IO Interactive are continuing to improve HITMAN 2 and to let people have a little taste, the first mission is now entirely free.
Thanks to Steam Play, it works really well on Linux. Without spending a penny, there’s hours of fun you can have here. So even if you’re holding out for a port from Feral Interactive again like with the previous game, you don’t even need to break any “no tux no bux” rule here to get a feel for it (not that Feral have even teased a port for this one—sadly). For those wanting to dip their toes in Steam Play, this is a fine choice.
On top of that, if you own the previous game, you will also get access to all those episodes inside of HITMAN 2 as well (with some upgrades) which is great. Find more info specifically on that here.
From the announcement about the first mission now being free, they said this:
You’ll get full access to the Hawke’s Bay challenges and unlocks – including hidden stashes, new starting locations and weapons that will change the way you can approach the mission.
When you feel like you’ve mastered the location, you can prove it with the Professional and Master difficulty levels that introduce new ways to play.
All progression that you earn from the Starter Pack will carry over into the full game when you choose to buy it.
What I truly love about the HITMAN games are their open sandbox design, so you can go at your own pace and you never really feel forced into doing something any particular way. Each mission evolves with you, as the AI reacts to what you do. A very interesting experience for sure.
Here’s a look at the first HITMAN 2 mission, played on Ubuntu 18.10 with Steam Play Proton 3.16-7 showcasing rather clearly how not to be a hitman:
Direct Link
As mentioned in the video, I got a little confused about taking down the target and I totally messed up the end. The point is though, it works well and it’s damn fun to play.
I did come across two issues to note. Firstly, unless I bring up the Steam Overlay, the game will lock my mouse cursor which is actually quite a common problem even with native games. The second, sometimes it will turn itself into a window instead of fullscreen on ALT+TAB, going back and forth once more randomly fixes itself back into fullscreen.
One other odd issue, is that attempting to record with OBS Studio in this case was a hassle. The game would be running great, so I hit record and suddenly I get intense mouse-lag. Thankfully, it worked this once to grab the footage. Not a mark against the game, as it’s specifically when using OBS and it doesn’t happen every time.
Honestly, I’m amazed at how well HITMAN 2 works for such a new game. If you fancy giving it a shot, grab your disguise over on Steam.
Note: If you try to install and you get an error about an Invalid Platform, you can check the “Enable Steam Play for all other titles” in Steam’s settings. There’s probably other ways around it but I find that the most simple to do.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Dribbleondo Mar 1, 2019
Also, you don't have to have GOTY to get Hitman 2016's levels, Owning the game with all locations bought on steam is enough.
Quoting: DribbleondoWell that went well.Good catch, I misread it a little, fixed.
Also, you don't have to have GOTY to get Hitman 2016's levels, Owning the game with all locations bought on steam is enough.
Also had one crash to desktop, but for 10 hours of gameplay that's not too bad.
It's nice to get to play the intro level to the new game while also getting access to all the old levels, although the latter feels very much like playing HITMAN 2016 with only very minor differences and having to go through the progression system a second time, which I don't mind actually after having unlocked every item and achievement in the predecessor.
Quoting: BrissePlayed 10 hours already. First impressions were not good with major stuttering while compiling shaders but after running around for several minutes and putting up with the stuttering it finally goes away as most of the level has been explored and the shaders are saved to disk cache.It's odd, I was fully expecting it to be stuttery, but even on my first attempt at that particular level, I didn't really see any.
Quoting: liamdaweQuoting: BrissePlayed 10 hours already. First impressions were not good with major stuttering while compiling shaders but after running around for several minutes and putting up with the stuttering it finally goes away as most of the level has been explored and the shaders are saved to disk cache.It's odd, I was fully expecting it to be stuttery, but even on my first attempt at that particular level, I didn't really see any.
Might be that NVIDIA has more readily available shader state(?) caches to be shared by Steam than AMD.
Last edited by Faattori on 1 March 2019 at 12:22 pm UTC
Quoting: FaattoriQuoting: liamdaweQuoting: BrissePlayed 10 hours already. First impressions were not good with major stuttering while compiling shaders but after running around for several minutes and putting up with the stuttering it finally goes away as most of the level has been explored and the shaders are saved to disk cache.It's odd, I was fully expecting it to be stuttery, but even on my first attempt at that particular level, I didn't really see any.
Might be that NVIDIA has more readily available shader state(?) caches to be shared by Steam than AMD.
That would be my guess as well, especially considering about 3/4 of the userbase use Nvidia. As an AMD user on a rolling distro with the latest drivers and frequent updates, I almost always see stuttering initially when playing games through Proton. In most games it's no big deal, it only takes a few seconds, but in recent and graphically complex games like HITMAN 2 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider it is so severe that your first thought is "this is unplayable", but patience is rewarded and once that on disk shader cache is built up to completion the games become perfectly smooth.
Quoting: BrisseQuoting: FaattoriQuoting: liamdaweQuoting: BrissePlayed 10 hours already. First impressions were not good with major stuttering while compiling shaders but after running around for several minutes and putting up with the stuttering it finally goes away as most of the level has been explored and the shaders are saved to disk cache.It's odd, I was fully expecting it to be stuttery, but even on my first attempt at that particular level, I didn't really see any.
Might be that NVIDIA has more readily available shader state(?) caches to be shared by Steam than AMD.
That would be my guess as well, especially considering about 3/4 of the userbase use Nvidia. As an AMD user on a rolling distro with the latest drivers and frequent updates, I almost always see stuttering initially when playing games through Proton. In most games it's no big deal, it only takes a few seconds, but in recent and graphically complex games like HITMAN 2 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider it is so severe that your first thought is "this is unplayable", but patience is rewarded and once that on disk shader cache is built up to completion the games become perfectly smooth.
maybe it is your r9 fury. i use a 580 and it works normal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju7_yy9VtJk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLuQ2FrDAqU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRI93MGph3k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ichqYNrYhwg
tomb raider has some framedrops, but it was dxvk 0.90 and i always have high settings on to test it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeQG9AMmj2E
Quoting: fabertaweOooooh, I'm gonna have me a bit of that action ^_^
It would appear not actually!
Accessing Settings or Play from the splash screen crashes X and dumps me back to the tty. Fully up to date Arch.
Is there some voodoo I should be aware of? Like specific Proton version? Specific graphics settings? I can bring up the settings but "Cancel" or "Save" initiates the crash. I'll fiddle with different settings and see if that helps.
Edit: It doesn't like fullscreen! Windowed works.
Last edited by fabertawe on 1 March 2019 at 6:32 pm UTC
1. "Exclusive fullscreen" setting (default?) = black screen, had to change to simply "Fullscreen".
2. Mouse worked in the launcher but not in-game, which was a big bummer, because I'm used to playing with controller but aiming with mouse.
3. I really, really wish Feral would port it or at least announce the port, because I don't know how much longer I can hold out from buying. :-(
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