Posts with tag Hitman
by Jason Dobson Apr 11th 2008 4:30PM
Filed under: Culture, Online, Business
The founders of
Hitman and
Kane and Lynch developer IO Interactive have left to form
Reto-Moto, a Copenhagen, Denmark-based studio "committed to redefining the online multi-player space." While the team isn't talking about its initial project, a press release announcing the company notes that Reto-Moto is in "active dialogue with strategic industry partners."
In a rather incestuous twist, it turns out that Reto-Moto was actually established in 1997, and was the former parent of IO Interactive before it was handed off to Eidos in 2004 as part of a £20 million acquisition. It looks like Thomas Wolfe
was wrong; you can go home again.
by Kyle Orland Mar 13th 2008 10:15PM
Filed under: PC, Online
If there's one thing we here at Joystiq constantly find ourselves thinking while playing
Tomb Raider games, it's "Man, if only this experience could be translated into an online video slot machine." Well someone at Belle Rock Entertainment must have had a window into our souls, because the group has just
unveiled Tomb Raider: The Secret of the Sword, a new video slot for their online casinos.
The machine isn't based directly on the games, unfortunately. Instead, it promises to "faithfully capture the gripping excitement and suspense of the original movie" with "a glossy 5 reel 30 pay-line multi-faceted package." Fans of the movie will be happy to know that the "randomly triggered Super Mode" and "Global Adventure Bonus" have been faithfully captured here.
The Secret of the Sword joins a similar
Hitman slot machine in the annals of
lame cross-marketing ideas for Eidos products impressive and engaging Eidos slot machine ports.
by Jason Dobson Jan 2nd 2008 8:51AM
Filed under: PC, Business, Casual
Casual games are not everyone's cup of tea, as evidenced by our controversial inclusion of PopCap puzzler Peggle among Joystiq's top ten titles of 2007. There's no denying, however, that these often bite-sized diversions are as popular as they are addictive, reason enough why many startup studios -- such as newly formed The Game Equation -- swing that way. The Denmark-based studio, established by a pair of programmers who worked on the Hitman franchise in a previous life, aims to develop for the "high end of the casual games industry" with titles that remind them of what it was like playing games when they were youngsters. That's sweet, but what exactly does that mean?
The company has pair of puzzle games available already named Deep Blue Sea and Constellations, though at first glance there certainly doesn't appear to be anything particularly evolved about either of these efforts, entertaining as they may be. What is interesting is that in creating the match-3 puzzler Deep Blue Sea, the studio brought on an honest to goodness film and theatre composer, Rasmus Hartvig, to create the game's music, though given the dev's experience with Hitman, a series known for its dramatic scores, The Game Equation's aural emphasis is not wholly unexpected. That's all well and good, and we like good music as much as anyone, but the studio will need to pull out some considerably bigger tricks before we buy into its incongruous idea of high end casual games.
by Justin McElroy Nov 27th 2007 10:28AM
Filed under: Culture
We all know that Roger Ebert, despite his five-digit gamerscore and level 70 night elf rogue, doesn't think video games have, as of yet, risen to the level of "art." But that doesn't mean that he doesn't give a fair shake to
video-game based movies. In fact, you could say he almost sort of liked
Hitman, saying "Agent 47 has great success with this disguise in
Hitman, which is a better movie than I thought it might be."
Ebert even goes so far as to give the movie, which
earned $21 million in its first five days, 3 out of 4 stars, which is, admittedly, the same score he gave to
Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties. (In other news: Why do we still pay attention to a man who gave three stars to
Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties?)
by Justin McElroy Nov 21st 2007 5:00PM
Filed under: Culture
Did you like that headline? Yeah, we did too. It's ironic, because if the critics weighing in on the new
Hitman film are any bellwether, it's the only entertaining thing about the movie. Of the 25 reviews of the Timothy Olyphant starrer (released today) only 12% gave the movie a positive review. If you're not so much with the math, that translates to "Not good."
One of the few decent reviews comes from Daniel M. Kimmel, who says "There's enough intelligence behind it that you don't feel you're just waiting to hit the reset button," which is a video game metaphor so belabored we feel compelled to dismiss his opinion out of hand. Of the negative reviews, our favorite comes from Dustin Putnam who says "Abysmal in the extreme,
Hitman is 100 minutes of soul-crushing nothingness." Wow, is it too late to pre-order tickets?
by Alexander Sliwinski Oct 31st 2007 4:46PM
Filed under: Mac, PC, Action, Adventure
Next month GameTap will offer the adventures of Agent 47 (except for
Blood Money) for free on the service in sequential order. Although they say the original game is available Nov. 1, technically it's
available for free now. The series' gameplay became far more forgiving as things progressed, so depending on your tolerance for repeating a level over and over again, you may want to wait until
Contracts becomes available Nov. 15 for the softest experience.
GameTap says they have more in store on this, but that's the basics for now. We are curious to see how one of the GameTap retrospectives holds up to the
GameTrailer ones we've become enamored with.
by Alexander Sliwinski Oct 11th 2007 10:00PM
Filed under: Culture
Variety confirmed that
Hitman is not being watered down and will be in theaters with a "hard R" rating Nov. 21. This is following
rumors that Fox executives removed director Xavier Gens from
Hitman's post-production and would be watering down the hyper-violent film to a PG-13 rating in an attempt to get the kids. An ironic move considering the studio would have been targeting kids with a movie who aren't old enough to play one of the Mature-rated (17+)
Hitman games the film is based on.
Variety says both a source close to the project -- they wouldn't be Variety if they didn't have one of those -- and a Fox representative both
confirmed that "director Xavier gens is still on board, and the movie will absolutely come out with an R rating." Now we wait and see if the violence is reasonable in keeping with the
Hitman games (which the scenes
shown in the trailer make us doubt) or if it'll all be over-the-top action insanity making us question what Hollywood has done to the "silent assassin."
by Alexander Sliwinski Oct 10th 2007 8:30PM
Filed under: Culture, Business
According to website Twitch, Fox Studios
pulled the director of the
Hitman movie off the project in post-production and will re-edit the film to receive a PG-13 rating. There is no official word yet that this is true, but the story goes director Xavier Gens was yanked off the project because the film he submitted to executives would have guaranteed an R rating. Apparently post-production of the film has now been handed over to Nicolas DeToth, the man who edited the hell out of
Live Free or Die Hard to receive a PG-13 rating. Essentially they are turning a hyper-violent (mature?) movie and watering it down for the kids -- if true, there's something wrong in that, on so many levels.
Our friends over at Cinematical
put it this way: "See, here's how I know Hollywood is a lunatic bin: Whomever hired Mr. Gens for this job had to know two things: 1) The director's first film --
Frontiere(s) -- is so amazingly and powerfully violent that it
almost becomes parody. 2) The video game? You know, the one that this new
Hitman movie is BASED ON? It's a pretty damn violent game. Like,
really violent." Not only is it violent our Cinematical friends, but the games are all rated Mature, the video game industry's version of an R rating. Oh well, guess we'll just skip the movie in the theater and wait for the unrated version on DVD.
[Via
Cinematical]
by Justin McElroy Aug 20th 2007 10:06AM
Filed under: Culture
Actor Timothy Olyphant's
take on Agent 47 and the
Hitman movie in general is about what you'd expect: Yes, he wants to be respectful of the source material. No, he had no idea that the source material existed before he read the script. (He was a bit busy being in one of the
raddest TV shows ever, thank you very much.) He does say, however, that director Xavier Gans was a big fan of
Hitman, which is sort of encouraging.
In his interview, Olyphant does seem to get that Agent 47 kills people
really well, which (pseudo-religious iconography aside) is pretty much the thrust of the character. He also says he sees the titular hitman as a loner who's just starting to question the meaning of his existence. Woah there, slow it down Tim. You don't want to go all
Sam Fisher on us.
by Ludwig Kietzmann Jul 13th 2007 1:45AM
Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Action
If you're unsure about the nature of content in IO Interactive's
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, you need only a single glance at the bench you're sitting on in the Eidos E3 demonstration room. Packed beneath a layer of glass you can find either a cache of machine guns and bullets, packets of suspicious white powder (baking powder, perhaps?) or countless rows of hundred-dollar bills. Judging by the brief demonstration of the single-player component of the game, these are all items that have been thoroughly used, abused and stolen by Kane and Lynch at some point in their dubious careers.
Despite sharing similar criminal and psychotic tendencies, the eponymous duo don't get along very well. Their brutish behavior and decidedly harsh vocabulary stems from the
Hitman developer's desire to keep things "raw and realistic," says product manager Matt Knowles. He sums the game up as "an emotionally intense crime drama," pointing towards a bickering Kane and Lynch as they prepare to enter a vibrant upmarket nightclub. They're certainly dressed for the part, but it soon becomes clear that those snazzy suits conceal a sinister kidnapping plot.
Continue reading Joystiq impressions: Kane & Lynch: Dead Men
by Kevin Kelly Jun 26th 2007 9:00AM
Filed under: Culture, Nintendo GameCube, PC, Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft Xbox, Microsoft Xbox 360, Action, Adventure
Leave it to the internets! The
Hitman movie trailer that we
mentioned will be running in front of
Live Free or Die Hard (are we the only ones that still find that title a bit much?) has hit the web. Whattya think? It's a teaser trailer and doesn't show much, but it definitely looks to be true to the games. Plus it has the added bonus of Uwe Boll being completely unattached to it.
Check out the
trailer over at film site JoBlo.com, and let us know what you think. Timothy Olyphant actually looks pretty decent
as Agent 47, especially with that bald head and the barcode tattoo. Combine that with the Silverballer pistols and Ave Maria playing in the background and you get a promising look ... for now.
Continue reading Hitman trailer: being bald never looked so good
by Alexander Sliwinski Jun 25th 2007 7:55PM
Filed under: PC, Action, Adventure
In one of the funnier announcements we've ever seen, GameTap's forums released (and we've confirmed that it's legit) a
bevy of franchises coming to the service. Although no release dates have been given -- except for
Hitman: Codename 47 coming this Thursday -- we do have the list of franchises expected on the service very soon.
- Hitman
- Thief
- BloodRayne
- The Legacy of Kain
They also announced that
Wing Commander IV is coming (the one with Mark Hamill and
Thomas "Hey, McFly" Wilson as Maniac). As much as we enjoy getting our
GameTap info through forum posts like this, we don't expect it to become a habit -- but it was fun.
by Ross Miller Jun 25th 2007 6:25PM
Filed under: Culture, Action
A trailer for the film adaptation of
Hitman will be shown in the previews preceding Live Free or Die Hard, opening this Wednesday, according to reputable film site
ComingSoon.net. The movie, starring Timothy Olyphant as Agent 47, began
filming on March 27.
No official confirmation has been made from distributor Twentieth Century Fox, but the action-packed Bruce Willis vehicle would be a perfect fit for the trailer and is also distributed by Fox. If true, look for the teaser to find its way on the internet likely by Wednesday afternoon.
by Alexander Sliwinski Jun 20th 2007 11:57AM
Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 2, Adventure
Agent 47 is about to get all bundled up and enter the frigid climate of retail to make even more of a killing as his
last three adventures get bundled into one compilation called
Hitman Trilogy. The game will include
Hitman 2: Silent Assassin,
Hitman: Contracts and
Hitman: Blood Money. and will retail on PS2 and PC for the worthwhile price of $29.99, now if they'll allow the
Blood Money control scheme to be used in the other two titles, that would be sweet. The game ships June 20 (today).
A bonus disc comes in the box which has a "
preview" of
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, IO Interactive's latest title which features a mercenary and his lovable psychotic associate. IO Interactive is a company that really doesn't get the attention it deserves. The
Hitman series has been a
sleeper hit for the company and they were also the developers behind the excellent
Freedom Fighters. As much as we like Agent 47, and wish all the best for Kane and Lynch, another chance at
Freedom Fighters would be a nice surprise.
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Posts with tag Hitman
