No, however normally in a non-speedrun sense (if you are just trying to complete campaigns faster and want it to have a slightly lower skill floor) you could leave the mission you purposely fail to be the last nonalerted territory (or at the very least the second to last one, if you wanted to save a certain nonalerted location for a showdown).
It’s usually how I complete campaigns now after completing all the assassination challenges and just going for numbers. I pick syndicates that have mendoza so I can save it for the showdown, complete all the nonalerted missions except the one I want to skip. Intentionally leave the mission without completing objectives, then complete the rest of the alerted missions, and do the effectively fail-proof super quick sniper strats for Mendoza seen in the speedrun.
Yeah if you die in the first, the other two become alerted, but that’s not the case with the other sections. Maybe you died after completing a couple missions in one section and it Alerted whatever remained, that’s what’s got you mixed up
Without any ado, here’s my Freelancer review : I give it 5 Silverballers out of 5. IMO, it’s pretty much as good as you can reasonably expect from a free extra mode from a game that has had more than half a decade to get set in its ways.
Considering we’ve been getting a slew of mediocre DLC (7DS, Deluxe H3 pack, ET Arcade), which, at best, shoehorned new mechanics into Escalations, it’s impressive the amount of work that went into this: new UI elements, voice lines, mission types, tweaked existing maps and of course the safehouse. With hindsight, obviously the Deadly Sins DLC now seems like a paid trial run for the new Freelancer mechanics.
This mode pretty much alleviates all the problems I had with the main game, which is no small feat. For example:
Silent Assassin – The main game pretty much only officially recognized Silent Assassin as the perfect run, and nothing under that. Either you played perfectly, or screw it, it was insane rampage time. A lot of the SA/SASO challenges basically involved save-scumming your way to perfection. In Freelancer, a “perfect” run is pretty much completing all four optional objectives, which often have nothing to do with SA. It vastly opens up possibilities. With the roguelike structure, the only “real” failure is dying or letting the Leader get away, everything else is just gravy on top. “Slapstick Assassin” is now a perfectly valid strategy sometimes as is “Rampage Assassin”. More important than that, coming back from a mistake and improvising on the spot is now part of the game.
Equipment – One of my main gripes with the trilogy was that 90% of the unlocks were useless. IOI have actually alleviated this without actually changing the items too much. First of all, new objective types actually require specific items to complete and less reliance on SA means you can still play “well” while going pew pew with the big guns. The addition of rarity and cost, while mostly artificial, also affects gear choice. More importantly, one reason why most items were useless was because the strict “only four items (plus added restrictions!)” only encouraged you to bring the “top” items. With the new system of “gear slots” (aka item size), now the fifth or sixth best item for a situation can finally get some use! Two pistols and a shotgun, go nuts! Finally, since every item is unique, it has at least a use as a potential backup… or as wall decor.
Safehouse – The safehouse, aka Barbie hitman’s dream house is a pleasant surprise. 47 is probably the only video game character whose clothes I’d like to wear. The same goes for his house, I guess. They’ve pleasantly rearranged assets from missions to give you a few option for making a decor that actually looks good. It has its limits, but I don’t think anyone expected The Sims. They’ve also basically reused every interaction animation from the game to make you feel like actually living there. For example, when logging into the mode, 47 is doing some random activity. Hoarding guns at some kind of base has been a staple for (most) Hitman games, it seemed sorely missing here considering the amount of unlocks that have piled up in the trilogy. It’s a nice touch that unlike items, you can freely use all suits unlocked from any other mode, since they have no real gameplay advantage.
Then again, the mode is not perfect:
Failure feels too punishing: resetting the entire campaign, plus losing half your money, plus losing all brought weapons, plus losing all tools feels like too many kicks in the nuts at once. Showdowns, in particular, are easy to screw up and are always tied to an automatic campaign failure. Despite the explanation, I still don’t like the idea of losing all tools on campaign failure. Getting them back is time-consuming; it makes more than an entire campaign to get a full set. Plus, they’re what makes the gameplay interesting and opens up possibilities. Despite being the real “persistent” items, guns are largely redundant, and most of them are still pretty useless. On the other hand, the Oil Canister is the only item that does what it does. Many objectives are tied to specific tools, and it might take dozens of missions to stumble upon something you need, like, for example, the fragmentation grenade. Ironically, despite money eventually becoming redundant, slowly building back up your tool set still feels like a chore. Anyway, it doesn’t help that Hitman isn’t really a game where things are 100% consistent. It’s the game’s fault sometimes that I’m failing, I swear!
It feels like the randomisation or the amount of targets could use some more work. I’ve gotten the same exact target multiple times, and yet entire areas of multiple maps have been left entirely untouched (Ex. On Haven, the entire mansion, plus its bunker; in Berlin, most of the outdoors and the biker hangout).
The mode seems a bit lacking in staying power. I mean, as a free side mode, it’s hard to complain, but still. For example, I think players will mostly fill their weapon wall at around level 40 or so. Filling the walls felt like the “soft” end point to me. The rest feels like grinding for the other mastery levels and challenges. The challenge trophies actually show up in the house, which is great, but a few of them still have truly outrageous requirements. For the above reason, missions start feeling samey after a while. To me, it feels like a mode with about 40 hours worth of content stretched to hundreds of hours by a few doodads. My suggestion to spice things up would be to add modifiers you can choose at the start of a campaign : ex. The Suit Only Campaign, the No Firearms Campaign, The No Loadout Campaign, etc. Time will tell how much new stuff IOI has planned for this mode.
Hardcore mode is a pain in the butt. ‘nuff said, there’s a whole topic about this.
Anyway, basically, Freelancer is good enough that everything else that came before it seems like an extended tutorial. IOI (and the player) can leverage years of experience with the existing maps with this evergreen mode. Good job!
In hardcore Mode, yes. But in normal mode, no. You don’t need to “Complete” 18. You can leave 1 unalerted map without killing any targets (that are not showdown missions).
Sorry for information that’s most likely been said, but through fishing you get a fish, cut up the fish and you have a sedative poison of no carry weight, that combined with creating a lethal poison in the shed are two free, valuable, weightless items.
Sure this adds a few minutes of prep, but damn is it useful!
Edit:
Okay a little more about the fishing, things I’ve caught: (worst to best)
Driftwood Rusty Crowbar (nothing special) Multiple Fish (3 so far) Sadly the game blocks you from crafting more than one poison (the cut fish blocks the cutting board) Fishing Line garrote (2 carry weight) Starfish (Lethal, Legal and weightless melee!)
Is there any other activities that generate items?
Completed a full Hardcore Freelancer campaign before they go and nerf it. I think I’d call the experience “overbearingly cautious”. Satisfying in a way, but very much not for most players and that’s fine.
Freelancer already messes with NPC clockwork a bit, on some maps more than others. Hardcore multiplies that. I had a showdown on Hokkaido where camera placements were probably doubled and each hallway had a lookout or suspect wander through it far too often for my comfort level. Took me like 40 minutes.
I got lucky with the Prestige Objectives compared to some horror stories I’ve read. I also utilized the showdown target escape sequence via sniper on Mendoza two separate times to great success.
It’s hard to suggest changes because I’m fine with the stakes Freelancer offers normally. It’s just the nature of Hardcore amplifying everything that makes the experience something I don’t want to do again any time soon. That said, I think omitting crates, couriers, safes, and suspect tells in the map/UI is a bad choice. Things are already tough, limiting available player perceptions is pushing things a little too far I feel.
Man, Timed Get Disguises is really broken (in good ways and bad)
I once exited a mission with over 40 seconds left, skipped the exit cutscene to make sure it stopped the timer then and there – and it somehow ended up as failed.
Yesterday I completed it twice, both with at least a minute on the clock, and it confirmed!
And also, for some reason, I think it grants more Merces than it says it does! The math doesn’t work out, I think it gives about 3,800M instead of 3,500
Just thought of another possible use for Mercers to help balance the economy - some sort of maintenance cost for weapons. After taking each weapon into the field a certain number of times (say, 10 missions?), you have to pay a modest fee to get the item cleaned up.
This wouldn’t apply to Freelancer Tools, just wall weapons. And the 10-use allowance would prevent this from affecting early-game players too much. The price could scale with weapon rarity too. Common - 500M; Rare - 1000M; Epic - 2500M; Legendary - 5000M. Something like that.
See, now we’re entering the “breakable weapons” territory, where you don’t want to use weapons too much, otherwise you’ll “break” them, perverting incentives even more than current.
And those prices are a drop in the ocean; you earn more than that on some contracts. Don’t get me wrong, it shouldn’t be super expensive either, but this isn’t a solution, at best, it’s busywork.
God I swear Im getting so done with this mode. Had a showdown going on in Marrakesh. I had two prime suspects marked. One was walking around the markets and another in the consulate garage. I try my shot at the garage guy and kill him with a propane explosion. All of a sudden the market target is alerted and flees at a spot only meters away from the exit. I had no chance whatsowever. This pisses me off. Another campaign failed and my tools gone again because of this bullshit. The fun of Freelancer is slowly drifting away.
So, I just played “normal” Sapienza (as a part of the very first Syndicate in a new campaign, where there’s never alterted areas), and it was definitely alerted Sapienza (more guards, cameras, etc). Has anyone else had this experience?
I see your points, but they do seem a little contradictory. A repair system would disincentivise using weapons to some extent. But I don’t think the impact would be too great given the ‘drop in ocean’ pricing.
As things stand in late-game, there’s rarely a reason to take anything less than legendary items on a mission. If you happen to lose a couple of legendary items, they can easily be replaced in no time.
This really takes away a lot of the dilemmas in gear selection once you’ve increased your gear capacity via Mastery. In other words, I think use of legendary items could do with a little disincentivisation.
Part of the reason why tiered items have less gear weight is to encourage their use; the issue is that
A; they look too pretty on a wall and players like pretty stuff.
and
B: having lots of merces (and I’m not in late-game, I’m level 41 with 280K Merces) just makes the pricing functionally useless; again, it just comes off as busywork rather than a fix. As is, buying back weapons is a better solution to not use legendary weapons, even if the price is similarly not very restrictive.
You want people to use legendary weapons, or well, all weapons, because otherwise they become cosmetics; never to be removed unless you need to break glass, a problem CEFT’s currently face.
Perhaps a better option would be to increase weapon prices slightly then? I felt like I was able to complete my weapon wall very quickly. And likewise replacing (even legendary) weapons felt trivial with the current economy, even when I was on my run of Hardcore attempts often losing all my Mercers.
