Points & Tabs: 24th of January 2017: Hitman Pinball

Hello, and welcome to today’s Points & Tabs where we settle down and link out to the shifts in the industry that we’ve covered, and those that we haven’t.


If, for some reason, you’ve found yourself paying attention to the round-up subtitles since we started running them then I have two things to say to you. One, sorry about today’s, I’ll explain that in a bit; and two, we’ve changed the name of the round-ups, so yeah.

Points & Tabs is the new name for our round-ups, it’s notable because of pointing and having tabs open in the internet browser. It also sounds like my mate Ron asking for a couple of pints and a packet of smokes.

Pinball Hitman then.

One big problem I have in explaining the difficulty curve of Hitman to people is in finding a way to compare it to something else with a similar learning curve or ability arc. It’s plain lazy to compare it to Dark Souls, although the fact that the game gets easier as you grip onto the mechanics of the game and find more equipment does draw a massive parallel between the two.

That said, I was lazy-boy drawing a line between Demon Souls and Pinball back when I was working at GAME ahead of the game’s release back in 2010. My work colleagues and I managed to get about 30 pre-orders for the title, which completely dwarfed that of any nearby store, and we did that by stressing its unforgiving manner, and that reversed learning curve.

Hitman, then, is like pinball. Specifically like computer pinball, with it’s ramps, triggers, stories, and animations. Not one part of it stands out from the rest in any real way, but once you’ve learnt the layout of everything in the level/table, the rest of your options begin to open up. It’s still largely a matter of timing, and stuff can go completely wrong if you loose your attention for a moment, but once you’re equipped with the knowledge of where to go, and how to do, the score simply keeps climbing anytime you put the experimentation aside for the sake of attempting a perfect execution.


Video Games News, From B3’s Mouth,

Review – Spiritsphere
GG – Robo Puzzle Smash
Video – Killing Floor 2 Review – Gamegazm TV
News – Xbox One Update Begins Reaching Players, Adds Features Such As The New Guide, And More
News – HITMAN Faces Elusive #19, The Blackmailer Sends Agent 47 To Paris
News – Games With Gold February 2017 Revealed
News – The Crypt of the NecroDancer: Amplified DLC is Now Live in Early Access
News – Avalanche Software Revived as Warner Bros Studio… To Work on Projects for Former Owner
News – Beautiful Desolation Live on Kickstarter; Post-apocalyptic Title from STASIS, CAYNE.
News – BadLands Games Sign Tough Platformer Nightmare Boy, Announce its Greenlight Campaign
News – Toukiden 2 Gets New Trailer As Western Release Dates Confirmed


And, here’s what we didn’t get the chance to cover, from the source.
  • Travellers Tales Games’ Head of Design Arthur Parsons has confirmed that Lego Worlds will also be coming to the Switch at some point after its February release for other platforms.
  • The Nintendo Switch Touchscreen has been shown off in video footage uploaded by Youtube account GamingWithMe – to skip straight to the touch screen part you can simply check it out on AGB’s YT –here
  • The Deus Ex blog confirmed the next DLC mission coming to Deus Ex Mankind Divided will see Mr Jensen find his way to an Arizona Prison. (Blog)
  • A recent update to Astroneer has seen cross play multiplayer enabled between Xbox One & Windows 10 store versions of the game. Sure, most people on PC will have got it through Steam, but it’s a start right?
  • Tales of Beseria received a new launch trailer ahead of it’s 24th of January PS4 and 26th of January PC release. (Trailer)
  • A quite interesting trailer showing off the Buddy-AI logic for the photo system in FFXV was released on the GDC 2017 Youtube ahead of the event. (Youtube)
  • Chucklefish announced late yesterday that Starbound had shipped over 2.5million copies of the game. (Blog)
  • FFXII: The Zodiac Age had more gameplay footage shown off at the recent Taipai Game Show. Dualshockers managed to snip the footage from the stream which is otherwise no longer available. (Dualshockers Youtube)
  • Viriginia secured the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain’s award for best game writing; an interesting choice based on the fact that there is not a single syllable uttered in the game.
  • Resident Evil 7: Biohazard totally launched today. (Launch Trailer)
  • Yakuza 0 also launched. I’m still a bit peeved about Sega’s dedication to not have the series come to PC. (Launch Trailer)
  • Tekken 7’s Season Pass was fully detailed, and Bandai Namco also detailed the PS4 exclusive content that would be gracing the system on launch. (B-N Blog)
  • SOEDESCO announced they would be releasing a physical version of Rougelike-Shooter Rogue Stormers later on this year.
  • The Banner Saga 3 launched its Kickstarter with a sum of $200,000 being sought out for the final part in the unforgiving series. (Kickstarter)
  • Herald, a point & click adventure title focused on Colonialism received a confirmed release date of the 16th of February. The title is a really interesting effort, combining period drama with character driven story and a rarely trodden settting. (Steam)
  • Finally, Activision have made SWAT 4 available on GOG after years of either wrestling deadly bears to find, or not really looking for, the files. (GOG)

We run these round-ups from Monday to Saturday, so make sure to check back tomorrow.

If you think we missed something then why not drop it into the comments below? We’ll jump right on getting it fixed.

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