Speedrun - Hitman: Blood Money - A Vintage Year (Silent Assassin, Pro Difficulty, Suit Only, Targets Only, "No Coins")

Messing around trying another Speedrun, this time booting up some good'ol Hitman: Blood Money, "A Vintage Year" level.

Hitman is a wonderfully crafted, enjoyable game. In my opinion, every single installment in this series has been. People have enjoyed the 'puzzle-play' aspects of it, people have enjoyed the gunplay, the stealth. Players have also enjoyed trying to run as-fast-as-they-can through levels that were probably not designed with this intention. Now, Hitman: Blood Money may not win any awards for "realism" in some areas of gameplay, but I personally have something against the concept that an Assassin, wearing a nice suit, most likely a millionaire, is carrying around twenty dollars in pocket change. Heck, I am sometimes annoyed at the jingle in my own pocket of a couple of quarters when I come across them. Thus, my personal aim with this level: to do a Suit-Only, Targets-Only, Silent Assassin, 'No Coins' Speedrun (on Professional Difficulty). I am probably not the fastest at this sort of thing, I have only done a couple of intentional Speedruns in the past; but it was still fun to make and I figured it was 'decently fast', so I wanted to share. Enjoy!

Recorded game:  Hitman-Blood Money, First/Third Person Shooter/Stealth/Action
Recorded with:  Bandicam (Registered Version) @ 1080p
Recording codec:  MPEG-1 @ 80% Quality (Default Setting), 30fps


This was actually not as hard as I thought it would be - after finding out that Delgado.Sr is snipe-able up out on his balcony. It was his Son that gave me trouble (as it seems to do with everyone, after a few forum finds on the subject). I started just pushing him down the stairs and also setting up the Barrels to fall on him; but eventually I settled on just a good-old-fashioned-assassin-stand-by: the single bullet to the head. This felt 'right', after sniping dear-ol'Dad, anyway. Instead of pushing the Guards at the bottom into the water, I just walked non-chalantly by them, as they didn't seem to care anyway.
[On the actual Playthrough, I seem to get some guards' attention, but I assumed this was for going into the areas I wasn't supposed to, not for being witnessed killing anyone]

I also wanted to do things like 'leave nothing behind', such as 'just dropping weapons' (like the Sniper Rifle) to save time. This sort of stems from the multitude-of-coins thing... Don't get me wrong by the way, I appreciate the time so many have taken to figure out their own ways to complete Hitman levels by using distractions. I just for some reason [OCD?lol] find it hard to extend my fantasy thinking within the game 'that far' - to where a so-called Silent-Assassin-slash-Hitman is always carrying around and actually utilizes enough laundry money to make the homeless cry on every mission. [I didn't actually mean to rant here, hah] I just think if an assassin wanted to throw anything around to distract guards, it could more realistically at least be a found weapon of some sort, as opposed to a ton of coinage everywhere (pebbles could even make more sense).

At any rate, whether you use coins (a mechanic that is indeed offered directly within the game) or you don't, there you have it; not the fastest run [or the most 'Silent' lol], but hopefully an enjoyable little watch, nonetheless.

See you in the games!

Speedrun - Hitman: Absolution - Contracts (The First Hit)

After playing through the first Contract ("The First Hit") properly, I noticed that the only requirements were to kill the target. It didn't seem to matter if you got spotted or anything else, so I thought - that would be perfect for a Speedrun!

Level: Hitman (Absolution) - Contracts (The First Hit)
Time: 21 seconds
Score: 95,186
Runs: About 4-5


After a couple runs of seeing what the fastest path might be (leaping over the log takes more time than running around imo), I changed to a smaller resolution and turned the graphics down to low settings to help with speed. I don't know if this is the fastest possible route, I just found it worked well instinctively after a few runs.

Bandicam seems to have some trouble with H:A, the fps keeps popping through, and seems to lag it out a bit. I even tried disabling SLI. I thought it might be my NVIDIA cards, and in the end, I ended up running it on an AMD/ATi HD 6870 even smoother than dual GTX 560Ti's (this game prefers AMD videocards).

Good luck with it and See You In The Games!

Hitman: Blood Money - Requiem Done In Under 26 Minutes (Video)

Warming up for the fifth installment in the Hitman series, I decided to boot up some Hitman: Blood Money. I tried to complete the game on the Pro difficulty setting, something I didn't do when I first bought the game. It wasn't too bad actually. After getting used to the controls again, I wished I was recording when some great moments happened while playing through the game (of course), but everything was going pretty smoothly considering I hadn't played in a while - until  'that level', the hidden-but-not-really bonus stage named Requiem (the 12th 'mission' in the game).

* YARR HERE THERE BE SPOILERS *  [Jump to the video to avoid them]

For those that don't know, when Agent 47 is considered dead, you can actually continue playing him by moving/pressing buttons and shoot your way out of your own funeral - and who wouldn't want to do that? Isn't that nearly the purpose of a 'wake' anyway? Then you just shoot your way out of there. Or, if you are playing on Pro difficulty, you get shot and die and restart and then die and then restart and die and then restart and try again. Apparently, some people are still trying to pass this level to this day.


Going in knowing only two things: that you can take the priest as a hostage/shield and there is some sort of weapon or item in the corner, I managed to complete the stage in less than 26 Minutes. Booyah! (hmm I don't think people say that anymore)..

Unedited, One-Take Recorded with Bandicam
- complete video compressed to ~5Mbps for smaller upload size
Game: Hitman: Blood Money, Steam Release (v.1.2)
- 'Secret'/Bonus Stage, Requiem (Mission 12)
Gameplay Time: ~26mins.
- recording resolution 1280x720, while playing at 1920x1080
- logo watermark (our GTAM logo), embeds a little bigger when recording at 720p
- might try out annotations on YouTube for the attempts

See you in the games!

Achievement - Diablo III - 'No Time To Rest' Challenge with Level 25 Demon Hunter (Video)

Recorded with Bandicam ('For Edit' Preset)
Resized to 720p, 4000kbps h.264/AVC (for smaller upload size)
Resampled to x1.5 speed (to assist in reducing watching boredom)

Playtime: 47:47 (forty-seven minutes, forty-seven seconds)
Character: Level 25 Demon Hunter (Female)
Skills most used: Vault (Rattling), Elemental Arrow (Ball Lightning)
DPS: 154.96
Dexterity: 207
Follower: Templar (Intervene, Loyalty, Charge, Gaurdian)

Usually playing games through slowly and savouring every graphic effect, listening to every environmental sound, I don't ever do "Speedruns"; but feeling that my Level 25 Female Demon Hunter [yes I know lolxDeathDeeler1337x] kicked a bit of butt, I decided to try running Act I Normal for the No Time To Rest Achievement.

The first time I tried it didn't register for some reason, so I had to try again. Then the second time I got disconnected halfway through! That saying The Third Time's The Charm came true once again and this is the result:

The slow moving big blue orb, similar to D2's Frozen Orb, is Elemental Arrow with the Ball Lightning Rune/buff. It acts very similar to the old Sorceress FO as it sails over the enemies, hitting most of them as it passes. Running through Act I I found I could just Fire-And-Forget, launching one and then continue running past.

The Demon Hunter Elemental Arrow, with Ball Lightning Rune 

The acrobatic cartwheel she does (a lot) is Vault, an evasion move that lets you get away, even moving through enemies, I believe. I have the Rattling Rune/buff on it, that lets you shoot a couple arrows off as you cartwheel by, which has showed me some barrels/jars at times that I have missed. It uses the slower-regenerating Discipline as it's 'mana', so you can't just cast it constantly (which I would have liked, heh).

The Demon Hunter's Vault skill/ability

For the most part, to get this Achievement you just have to be willing to run past a lot of things. I gave up Uniques and what they might drop, Treasure Chests and Treasure Goblins. I suggest having all of the Act completed ahead of time, so you don't have to miss all the story and plot, of course. Also, I had created and done the Act with a few characters already, so I was familiar which what should (relatively) come next and had a feel for the dungeons, which helps a lot. There were a couple small things that I couldn't figure out, like why I didn't get the achievement at The Butcher for not getting burned by the floor fire. I thought I got away clean from it - I realize now that it says "on Hell difficulty or higher". Regardless, these types of Achievements are ones you can go for at the same time, while getting the Challenges like the one above.

The video is unedited and you can see all the mis-clicks I do, like going into the wrong doorway and the dialogue with the caravaneer at the end, heh. I am also not the greatest at picking Pathing routes to take, as I haven't done Act 1 more than a few times; but all in all this was enjoyable to run, with it's own sense of Tension added to the gameplay session. Nice Challenge Blizz, it was fun.

See you in there!