Hitman: Blood Money...

[MinionZombie]

Okay people, it's out on May 26th / May 30th (all the sources I've seen have said one or the other, I'm hoping for the first of course). Anyway, there's a demo out on Monday people, I'll be there downloading it no diggity no doubt, I remember someone on here asking if there was going to be a demo, well there you go. Needless to say I can't friggin' wait!! It's time to whip out some old school carnage, new school style with sweet graphics and loads of interactivity and changeable outcomes. Any game where you can kill a guy by putting him in a freezer is worth the money. I've been waiting for this game for a year, and now it's a week away with a taster on Monday, hot damn! I can't wait to get that suit on and start sneaking around taking down my targets ... speaking of the 3rd person sneaker-type style of game - the new Splinter Cell game comes out in September I believe. I'm a big fan of the franchise and can't wait to get my hands on that - again, freedom is the name of the game - choosing whether you kill someone or not when challenged to do so will affect how both sides think of you (the NSA and the bad guys you've infiltrated). Freedom and a bit of the old ultra violence - now that's a game. Sh*t, the rating information for Hitman: Blood Money says it all, it's nothing but "bad" themes, which means GOOD.

[CoinReturn]

Well, the demo has arrived and it weighs in at a hefty 760MB. Heres the link, for those who are interested: http://files.filefront.com/Hitman+Bl.../fileinfo.html "This demo features the first level, Death of a Showman, giving you a quick tutorial and then you must track down your target in a theme park turned drug lab."

[MinionZombie]

I managed to get it downloaded last night (from ActionTrip, at a steady 70k ... not the quickest but consistent). Won't have a chance to play it until this afternoon, or perhaps evening! *gah!* After waiting so long it had to be today I had a meeting to attend in the afternoon! lol. Oh well, I'll soon have the full game in my hands ... just waiting for the stock to arrive and May 26th to crop up, yeeeeeaaaaaah, okaaaaaay!

[LoSTBoY]

I got the demo and played the single misson that came with it. It is indeed Tip-Top! Plenty of new moves, including pushing people off balconies and using people as a human shield. It was quite demanding on my PC, when I get the game I will play about with the settings to make it smoother. Oh, and when you play the demo and you get to killing the target, try the baseball bat on the wall to kill him. I noticed it after I shot him so let me know if he pulls an execution move with the bat.

[MinionZombie]

Same here - it LAGGED like buggery. I'm hoping that it's just because it's a demo, I've found sometimes that a demo will handle like total ass and then the full game with the full install works properly. I googled up specs for it and my computer is above the requirements and it should easily be able to handle it - after all, it's a game that's also on PS2 and original Xbox - which my computer can whip with ease. I played with all the settings in the demo, but nothing sorted it out, which is very, very strange indeed. It shouldn't be a hugely demanding game when I look at it...very weird. I'm hoping the full game with the full DVD amount of data will hold the key to working properly! Aside from the uber-lag, I enjoyed it. Would have enjoyed it more without the lag, so sadly that really naffed up my enjoyingness, lol. However I love being able to do hand-to-hand combat, headbutts and pushing folk around, it's handy in a sticky situation. I did this and in the process I grabbed the guy's gun and blew a hole in the other guy's head (where you have to distract the guards). I tell you, I got through about five bucks worth of coins before I ended up just boshing them both down, ha! It's just a training level, so the full scale of the game's awesomeness hasn't be revealed, but you get a good taster. Besides, I was all "oooooh" over the finale of 24, so that probably took away from me enjoying HMB as much. Here's hoping the full game will actually run and not lag like a complete twat. *edit* Are you running on an ATI card? I am and it lags like buggery, I wish I'd gotten an NVidia card now...I read some forum I googled up and other people with ATI cards were having the same problem. The only recommendation was wait for the next Catalyst drivers from ATI. 6.4 is the latest and they don't work apparently. *sigh* Goddamned ATI, BASTARDS!!! Games have lagged specifically on ATI cards before (Deus Ex 2 for example)...so I guess I'll just have to wait for the new drivers, so if you've got an ATI card and it's lagging - that'll be why and you too will have to wait for new drivers...geez, after waiting over a year for this game, now I have to wait even longer for some new f*cking drivers! ARGH!!!

[CoinReturn]

Just finished the demo, and it ran pretty good on my pc. I had everything on high, 2x AA and 4xAF. My specs: ATI X800 Pro 256mb 1 Gig RAM Athlon 64 3200+ processor Turning off soft shadows and anti-aliasing usually helps to increase your FPS.

[LoSTBoY]

I have a Radeon, but my system is getting out of date now so I expect a drop in performance. The system requirements are: Windows 2000/XP 1.5GHz processor 512MB RAM 5GB hard disks space DirectX 9 compliant graphics card supporting Pixel Shader 2.0 (nVidia GeForce FX or ATI Radeon 9500) DVD-ROM drive DirectX compatible soundcard I just make them. Time for an upgrade methinks!

[MinionZombie]

Hmmm...so it must be the more avergage to lower end of the spectrum of ATI cards that get fudged - I've got a Radeon 9600, although I had to turn off something because I was getting a lot of glitches and graphical errors etc on screen when playing back video or playing certain games, so that means my graphics card isn't as powerful as it should be. However, having googled the specs up I certainly meet the recommended, not just the minimum requirements. I played it again last night, it ran a tad better and I boosted all the settings up to "high". Still the same lag, however there would be moments where it would break into normal FPS and it ran like it should. Smooth as hell and no problems dealing with it. It's clearly an ATI driver problem for me, here's hoping they get it fixed quick smart! My computer is clearly capable of running it sweet as on "high" settings, if not "extra high" with a couple of things dialed down a bit. But fiddling with AA and all that didn't change anything, damned ATI drivers, you bloody buggers! Fix it already!!!

[LoSTBoY]

I was looking at new components for an upgrade last night and noticed they have made AGP obsolete with PCI-Express without telling me. Now if I want to upgrade my motherboard, I will need a new processor and a new graphics card. There are still AGP motherboards out, however it seems pointless getting one if they plan on using PCI-Express for their new cards. Also looking for a simple Athlon Socket A XP processor for my current motherboard and I can't find much but 64bit Proccessors, need to look in the obsolete sections.

[MinionZombie]

It's all over my head with that AGP/PCI jibber jabber, although I do remember now I had to turn off AGP on my Radeon 9600 - that's what was causing the graphical glitches and video playback green lines. I might try putting it back on again and see if HMB works better that way, but I'm certain it's a driver issue. To prove that theory I jacked HMB up to "extra high" settings, everything maxed out, and the game ran exactly the same, but there are moments when it runs nice and smooth like it will once ATI pimp out some new Catalyst drivers (I HOPE!). So yeh, once those come out I'll be assassinatin' with sweet ass graphics, hehe. I've played the demo four times today already...twice yesterday...with a poor ass FPS rate, I've been trying to get as many different headlines as possible, got "Hoodlum Kills Again!" last time I played it through.

[LoSTBoY]

I was just talking about the types of slots you graphic card goes into, AGP was the standard but now its PCI Express, hence I can't plug in my AGP card into a PCI-Express slot when I get a new Motherboard. Turning off your AGP, did you do that in BIOS or in dxdiag (DirectX). If your card is on a AGP slot then it could benifit from enabling it again.

[MinionZombie]

I turned it off in the ATI Catalyst Control Center software that comes with the drivers, actually I turned it on again back from "off" to "8x" and the demo did run better. Although I had to turn some things down a bit to bring the speed up further - I still think new ATI drivers will be the daddy of solutions. Apparently the graphical glitches (which came back with putting AGP back on) are to do with the Aperture size or something. I changed those in BIOS a while ago and managed to stop the glitches, but instead I got little white dots that appeared and disappeared like a slightly bad reception on a TV. Really not sure how I can (or IF) sort it. I can put up with the glitches for a little while, so I could turn on AGP for the time I play the game, I'll have it completed inside 4 days I'd think, which isn't too long to put up with it, but I'd have to turn off AGP if I want to really use my computer for anything at all ... especially playing videos. Good news it - HMB was posted off this avo, so 26th at the earliest, most likely the 27th I'll have my mits on those fibre wires! *fingers crossed for new ATI drivers to fix the problem so I don't have to rely on AGP, which is better off than on with my computer *

[Bunker65]

For those of you here with an Xbox 360, the demo is available for download from the Xbox Live Marketplace . I'm downloading as I type this so I haven't had a chance to try it out yet.

[LoSTBoY]

Guess what I've been playing!!! Done about 8 missions, I'm now on the 'playboy mansion' one where you have to take out some Peter Stringfellow guy and someone too fun of the S&M. I like the whole upgrade part where you can buy parts or items to help you, like a better silencer or ammo for you Baller or better lockpicks and flak jackets to generally make your guy better. The mission before that:   Where you are at New Orleans, If anyone can work out how to kill the albino guy as an accident let me know. I planted a bomb in the suitcase and blew him up, but you get a bonus if you keep the suitcase. If anyone need help, let me know. Now back to the Game.

[MinionZombie]

Damn you!!! The game arrived on my doorstep today and I only managed enough time to whip through the training mission again to be prepared to play more when I got back from my afternoon meeting - however that whole thing went on far longer than expected and I got back a lot later than I'd though, just squeezed in dinner and just finished watching the Channel 4 Friday night line up. I'm too tired to play it tonight, so I'll have a treat tomorrow, but I simply must watch the season two finale of "Lost". Grrr, all these meetings keeping me away from a jizz-worthy game! Although, I don't mind, the young woman we were meeting with today was proper fit, so it's all good, hehe. I see Eidos put out a patch to fix lag in the demo ... although I'm not sure if it'll work for the full game as well, hopefully they'll put one out for the full game, I've had to turn AGP back on again, so it's graphical glitches ahoy-hoy *grumble*. *EDIT* Swung by ActionTrip.com last night and discovered Eidos whipped out the HMB 1.1 patch, which fixes the lag issue! HOORAY!!! Needless to say I got that bitch installed faster than a 13 year old wraps up a happy session and hammered through the first couple of missions (place with a waterfall and Paris). Obviously I'm loving this game and I'm off to play it some more right now, it's the rehab level I'm at now, can't beat a bit of silenced SilverBaller action!