Archive for May, 2006

Hooray!

I just finished Beldingfield Manor and got a Silent Assassin rating.

Kill a guard near the start, take his uniform and gun. Walk to the front of the house, up the ladder, in the window. Pick up poison. Save. Syringe the weird woman wearing underwear in the shower (could have turned it off, I found out later), smother the old guy with a pillow. Downstairs, to the basement, poison the cask of whisky. Save. Wait for target to be served and to drink whisky. Out the front doors, over to the stables, poison the horses, turn off the telly, steal the key, free the academic bloke, run straight back out the level.

Died quite a few times and it took about two hours in total, but got there in the end. And dying’s good too, because you get fun shootouts beforehand. As the colour bleeds away and the speed falls I always try to get the man that killed me.

Excellent stuff.

Finally finished the third mission, the one I started yesterday. That’s two evenings play it’s taken me.

I had a great idea of catching my two targets in an explosion, but it kept only killing one of them. The survivor would then go and sit in a car in fulll view of about eight guards, meaning that killing him was impossible. Eventually I just had to run to where the targets were when I’d saved, gun them down and then run out of the level.

Got a mass murderer rating from that level, not quite the silent assassin that I was hoping to be. Oh well, job done, however messy.

Only having two save points per level is a bugger when you get them. That level seemed to take ages to do, but the total time (not including reloads after deaths) was only twenty minutes. A few hours actually including those retries, of course.

Phew. Maybe I should have swallowed my pride and played on Normal difficulty, but I don’t want the game to be easier, I want to be better.

I started it again tonight, this time on Expert difficulty, when I noticed it was on the backwards compatibility list. Plays fine on the 360, though there is some very slight graphical glitching here and there. Very, very slight.

I’m currently having a very, very hard time doing The Bjarkhov Bomb mission after a really, really sloppy Meat King’s Party. Can I find a radiation suit? Can I fuck. (Though my Asylum Escape was textbook.)

And I’m glad nobody reads this diary, because I noticed tonight that Contracts does have a suspicion meter. A big one, right next to health meter. Yes, it has one of those things I was praising Blood Money for introducing. I’m an idiot. Like I said, I’m glad nobody reads this. This is where I write the stuff I assume nobody wants to read – but it’s stuff I somehow have an insane need to make public record. The Internet does weird things to a man sometimes.

For no reason at all I decided to stop playing on Normal difficulty and restart the game on Professional difficulty, the highest setting. Well, I say for no reason, but it’s because I was annoyed about being able to get away with too much. It’s too easy on Normal to start blowing people away when things go wrong. On Professional, if a gun fight starts then I’m basically dead. Much better.

There’s also less information on the map – which I like – and no mid-level saves, which I’m not too keen on. But as things tend to go differently each time I play a mission, it’s not so bad.

I did the first level after a few goes. Had to kill a few cops, but I did it. The second mission – The Meat King’s Party – took a lot longer. I almost did it cleanly, though. I would have done, too, if Sturrock hadn’t been too fat to strange. I had to run off and find a knife, all the while listening to him shout for his guards. Good thing he’s too fat to move, really. The other two targets I took care of very quietly, though.

I nearly got out all right, too, but the guards decided I was suspicious as I left, so I had to run through the last few rooms. Still got a Professional rating for it, though. I’m proud of myself. Though whether I should be proud of being a very good killer is another matter. Given how many times I died before getting it right, I don’t think I’ll be changing career paths soon, though. Being a programmer is a much safer occupation.

The game’s not without oddities. Sometimes the enemy AI seems to fall apart and I’m surprised none of the people searching me cared that I had a severed arm under my jacket, but it’s generally all works well.

I’m really looking forward to Blood Money now, as it should refine everything.