TGO Daily | January 20, 2021 | Hitman 3 Releases
January 20, 2021
In The News
Hitman 3 Reviews
Hitman 3 releases today, and the review embargo has lifted. I can easily recommend the first two games for you — they are intricately designed assassination games that place you on giant maps that you can explore to your hearts content. What I care about with Hitman 3 is how it stacks up against the other games.
Something that has been made clear by the reviews is that the story and plot matter much more than before. While many people (myself included) have tossed away the story as a backdrop to the core gameplay loop, reviewers are saying IO Interactive made it matter in what is now the capstone of the series. The story apparently integrates with the six new maps in ways that we haven’t seen before. The missions are also more complex — from murder mysteries, to puzzles, to branching plots. There are new mechanics as well, introducing a camera for Agent 47 to use, or keypads that you have to use manually rather than automatically.
All of that being said, there is a consensus that they haven’t done anything revolutionary with this title. Multiple outlets noted how the game felt like it could have been a DLC or some other kind of expansion, but is still so good at just being itself that its worth it. And as VG247 puts it:
Taken individually, Hitman 3 feels like great value, with plenty of variety and lots to do. When taken as a whole, the World of Assassination trilogy is hands-down one of the best and most complete-feeling trilogies in video game history.
Hitman 3 is available pretty much everywhere today for the standard AAA price — definitely check it out.
Auto Chess Goes MOBA
Note: This story was announced early in the month, but most sites didn’t pick it up until yesterday.
Two years ago, a game mod for the MOBA Dota 2 released by the name of “Dota Auto Chess.” It took the characters from Dota and put them on a bunch of chessboards where they would automatically battle each other.
The concept ended up getting so popular that it spawned its own genre called auto battlers. The mod developers released a standalone version of their game called Auto Chess, Valve developed their own version called Dota Underlords, and even Riot released Teamfight Tactics as their first non-League game.
The news today is that the Auto Chess developers announced that they are making a MOBA based on the Auto Chess universe. As Kotaku puts it:
An Auto Chess MOBA is a game based off a game, based off a mod of a game, that’s in turn based off a mod of a game.
(new MOBA>Auto Chess>Dota 2>Warcraft III)
There isn’t much news about the new game, but it will have a day-night cycle, will be free-to-play with all characters unlocked, and appears to be on mobile.
Rust Makes a Comeback
In the last year, the power of Twitch streamers have become extremely evident. Games like Among Us and Phasmaphobia got incredibly popular thanks to major streamers getting their hands on them. Today we’re not seeing a new game, but an old one, Rust. It’s a server-based multiplayer survival game.
The game itself was already popular — it established a peak Steam concurrent player count at 125,000 last April. With these streamers however, popularity for the game has skyrocketed, and they have already doubled their concurrent players record (~250,000). There’s also been a Twitch viewership increase by quite literally 100x its previous record (used to get 5-20k total viewers, now 500k-1.3m).
I love seeing stuff like this — and if there’s ever been doubt about where publisher’s marketing dollars should be, well…There’s the answer.
The Grab-Bag
Civilization 6 “Frontier Pass” DLC adds Kublai Khan, game mode Monopolies and Coprorations, and Vietnam.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning arriving on Nintendo Switch on March 16th.
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