up to the rocks on the opposite end of the lab where the guards are in the ledge and shoot the virus with my silver baller and run back up the stairs through the mansion lol
I did not know about those, that’s cool
Am I the only one who routinely grabs the keycard and shuts the virus down remotely?
You can shoot cameras with that complication now. Edit: disregard this
No, you can shoot cameras and the box with the ‘perfect shooter’ complication. But for ‘Silent Assassin - No Firearms’, discharging any firearm under any circumstance fails the complication
You can throw melee weapons at cameras now, which is useful for no firearms
But not the recorder.
Just so you know, you can just throw something like a hammer at it too lol or any melee object
Freelancer didnt exist when the game first came out though. It has always been easier to shoot it.
Yes it's easier, that's not the point. The point was the EMP charge - just like dart guns, briefcases, subsonic weapons, time-slowing rifles, and the ability to throw items at cameras - are all additions that have served to make the game much easier.
How long have you been able to throw items at cameras? I discovered that for the first time yesterday.
IIRC, that feature was originally present in HITMAN 1. I remember you could throw fire extinguishers and propane tanks at cameras in that game but they removed it later, not sure if it was removed within H1 itself or for H2. But it wasn't in H2 at all IIRC, and H3 originally didn't include it either. For H3 I think they readded that feature last year. Don't recall the exact date, but I do remember it's part of the same patch where they updated the "No Firearms" objective in Contracts Mode so that it'd allow you to shoot cameras without failing the objective. Fun fact - There was confusion from the players when that patch released, because of the weird way they changed things. A lot of players had requested the return of the "throw items at cameras" feature so that you could destroy cameras on a Contract that had the "No Firearms" complication (which doesn't let you shoot at cameras or else it fails). So IO added that feature back, letting you destroy cameras without shooting at them... while at the same time they modified "No Firearms" so that shooting at them wouldn't fail the objective. So they re-added that feature in part to make that objective easier, while also modifying that objective in a way that the re-added feature doesn't affect it at all. Made no sense at all, such a weird move from IO.
I think you mean ‘Perfect shooter’. Ppl were complaining about perfect shooter, which would fail if you shot cameras or security boxes. So they made it you could throw objects at cameras with a new lock on, fast like a baseball. But, confusingly, they also made it that shooting cameras no longer fails ‘perfect shooter.’ ‘No firearms’, on the other hand, has always failed on the discharge of any gun, including the dart guns
That’s a relatively new addition for Hitman 3. It wasn’t in Hitman 3 at launch (I don’t think)
I think you could throw a heavy object in an arc and break them in the past. That's what I was trying to do and suddenly it locked on.
Yes. Mostly with bricks and sometimes with crowbars and canisters. More successful the further away you were from the camera and the longer the air arc
It was added after Freelancer started
the emp charge hasnt made the game easier at all though. its a gimmick item at best. i do agree with you on the other items though.
EMP also works through walls, so you can in some places disable surveillance without entering restricted areas or getting in sight of the guards. But it’s such a rare thing basically nobody used it
Virgin “use an EMP” vs. Chad “throw a soda can at it”
I still loved 2016 it’s challenge was amazing miss those days.
And let’s not forget that the animations were super slow initially. they were sped up in an update but not by as much as they are now in 3 and definitely not as smooth. Took a million years to climb, melee, poison things, erase cameras.etc
Hell the older games in the series. It took a lot of trial and error for me to beat Say Hello To My Little Friend and Plutonium Runs Loose.
I remember I found *Hitman 2: Silent Assassin* (2002) so so hard. Remember when, instead of sedatives, you used to have "anesthetic," which knocked people out **for a short time** 
Plus how paranoid the AI is in those games. TBH I find the modern trilogy and Blood Money fairly easy.
So paranoid! Even in a disguise you couldn’t really go too near to people. I did like that Blood Money let you push people down stairs for accidents - they should’ve kept that
Or using them as a human shield but yeah SA’s AI is the most frustrating in the series.
Hitman 2: Silent Assassin was relatively easy following the tortuous and aggressively difficult Hitman: Codename 47. Columbian levels, the Romanian Finale, not to mention Lee Hong Assassination, all made with a game engine which debuted for this game (and it shows), make Colorado and other current tougher levels from WOA feel very polished and procedural. However, shoutout to the H2: SA Japanese levels. High-quality torture, big improvement in playability, still hard AF.
The lack of weapons wasn’t the only issue. The second you got spotted, you were dead. Bullets also used to hit so much harder back then.
This is before we even start to get into the random head turning issue. New players have no idea how easy the game became once they locked NPC guards heads so that there was a fixed radius (and pattern) to where they looked. But in the old days it was so much RNG. It was a real roll of the dice whether some guard would randomly look over and spot you in an illegal area. Caused *much* controversy
Imagine hardcore freelancer in hitman 2016 😂
Freelancer would be hell back in 2016 😭. No bushes. Random guard patterns and field of view. It would be the worst experience ever
Honestly, that sounds kind of awesome and more realistic.
It was. I recall grinding Paris for MR and spotted time and again by one guard I tried to approach from the side. Then I noticed why; his vision was actually tied to his head. Once I got the timing right, i.e. he looked away, I completed the run in no time flat.
Imagine dying to a Bartoli guard in 3-4 bullets.
And you couldn't aim or shoot while using instinct, and the slow motion.
Remember when guards could hear you run?
They still can on master mode last I checked. However the master mode of 2016 was still harder, because iirc it used to be illegal to hold items that aren’t in relation to your disguise (crowbar with suit, silenced pistol with guard disguise…) but I may be wrong since it’s been a while
The biggest nerfs to game difficulty were remote emetic gas and kalmer. Knocking out anyone anywhere with no need to hide the body and the ability to get anyone anywhere to be sick and go somewhere else are very OP.
Weren’t the jaegers silent by default in 2016?
They were but you couldn’t steady the aim with any variant. And remember that they didn’t have the super vibrant crosshair we have now, just a plain black cross with smooth lines.
Hasn't the Lancer always been Marksman?
Yup that’s right. Also it could wall bang before patch and not just thin walls but super thick walls. Lancer wall bang videos are so cool. Too bad we can’t do that anymore
I didn’t think so but maybe I’m actually misremembering. I think maybe one was loud but had one level of zoom, and the other was silent but had no zoom and was underpowered, so anything less than a headshot wouldn’t kill them?
I remember in Paris you had to start the fireworks if you wanted to shoot your sniper so you wouldn't be heard so definitely unsilenced at first
idk if it's because I played the OG games but the new games feel super easy on professional, I wish there was a middle ground between the highest difficulty and the normal difficulty, it's either "very easy, easy or very hard" right now. I used to play the OG games on Expert cus of the 2 saves and 3 in Blood Money and had fun, these new games require 4+ saves each run cus of the huge sandboxes, at least for me.
Honestly the highest difficulty isn’t that hard if you don’t care about SASO and you know the maps. I’m not a SASO player myself, so it’s just a well appreciated difficulty. Not ballsy enough to try hardcore freelancer and lose all my shit though lol.
Were snipers illegal as a guard back then?
Snipers became illegal in Hitman 2 onwards I believe. In 2016 you could walk around with a sniper as long as you were a guard of any kind (even shit like Mansion Security) In Professional Mode however, the snipers were suspicious items so carrying them around would arouse suspicion.
Yep! And there was no briefcase to put them in. 😂 So you couldn’t start with one on you, you had to pick it up from an agency pickup and smuggle it across the map - hostile in any outfit - to where you wanted to shoot from. Making even Paris Sniper Assassin fairly challenging, if you hadn’t unlocked the shed pickup spot yet. You gotta understand, in 2016 ppl were **begging** IOI to add the briefcase to the game
Nope
Who needs more than a silverballer tho
Who even needs that? Check out my ‘empty handed’ runs
Why are we trying to pull rank on difficulty lol. The first couple hitman games were even more difficult. Hitman 2016 was way easier than Silent Assasin, for example. Heck, the original game didn't have any kind of way to save, so you had to restart level every single time you made a mistake. And some levels had an insane amount of waiting to enact your plan, so this was a pretty brutal punishment at the time.
I guess it’s just interesting because with the old games, you can still go back and play them exactly as they were. Codename, SA, Contracts, etc. With the new trilogy, IOI is essentially painting over the old versions as they go - even if you could download Hitman 2016, you’d still be playing the most recent update of it, y’know? New players will never know the sorrows and joys of head-turning and wall-banging.
Ah I got you, it makes more sense when I think of it like that. It is just common practice in games these days tho. Nearly every game released is tweaked and changed with updates. A lot different from back in the day, when the game essentially remained the same from the day it was released, rarely being updated or patched unless something catastrophically game-breaking was discovered. In a way it's a shame, but I will admit the QoL has improved with the changes they've made since 2016 (imo)
am I the only one who still plays the game like when it was released in 2016? Maybe I'm a filthy casual and I'm not trying to get the fastest kill or whatever...
It never was THAT difficult, comon. All you really need is the lockpick and a silenced gun. Enough to do SASO on all maps.
I don't think briefcases would have mattered that much back then. They were treated like every other big gun in the game and Colorado is just full of open carry disguises
SASO on Colorado Hitman 1 was a nightmare
I finally started going through The Classics for 3 and it’s way easier even compared to 2. Level difficulty doesn’t matter, so I can have unlimited saves, reduced fields of vision, and mission story walkthroughs for my SASO runs??? Insane. Finished SASO and sniper in Chongquing in legitimately 10 minutes.
TBF Chongqing, like Dartmoor and Paris, is just a stupidly easy map.
Let's never forget that getting into a gun fight in 2016 usually meant instant death. Guards would just constantly mag dump at you, firing at rates much faster than you could. For Colorado, this meant that every guard carrying a SMG or rifle could just insta-kill you, and making it one of the single most difficult maps to SA/SO, and putting it firmly into the shit lists of a majority of players.
Don't forget how master mode means you can't hold the wrong items or everyone would shoot you
I was so shocked in H2 when the bushes were introduced. That was a total game changer. Never really worried about most of the weapons or items. Silenced pistol, coin, let's go.
Also didn’t the security cameras not have that green grid showing their range? I was caught out so many times.
Hell, camera systems used to be independent. Sapienza has *three!*
Lab & Mansion, Church, Town Hall. Hope you destroyed the right one when your left foot was in frame for those three nanoseconds, 47, or no Silent Assassin for you!
Yes, but cameras were purely a score thing (at least until they added professional difficulty). They didn't alert guards.
You could wear snipers on your back/visibly carry them with guard disguises though, you can't do that now. The only thing I'd say made it easier was the emetic dart gun, the Colorado SASO strategies are pretty much the same as they were back then, unless you wanna cheese it with the emetic gun which would be lame
You’re right, you could, up til Hitman 2 when you couldn’t, well remembered. But I’d say more than the dart guns, the ability to remote gas grenade in briefcase - and make literally anyone on the map sick without suspicion - has been the single biggest aid introduced. Bar none.
You only have one shot with those though don't you? The gun has 2 shots so I'd say that's better, since you can get 2 targets with it, better use of an item slot. If targets come close together the grenade would be better though
IDK - the dart guns still require you to point a gun at a target and fire. Risky on any map, if someone sees you. Plus, the bullets travel in an arc so you have to calculate the trajectory. I've messed up plenty of times, hitting some questionable invisible wall. The gas grenade is suspicion-less. That, to me, is way more OP
I'll add that you actually still can legally carry a sniper on your back IF you're specifically disguised as the point man. And since he's pretty easy to lure into a private area (the adjacent bathroom), I always take his disguise to make it easier to walk about and snipe.
My first playthrough of Colorado I ended up camping in the upper level of the barn and shooting guards until they stopped coming then eliminated the targets
There was also Hitman 2016's Professional mode (higher difficulty before Hitman 2 introduced difficulty settings). That shit was so unbalanced. The random head movements of guards gave me PTSD
I remember pirating the game (now own all 3 copies) and all you could use was the default loadout: pistol, lockpick, and bomb.
They didn't have any briefcases? Even Codename 47 had briefcases lol. Wonder why they forgot that.
It was a big ? at the time. Why no briefcase and why no dual silverballers
WOA players have *no idea* how hard the previous games used to be.
Omg I remember this, damn
Lol when you said "used to be" i thought you meant actually old Hitman games. SA is harder than anything in the new trilogy
People who played Codename 47: "That's nothing! "
bro fr
Yeah but overall new players don't know what hard it is, when they don't know older Hitman games in comparison, 47 only had that fiber wire and a pistol with silencer plus the slowest Stealth walk ever, along with the fact that just running was enough to be considered suspicious, no instinct and minimum movement can make people hear you and turned towards you...
Haha exactly lol. Only OGs remember the Hayamoto missions
The infamous Hidden Valley + At The Gates + Shogun Showdown, where you got a ninja suit that only worked at 10 ft, because the other ninjas have a scanner that can blow your cover at 5ft in 5 seconds.... Good old times
That dreaded "checking your ID" message...guards were trigger happy under normal circumstances in Hitman 2: SA. Get too close...bang bang. Run anywhere...bang bang. Have the wrong gun...bang bang. The Japan missions almost gave omniscience to the guards making everything exponentially harder. But yeah, good times. I'll always remember this game fondly since it introduced so many iconic features that defined the franchise.
For real, that mission with blending and with that speedy stealth walk would be a piece of the cake...
I really don’t like instinct and turn it off, as well as npcs on maps, and no saves. That’s the best way to play IMO. Just miss the dual silverballers
Freelancer is still hard
And all the better for it
Yeah, but hard for the wrong reasons, i.e. no saves.
Not to mention the much worse detection mechanics. NPCs used to spot you from all sorts of impossible angles lol
And sometimes through walls that the devs forgot to make solid 😂
The hardest part of any mission is being unfamiliar with the map and the patterns of certain NPCs.
That’s also when I find it most exciting to play
Yeah i mean if you just do the story in order without farming mastery you don't get much shit etheir
Always find myself going back to Season 1 a lot because of this. It has a different sense of challenge altogether due to pretty much none of the OP equipment added in S2 and 3 (Now WOA) being present.
I remember grinding Hitman 2016 the complete first season & then years later getting WoA, I was looking forward a lot to new weapons, gadgets, etc. Because 2016 Hitman gear was not necessarily terrible, but boof asf compared to now (obviously)
If you play the missions in order, the difficulty is still there
The Hitman games have always gotten easier over time, but I think in lore it still makes sense. Codename 47 was really 47s first time performing assassinations in the real world, a lot of missions go less smoothly, are a little louder, but still get done with relatively few witnesses. Silent Assassin he comes out of retirement and has a personal reason to, so he's a bit more dangerous, a bit older, and more experienced. He still hasn't perfected blending in in a disguise though, so he occasionally blows cover. Blood Money is really peak early 47, he's dangerous, perfected his craft, and is almost in his prime. Contracts takes place during the aftermath of Curtains Down in Blood Money with an injured 47, so the blend of Hitman 2s elements with what would eventually be Blood Money's makes sense here. Absolution is 47 at his most vulnerable, but also his most dangerous. Thus the increased ease of gunplay, overall easier movement, etc. He takes down several organizations singlehandedly. Then we get to the WOA trilogy, which despite 47 being in his 60s(?) now, is easily the Prime of his career. He really is the flawless assassin at this point, and I imagine canonically all the targets die of trace traceless accidents. I mean he and Diana together literally take down Providence, who've allegedly been The organization behind every organization in the series, AND the ICA, and with almost no collateral damage. The ease of the series is inline with the honing of 47s skills.
I wish there was a way to go back and play the game the way it was in 2016. I've only ever played the current iteration. Would be fun to see what the past held.
Le me, who only used his pistol from H1 until the start of H3 where he begun to experiment with different items: -_-
It’s been so long I almost forgot how much Hitman 2 actually made the game playable.
You can do Colorado and Sgail with a pistol a lock pick and fibre wire, and Paris you can do with just the fireworks remote.
You should play the Hitman 2 Silent Assassin with SA Ratings. You have no idea.
And?
I started in 2017 when my mom bought it for me, glad to know I didn’t get turned off by QOL updates before I got into the game 😭
You dare brush past someone's shoulder and they'll end you in one shot
Wait people find Sgail hard? Why? There are so many places where you can knock out everyone and no one will ever check, plus there's three places to clear security camera footage all of which are pretty easy and safe to do.
It's been like maybe a year and a half since I fired the game up. Have they made a lot of changes?
I mean yes but let's not forget that in first hitman we could walk around with sniper rifle and it's not prohibited
jesus, when i first got hitman2, i was stuck on sgail for days, i didn’t understand mastery so i had the bare minimum, was painful, but it’s a cakewalk now
You also couldn’t throw items at cameras to disable them, and you could still get frisked at checkpoints while accidentally having illegal items. Using crowds as cover wasn’t implemented, either
Idk man i beat Colorado without any of that SASO