Hitman demo on Xbox 360

By Tom Bramwell Published 25 May, 2006

Demo of a showman.

Those of you who'd rather play the new Hitman game on Xbox 360 than PC can log onto Marketplace and start downloading your own version of the PC demo released this week.

Weighing in at over 700MB, it'll take a while to get your sleekly gloved hands wrapped around its innocent throat, but it'll be worth the wait if you fancy a go on the "Death of a Showman" level.

The full game, which sees Agent 47 sojourning to Americaland to kill for a bit of pocket-change, is due out on Friday - also on PC, Xbox and PS2 - and we'll have a review of it up very soon.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (20) Latest comment 6 years ago

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  • BartonFink #1 6 years ago

    First of all it takes forever to flippin well download
    Edited by BartonFink at 25/05/06 @ 10:18

  • Skooch #2 6 years ago

    Hitman looks pretty good on 360, gonna give the demo a try and then decide about the full game. Man...I love Live!

  • #3 6 years ago

    Definatley one to try out - will set to download while I'm in the gym after I get home.
    Not "the real next-gen" but might be jolly good fun none-the-less.
    /Thinks - may be best to employ a rental strategy for games like this and save the wonga for real quality, logevous titles.
    /Holds head in shame for buying PDZ.

  • Skooch #4 6 years ago

    "/Holds head in shame for buying PDZ."

    LOL. Played that game for about 30mins and thought it was absolute cack. Luckily I borrowed it from a mate so have never had to play it since...

  • S.J.Rogers #5 6 years ago

    Anybody want my copy of PDZ..?

    I will pay you to take it off my hands...!!!!

  • king_skins #6 6 years ago

    I thought PDZ was quite good, espeshially in Multiplayer

  • Darren #7 6 years ago

    I was very impressed with Hitman Blood Money on the Xbox 360. It looks as good as the recent PC demo on max. detail and thankfully doesn't tear or have bad jaggies. Also the controls are just sublime compared with the clumsy keyboard ones in the PC demo where you have to hold down Shift to run...

    Although I only played the demo this morning, the full game arrived in the post shortly after I started it so I'm looking forward to checking out the game proper later on.

  • #8 6 years ago

    I'm sorry, but it really wasn't.
    A friend and I played some co-op over live the other day. We vowed never to play that game again.
    I can't even begin to list my problems with that game - I could really go on all day.
    It was played because it was the only thing out there to play. COD was a bit more simplistic (and is only now a reliable multiplayer game) and Kong didn't have multiplayer. Quake was nothing new.
    God, that game bugs me so much.

  • kangarootoo #9 6 years ago

    Whoohoo!! Thats my next XB related activity taken care of. XBLive is, yet again, totally great.

    @jamesphilp

    I guess you are talking about PDZ? I wasn't much enamored with SP mode, but found co-op to be quite good fun. The sniper alley type level was good, the rest kind of entertaining enough. Not worth the money overall though IMO.

  • #10 6 years ago

    @kangarootoo
    Yeah PDZ was what I was on about - sorry should have made that more obvious!

    Yes, the first few levels of PDZ co-op are OK. Just don't delve too deep - they get pretty godawful!
    e.g:
    What's the point of a hovercraft when I have no friggin idea where I'm supposed to be going?!
    What's the point of the yellow arrows (pointing towards you co-op teammate) when they point through a locked door!?
    /Gets frustrated /almost throws game out of window /vows never to play again.
    Oh and a gun that looks EXACTLY like n uzi, but all of a sudden projects a hologram - WOW - amazing. It's set in the furture right - why not design a gun that actually LOOKS like it could display a hologram?
    A FAMAS that makes you invisible? etc etc. - Just lazy, crappy, design.
    Everything's shiney - EVERYTHING.
    Did I mention how bad the controls handle?

    Damn it, why'd you get me all riled up!?
    Edited by at 25/05/06 @ 14:40

  • kangarootoo #11 6 years ago

    @jamesphilip

    "What's the point of a hovercraft when I have no friggin idea where I'm supposed to be going?! "

    Thats a great sentence, and one I shall try to use in other situations whenever I can. If I ever write a film script, I'll credit you when I include it :)

    I totally agree, there are loads of issues in PDZ that leave you scratching your head (those floor arrows smell like a late "fix" to me, when testers found they were always getting lost). I know what you mean about everything being shiney, occasionally it loks nice but quite often its oddly out of context (I've never seen shiny snow in real life, not once, not even when someone has whizzed on it).

    And you don't need to tell me about the controls. If you have read any of my ranting posts on the subject whenever the subject hoves into view, you will know how I feel about it (time to post that link again, all devs please read it).

    http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20040714/ng_01.shtml

    On a positive note though, the intro music is great. Not something I would buy on a single obviously, but I mean its like a proper fully produced film theme and is a really nice touch of polish.

  • jamesbee #12 6 years ago

    Anyone acutally get this to work in HD? Says I need to switch to pal60. Dash is running in 720p

  • kangarootoo #13 6 years ago

    There was a similar problem with the Outfit demo apparently (assuming its the same issue).

    If it is the same problem, switch to PAL, change the setting to 60Hz, then switch back to HD and everything should be cool. its just an oversight in the code, where it checks to see it has the right PAL settings even if they are not actually be applied.

  • #14 6 years ago

    And BTW that is the crappest thing ever if you've been running the 360 in HD, like, forever. I won't rant about it here, because I've already done that in the past. - But how hard can it be for a game to recognise the 360's set to HD and just bypass that step?

    Kangaroo, I could easily take issue with almost every weapon in PDZ, and rant about poor level design poor controls etc for well over 2000 words, but I won't, for everyone's sanity!

  • jamesbee #15 6 years ago

    Ai, that fixed it, thanks, abit silly really that!

  • OnlyMe #16 6 years ago

    Okay, played through the demo. I don't think I'll ever be interested in the Hitman series, they're all so boring. It's not that I don't like sneaking, I really like Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid. I played through the whole demo but I really didn't see anything I liked, nor anything I hadn't seen before. Utterly unimpressed.

    Just... boring.

  • Stilicho #17 6 years ago

    What a complete waste of time and effort this is. Absolutely abysmal A.I., pathetic animation, just utter crap. I had a very bad feeling after opening the door next to the first two guards didn't even attract their attention but they instantly hear you flip the coin, and my fears were completely justified when I got downstairs and found a bunch of identical women in their underwear and another bunch of identical brain dead cannon fodder who just stood there and let me shoot them. I played all the way to the end in a vain attempt to find something to like. Thank God for Live...it's saved me the effort of trotting in to my local branch of Game and then trotting back in again to get rid of this turd. The Hitman series has gone the way of the Tomb Raider franchise and this is the equivalent of Angel of Darkness.

  • bloodflowers #18 6 years ago

    Not great. Horrible controls which don't work in any intuitive way at all, stupid problems with getting the character to do what you want, even when following the guide details. Examples: grabbing the crook to use as a human shield, just wouldn't register. Pushing the guard over the balcony - again, nothing. Both times I ended up getting a gun out instead after they noticed me (which took 10 seconds of me standing in plain view spazzing at them). Other annoying glitches include not being able to open doors while sneaking, if the door has a keyhole (open door becomes look through keyhole unless you stand up).

    It looks nice enough until it moves, frame rate like a damn flick-book on a large screen - quite why that should be when it's multiplatform is beyond me - it used to be the the most powerful machines got the same game with smoother graphics.

    Why has the Hitman series been consistently glitchy like this, when the same company (and maybe the same team) used a similar engine for Freedom Fighters, which was -absolutely brilliant-?

  • #19 6 years ago

    Having played this through:

    Hitman: Blood Money

    Could I have been more 'Meh'?

    Clipping issues, framerate dodgieness when it went into the split screen bits (which were completely unnesscary and if anythind ruined the purity of the experience). Rubbish textures (Agh those gates when you're talking to the first dude), bad (terrible) animations, over-the top outdoor lighting, rubbish cut-sequences, bad facial expressions, bad lip-sync, really bad character interaction (again the animations), bad controls, especially sniping, over-the-top blood effects, simplistic level design, really bad implementation of controls, god the list goes on.
    I'm sure the game gets more challenging, but I found one play through of this demo much more than enough. Handled dodgily, and not a patch on hitman 2 (the best in the series imo).

    Really just left a sour taste in my mouth. When I think back at the fun I had with Hitman 2 on the xbox....
    Edited by at 26/05/06 @ 11:31

  • polar #20 6 years ago

    What a shoddy demo, IO would've been better off not releasing it at all. Was thinking about buying the game until now. It's not even worth the download.