Documents released as part of Square Enix’s financial statement show a company disappointed by Tomb Raider‘s sales of 3.4 million, a number substantially below the 5-6 million they were aiming for.

“We put considerable amount of effort into polishing and perfecting game content for these titles,” reads the statement (PDF), “receiving extremely high Metacritic scores.”

“However we were very disappointed to see that high scores did not translate to actual sales performance.”

Hitman: Absolution similarly underperformed, selling 3.6 million of the 4.5 – 5 million Square Enix were hoping for, and Sleeping Dogs only cracked 1.75 when Square Enix were hoping for 2 – 2.5.

Late last month Square Enix warned it was expecting “an extraordinary loss” in company profit, and their CEO Yoichi Wada stepped down. It’s a genuine shame that these games have performed under expectation, as Square Enix have shown that they’re capable of publishing some top-quality games with excellent PC support.

Source: Eurogamer

Shame on you, Australia. Shame, shame, shame. Stats released by I/O Interactive gathered from Hitman: Absolution have Australia at the very bottom of the sniper kill lists, coming in at a pitiful 27 kills average. Disgusting! Even our former colonial masters in England are doing better than that!

Some other, less sordid stats revealed in the infographic indicate that over 1.3 trillion dollars have been earned through assassination contracts, and that the most popular disguise is the outside estate guard — and that breaking the necks of your targets with your bare hands is overwhelmingly the most popular solution.

Click here to see the very hi-res infographic and stats for yourself.

First the Stripper Nuns Controversy, and now this: Square Enix have landed in hot water again over a new advertising campaign which allows you to use Facebook to send death threats to your friends and have them ‘killed’ by Agent 47 via a ‘Hire Hitman’ app.

Why would you want to have your friends murdered? Well, this app allowed you to choose from a drop-down list offering a variety of thrilling and offensive reasons such as — in the case of a lady — “her big ears”, “her muffin top”, or perhaps “her small tits”. Men have similar options available, including “his tiny penis”, “his big gut” and “his sh*t hair”. The target would then be presented with a message on their Facebook wall saying that Agent 47 was coming to kill them, and a little animatic showing their hinted-at off-screen death.

Mere hours after being released into the wild, Square Enix hurriedly removed the app, saying “We were wide of the mark with the app and following feedback from the community we decided the best thing to do was remove it completely and quickly. This we’ve now done.”

“We’re sorry for any offence caused by this.”

Surely by now we’ve got to start asking ourselves: are we being trolled? Is this deliberate? Could you honestly not have seen what would happen when you released the app?

Source: RPS

There’s some new Hitman: Absolution DLC out today: the Deus Ex: Human Revolution DLC pack. I’m not really sure what to say about this one. It sort of speaks for itself, and yet it sort of doesn’t. And yet, there isn’t a lot of explanation either way.

Have you ever wondered what Agent 47 would look like in Adam Jensen’s clothes? What do you mean, ‘no’? Well, at last you can discover just how out of place Agent 47 looks dressed up in future clothes. As a side note, I like that they call it the ‘Adam Jensen disguise’ as though he wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb in that get-up. Anyway, watch the trailer! And as usual, let us know what you think.

IO Interactive have release patch v1.0.438.0 for Hitman: Absolution, which should download automatically through Steam. The patch fixes a number of configuration issues which prevented some users from even launching the game, as well as issues where Sniper Challenge unlocks didn’t carry over into Absolution correctly.

You can also now skip the intro movies, as well as various other tweaks — check out the full list below. Out of all of them, I think my favourite is probably “Players using the Russian language will no longer crash as soon as they use the sniper rifle.” That’s a pretty harsh bug.

• Players using the Russian language will no longer crash as soon as they use the sniper rifle.
• Various issues that have been seen on specific configurations that caused the game to not be able to start up at all have been addressed.
• Problems with the Sniper Challenge Unlocks not carrying over into Hitman: Absolution have been addressed. On first starting the patched game you will receive your unlocks.
• Problems with negative level-scores have been fixed. Newly accomplished positive scores will be needed to erase your incorrectly remembered negative scores.
• A problem with keyboard and mouse controls where users would accidentally melee attack a person next to them when they intended to throw an item has been addressed.
• Legal and Intro movies can now be skipped immediately on startup after the game, on all launches but the very first on a machine.
• DirectX 10 hardware can now enable the simplest version of the Depth Of Field effect.
• Problems with audio occasionally being muted after ALT-TAB have been fixed.
• Various localization fixes.
• Miscellaneous other stability and general improvements based on crashes we have seen coming in.

Despite the latest Hitman game, Hitman: Absolution only being released this week (read our review here), already there is talk of the next game in the franchise. The hot goss though, is that the game’s developer IO Interactive is passing the torch to a new studio, Square Enix Montreal, and working on a new project themselves.

Absolution‘s director Tore Blystad compared the move to a new studio to the cyclical format games like Call of Duty follow. “It’s like with Treyarch and Infinity Ward.“You have an IP that has been developed. They will feed off each other, as well as some things that stand out. I think with these big franchises it takes a long time to develop just one game. If you can, work a little bit in parallel at least and help each other out.”

“We’ve been talking about these similarities to some of the big movie franchise like Aliens, where everyone’s doing it their own way. Every time someone gets their hands on a franchise they do something different,” he said. “So rather than doing the same thing again you get another take on the character from a fresh perspective.”

“There’s a lot of these problems you encounter with these sort of productions, some of them are really fundamental problems, or they have a big effect on the game – like how you do a mechanic for instance. If you change a mechanic too much then the whole gameplay will be modified.”

Source: VG247

It might have been plagued with problems, but Hitman: Blood Money still has a cult following to this day. Each mission took place in a huge, open killing ground, where the method of death was limited only by the player’s twisted imagination. The game provided the tools and the environment, but it was up to you to decide how to manipulate them through hours of observation and experimentation, and it’s still revered as one of the finest examples of sandbox gameplay. Powered by the meagre muscle of the PlayStation 2 and Xbox (with the 360 version really just an afterthought), it’s no wonder virtual killers were fingering their garrottes with glee when Hitman: Absolution was announced. Today’s consoles are exponentially more powerful than their predecessors, so we could only imagine how much bigger and more densely packed with death traps the new game would be.

Instead IO Interactive used the power of the PS3 and 360 to deliver the most claustrophobic Hitman game yet.

Gone are the huge playgrounds of Blood Money, with each level now broken down into bite-sized murder-chunks. The reasoning behind this compartmentalisation is obvious as soon as you lay your eyes on Absolution’s luscious levels. By making each area much smaller, the game can cram more detail into the environment and the objects that fill it, without causing today’s consoles to burst into flames. The PC version is simply spectacular, using hardware tessellation to deliver a level of detail over and above the consoles, and the crowd technology is still as impressive as it was in the last game, with hundreds of people filling clubs and marketplaces.

The NPCs have been brought to life, far more believable than the robotic automatons of the past, spewing out lengthy reams of voiced dialogue provided you stick around long enough to listen in. In Blood Money, it often felt like you were a kid with a magnifying glass looking in on a huge robotic ant farm, but Absolution’s areas feel much more alive and real, albeit at the cost of scale and openness. While the look of the game is mostly breathtaking, IO has gone a bit crazy with the lighting and bloom stick; even Agent 47’s bald dome casts off enough glare to distract overhead pilots. The eye candy also comes at a cost, occasionally bringing my i7 3770K (overclocked to 4.5GHz) with dual GTX 670s to its knees, often in areas that should run beautifully, such as tunnels.

Due to the smaller size of the areas, many levels follow a single linear route, making it less about experimenting with different pathways and more about following the obvious cues to the next checkpoint. Every now and then it’ll open up into a larger area like a marketplace or apartment building, where hints of the old Hitman experience shine through, but even these areas pale in comparison to the hectares of space virtual hitmen are accustomed to exploring.

Making it even less about player choice is the fact that you don’t get to choose which weapons to start the mission with. Instead you spawn with whatever the level designer has deemed suitable — but you don’t have to use them. There are usually three or four traps squirrelled away in the environment, and they’re not always easy to find; in one section it took me an hour of reloading before I found a certain poisonous fish that I could use to poison my target.

This has a huge impact on the playstyle — whereas in the past you could choose which weapons to take, and the levels were littered with various options of despatching your target, now it plays out like an easter egg hunt. Walk through the level, stumble upon the obvious trap, then trigger it when the target is near. The game doesn’t even let you use weapons that you ended the last mission with — if you left the last mission bristling with items tailor made for mass murder, they’re all gone by the time you start the new mission, even when both missions are directly connected in the game’s timeline. This lack of continuity is strange problem for a game that prides itself on bringing a strong narrative to the series.

The choice to use pre-rendered cut-scenes means that other continuity issues constantly rear their ugly head. Countless times I opened a door in-game, garbed in a stolen police officer’s work blues carrying a police revolver, only for the game to jump to a cut-scene of me entering the room in Agent 47’s trademark suit armed with a silenced automatic pistol. It’s jarring and it’s basic film school stuff, so it’s baffling that a game that places such a heavy emphasis on narrative ignores one of the basic tenets of the storytelling process. If you can ignore the issue, the storyline is actually rather decent. It’s not going to win any Emmy’s, but it’s also not cringe-worthy. We’ve all known that – deep underneath the coat of blood of his recently eviscerated victims – Agent 47 has a good heart, and Absolution explores the theme of how many lives he will take to save a single life.

Chances are you’ll take a lot more lives than you want, as playing the game in stealth mode is brutally difficult. Demons Souls is an utter cake walk compared to stealthing through Absolution on the higher difficulty levels, as the linear level design and aggressive AI makes it incredibly hard to get through most areas. The new disguise system makes stealing uniforms basically worthless, as enemies garbed in the same attire will spot you in seconds unless you use your Instinct power to hide your face, but it burns out in just a couple of seconds. Throw in checkpoints that are harder to find than a working follicle on 47’s head, and this is one tough sucker.

Like Demons Souls, the sweet, sweet sensation of satisfaction of getting through a level makes it all worth it, but you’re going to need the patience of a saint to ghost your way through. Blasting enemies is infinitely simpler, and the improved controls and weapon feedback makes this a very serviceable third person shooter.

This gunplay can be used in the online Contracts mode, where you must kill a target in an area according to a plan built by other players, but most players will probably set up tricky silent assassinations instead. It’s an interesting mode that will likely die out rather quickly, as the joy of setting up or achieving a kill is still limited by the linear levels.

If it sounds like I’m disappointed in the design decision to lessen the scale of the game, it’s because I am — but that doesn’t necessarily make Absolution a bad game; it’s just very different to past Hitman experiences. Experimentation is now replaced by observation and persistence, and it feels much more like a Splinter Cell or Metal Gear game. Yet there’s still the feeling of sweet satisfaction after clearing a level without killing anybody, and in some ways this is even more pronounced thanks to the fiendishly clever AI and devilish difficulty, provided you’ve got the tenacity to retry levels dozens of times.

Many gamers will also appreciate the increased attention to detail, and won’t miss the head-scratching problem solving required in the past. If only IO Interactive could have accomplished both, combining the open nature of the previous game with the lush minutia of Absolution, it’d be the perfect Hitman game. Instead we’re left with a much more focused assassination experience, which sacrifices emergent gameplay for blockbuster presentation.

Good:

• A visually gobsmacking game which makes the most of the PC’s powerful graphics capabilities
• AI is much more believable thanks to better behaviour and a wealth of dialogue
• Pulling off environmental kills is still incredibly satisfying
• Gunplay is now a viable – and enjoyable – way to clear the game

Bad

• Doesn’t feel like a Hitman game
• A narrower experience than the sandbox gameplay of its predecessors
• Incredibly hard to successfully stealth your way through on higher difficulties
• Very demanding hardware requirements if you want all the eye candy

Green Man Gaming have just sent word that you can grab Hitman: Absolution for 35% off until 11:00 PM on the 23rd of November. You’ll need the code GMG35-FGR37-COY0B, which knocks the price down to an almost hilariously good $29.

By contrast, Hitman is currently on Steam for $54, even with the 10% pre-order discount — and the Green Man purchase gives you a Steam code anyway. Regional pricing, everybody!

We recently took a look at Hitman: Absolution on PC, and found that the time IO put into the PC version was well spent.

Remember how we received the “final” trailer for Hitman: Absolution earlier this week? Friends, that was a lie: here’s another one. This latest effort is the launch trailer, and does quite a good job communicating the quiet tension and style of Agent 47.

In related news, the Hitman Tumblr reveals that US players won’t need a bundled DLC code to access Absolution’s Contracts mode. It seems like all formats in all other territories will use an online pass system, but US players get it even if they pick the game up second hand. Strange. Hitman: Absolution releases on Nivember 20.

Source: VG247

With only 10 days now remaining to the launch of Hitman: Absolution in Australia, the marketing is now coming to a close — and this final trailer gives an overview into Agent 47′s Instinct, which is basically a neat way of seeing through walls. It also apparently has the ability to allow him to tell the future: check out the trailer below as he sees a line of fire appear across the ground indicating where a guard will walk, and then clambers out of the way just in time. Of course, you can always play the game in Purist mode to give yourself no Instinct, no guides, no help and literally no interface at all. If you want.

For more on how Absolution is shaping up on PC, check out our in-depth examination of the Sniper Challenge.

Hitman: Absolution is almost upon us with only 17 days left to go, and as such marketing for the game is stepping up a notch. This second-last trailer introduces the “living, breathing world” of the game, which seems to be a fancy way of saying “You can listen to NPC’s and then use the knowledge you gain to progress in the game”. But time will tell! In any case, it certainly looks sweet.

The cinema trailer for Hitman: Absolution is out, and I have to admit the first thing I thought of was, “No thanks, I’ve already seen Babylon A.D.!” Of course, the premise is entirely different and I was wrong to jump to such a conclusion. I can’t help but feel that the emotion behind the line, “How many lives would you take to save one?” is sort of lost in a game that is about killing people in as many ways as possible, for reals, no qualms or issues, why are we even having this conversation? But you know, it still looks like a beautiful and lovingly rendered game that I will probably pick up, let’s be honest. Check it out and tell us what you think!

A new trailer for Hitman: Absolution was released this weekend at the Golden Joystick awards; although it’s very much a cinematic affair, it’s still well worth a look, especially if you’re invested in the franchise’s fiction, or just think protagonist Agent 47 is a total badass. Hitman: Absolution launches towards the end of November.

Source: CVG

“There’s nothing quite like a tailored suit,” this Hitman: Absolution trailer claims, and we’re bang behind that statement. But what about this instances when Agent 47′s immaculate tailoring and power tie combo attracts unwanted attention? It’s disguises time, and this trailer shows off just a small number of the collection available in the full game. Some of them are awesome; some of them are useful; and others are pretty hilarious. Hitman: Absolution launches in November.

Kotaku have used an early preview build of Hitman: Absolution to detail the five difficulty levels available in the game. Ranging from the obviously-expected ‘Easy’ to the previously-revealed ‘Purist’, the difficulty affects not only the amount of enemies and their reaction time but also how much ‘Instinct’ you have, whether it regenerates, and what (if any) HUD elements are available to you.

Check them out below.

Enhanced: Easy
Supreme training and a physique enhanced beyond ordinary human capacity mean that your enemies are no match for you. By cunning or by brute force, you are unstoppable.

• Players can activate additional checkpoints
• Instinct regenerates
• Instinct will provide hints
• Enemies react more slowly than normal

Enhanced: Medium
You can rely on Agent 47′s superior training and instinct. Remaining completely unnoticed can be a challenge, but you can always rely on your guns to get you out of trouble.

• Players can activate additional checkpoints
• Instinct does not regenerate
• Instinct will provide hints
• Normal enemy presence with normal reaction times

Professional: Hard
You like a challenge and your enemies will provide you with just that. They will be more numerous and with faster reactions. Evading your enemies will be difficult and you must strike with flawless timing.

• Players can activate additional checkpoints
• Instinct depletes when used and does not regenerate
• No instinct hints
• Additional enemies with improved reaction time

Professional: Expert
You fight for every inch of progress, often without firing a single bullet. You don’t rely on any help and accept trying many times before reaching your target…and perfection.

• No player-activated checkpoints
• Instinct depletes when used and does not regenerate
• No instinct hints
• Maximum number of enemies with fastest reacton

Professional: Purist
This is a challenge for a true perfectionist. You know every rule, every detail, and all environments by heart. Even then you will die trying.

• No Help
• No guides
• No Interface
• Only a crosshair

For more Hitman, why not check out today’s hands-on preview, or find out why the Sniper Challenge shows a game looking great on PC?

Source: Kotaku

So what’s it like to be a grim-hearted killing machine for hire? The premise of IO Interactive’s Hitman games is a complex and sinister answer to this fantasy, but there’s one obvious suggestion at hand: You’d probably need to be quiet about it.

Up until now, the emphasis has been very assuredly on stealth. Stealth, as you might’ve noticed, is not a gameplay mechanic that’s anywhere near as in fashion as it was during the formative years of Sam Fisher and PSX-era Solid Snake. IO are cluey guys. They know this. They also know that no one would give a crap about Hitman if it weren’t for an impressive legion of bedroom bodybaggers attuned to its particular brand of mark-the-target-and-make-it-happen.

Absolution’s foreword of latex bullet-nuns set a bad precedent. Tastelessness aside, the game is nothing at like a Zack Snyder film. The option to go full auto, however, is now a big deal. Rather than the inferior contingency plan of previous games, it’s so fleshed out here that the game is seemingly split into two distinct halves at times: One for rogues, one for warriors. Quite often it even begs the former to dip into the latter’s world, and vice-versa.

If you’re discovered, for instance, people don’t just start shooting. That’d be insane. Instead, they’ll hold their gun on you and slowly approach, demanding you take it easy. Agent 47 now has the option to calmly raise his hands – until they get close enough. One swift martial arts move later and he’s got them as a human shield, and it’s on.

Spend a buttload of your Instinct Mode and you can even pre-mark as many targets as your remaining Instinct allows. When you’re satisfied, just hit “Hell Yeah” and Agenty 47 will gun them all down in whatever fashion you designed.

Contracts, too, are bound to result in much YouTube hilarity (which already exists in an ad-libbed form – you crazy fans, you made this happen). Kit out your Agent 47, and take him through a level. You pick up to three people – and they can be anyone, anyone at all – in that level, and kill them. The game will automatically take stock of variables like what weapon you used and what suit you were wearing, and add it to the Contract’s requirements for completion. Bam, share that Contract and see if anyone else can mix it up with your homicidal genius.

None of this comes at the price of subtlety, and you’ll still lose mondo points for shooting up the place. That’s the great news. Instinct Mode also works hard here, highlighting everyone around you and, should you be in disguise, will increase the effectiveness of said disguise. This is important, because IO have done the best thing they could’ve done and really ironed out those niggly details that’ve made previous Hitman games a little bit odd (hello, weird AI).

Agent 47 is a strange man. Look at him. Even dressed in a dead cop’s uniform, he still looks like a guy who’s here to kill someone. Further to that, other cops just won’t buy it upon closer inspection. They know who they work with, and will see through your clothed ruse in a matter of seconds if you get too close. Instinct Mode will make Agent 47 shadow his face with his cap or some other such mannerism in this context, which is frequently just enough to chill everyone out – especially the skeptical.

We’ve heard before how you can use the environment to kill your targets in Hitman: Absolution, and today’s video really shows that off: a disco ball to the head, high tech surgery gone haywire, even an unintentionally electrified fence. Hitman: Absolution challenges you to take out your targets with finesse and grace, not to mention more than a little skill. Get some inspiration in the video below.

The Contracts mode in Hitman: Absolution kind of has to be seen to be believed. A level editor you use by playing the game? Competitive challenges in a Hitman game? Disco balls and hippy communes? What are you even talking about, man?

Well, wonder no more: this 18 minute video is fully commentated by IO Interactive’s Tore Blystad and Travis Barbour and explains everything. Hitman: Absolution arrives on November 20.

What’s the most ignominious weapons you can imagine being murdered with? A coffee cup? A yucky toilet plunger? Well, Agent 47 will be using them all to take down his foes, as well as some of the more traditional ones. In this latest trailer for Hitman: Absolution, the latest in the “Introducing…” series, IO Interactive will take you into Agent 47s world, where everything can be lethal. Even a toilet plunger.

Source: Press Release

Steam has just commenced taking pre-orders for the upcoming Hitman: Absolution. Priced for Australians at $50 USD, you can knock it down to $45 if you pre-order now. This is the same price our UK and US friends are paying, which means that now is basically the time to slap your pre-order down before they remember that we’re in Australia and we should be paying $70 – $80 instead.

Also on offer is a ‘Professional Edition’ for $10 more, which includes an artbook, making of video, and an ‘Agency Gun Pack DLC’.

Pre-orders get access to the Sniper Challenge to tide them over for the next two months — our recent hands-on time with this showed that the Absolution engine is looking great on PC.

Hardcore players of Hitman: Absolution were hoping to play in Purist Mode, which removes all of the HUD from the game and disables Agent 47′s x-ray-vision Instinct feature. Now, IO have confirmed that Purist Mode will definitely be in the game, and will be available right from the get-go.

““I’ve just heard back from the team that Purist mode is now designed to be unlocked from the get go,” says Nick@IO on the official forums. “Unless something critical happens, I feel confident that you can all get your butts handed to you from the first playthrough.”

You can see Agent 47′s Instinct feature in action in our Sniper Challenge gameplay video.

Source: VG247

After a little bit of worry from fans that Agent 47 would have a strangers voice in the next Hitman game, games.on.net has received a press release stating that the voice we know and love, that of David Bateson, will be returning to reprise his role in Hitman: Absolution.

Brand Director of IO Interactive Jon Brooke said “IO and Bateson have been bed fellows for over a decade and like all long running relationships sometimes absence makes the heart grow fonder. Looking back I think we were just playing hard to get.”

Also playing Agent 47 is LOST star William Mapother, who has provided 47s movement via motion capture. These two are part of a growing cast of not-insignificant star-power for the game that includes Vivica A. Fox, Keith Carradine, Powers Boothe, and Marsha Thomason.

Source: Press Release

If you were thinking about playing the recently revealed ‘Contracts’ multiplayer of Hitman: Absolution against a friend on another platform, you can’t! For “political” reasons. But what you can do is figure out the unique ‘file number’ of the contract, and then replicate it on another platform.

“[Contracts] was built in a way for people to asynchronously share things. The trick” said Ellert, “is you have to do it yourself. You have to be able to pull it off yourself.” Contract ID’s begin with a two-digit number that signifies the platform, followed by a unique string of digits that identified the targets within the contract and the rules of the scenario — theoretically allowing players to replicate scenarios across the platform DMZ.

Source: Joystiq

Remember that sexy nuns trailer for Hitman: Absolution that was universally reviled (well, not by me, but by a lot of people, apparently)? The director of the game, Tore Blystad, had a chat with Eurogamer about it at Gamescom, the thrust of which is they are tweaking the game due to the negative reaction to the trailer.

“We learned from the trailer that we really needed to give these characters some context and some backstory. We’re working within the game – within that level – to build these characters up before you meet them. That way you know what you’re getting and you aren’t put off by them,” he said at Gamescom, adding, “The game is inspired by Grindhouse-style movies, so for us the trailer was natural way to deal with that subject matter. We hope when people play it they have fun with it.”

Source: Eurogamer

First of the many new and exciting trailers coming out of Gamescom today/overnight is the new one for Hitman: Absolution promised yesterday, outlining its new asynchronous multiplayer. Check it out below, and let us know what you think.