Hitman Gets New Missions; Also A 'Vampire Magician'

Calm yourself: the quasi-episodic Hitman [official site] hasn't yet stuffed a whole new environment into its elegantly-tailored trousers. It's still strictly Parisian (plus that boat/harbour map from the tutorial), but the devs are continuing to try and wring as many remixes from that huge fashion show palace as they can. A little while ago, the game updated with two new Escalation missions, which set specific challenges intended to make a familiar map suitably tricsky all over again. Specific challenges such as dressing as a 'vampire magician.'

Goddamnit all, I play games for a break from reality - the last thing we vampire magicians want is to recreate our day jobs in sandbox stealth sims.

The stated aim of the consciously playful Escalation missions is to challenge how well you know the map, and best of all sometimes lure you into new locations. There's a ton of Hitman's Paris I haven't skulked around yet; while the greedy part of me hungers for a whole new map ASAP, conceptually I love the idea that one level can keep on giving in unexpected ways. For instance:

“The Holmwood Disturbance” challenges you to eliminate Faustin D’Aoust with a firearm while wearing the vampire magician disguise. Escalations include adding an additional target, disallowing pacifications, limiting you to a single exit point and adding more security cameras.

and

"The Mandelbulb Requiem” gives you a contract on Michel Charest while wearing a Palace Staff disguise. Making things harder, you will eventually need to find and hack a laptop, eliminate Lance Artois while wearing a different, specific, disguise, dodge more security cameras and finally get around deadly laser tripwires throughout the palace.

More details here.

These sound proper hard. I probably need to practice a bit more first.

As I understand it, these are free to anyone who purchased either the full season pack thingy or just the first mission. There'll be more every week until a full new map releases, which will require an extra payment from those who didn't buy the full-on £40 bundle.