Hitman Blood Money playthrough: Mission 2

This is another video run through of Hitman Blood Money, this time for Mission 2: Curtains Down; Silent Assassin rating, suit retrieval at the end of the level and using as few bullets as possible (none so far)... I've provided a flash video and a high quality version is also available for download. I've updated the way transcripts are viewed and instead of placing them inline with the article, which was probably less than useful for those who will utilise it, I've provided a link which will open up the transcript in its own window.

Hitman Blood Money is classified as "18" in the UK and "Mature" in the US which means that it is unsuitable for minors; fairly warned be thee.

Download the higher quality version (107MB, XviD video, VBR MP3 audio)
View the video transcript

Notes

I'm a lot happier with the narration of this mission than I was with the one before, I make a couple of errors while speaking: when I say that the guard is protecting the co-star's dressing room, he is actually guarding the main star's dressing room; when I say "length" then correct myself and say "distance" for the bomb detonator, I'm referring to the radius that your bomb detonator works within, the upgrade I mention increases the range from which you can detonate the bomb from. I also invent a word: "incorrections" which is a portmanteau of "inconsistencies" and "corrections" to create some kind of mutant, nonsensical word. I only used "so" 15 times and "actually" twice in this narration which is an order of magnitude better than last time, I do seem to hesitate a bit more and stumble over my words in places.

Details

Play time: 14:23
Rating: Silent Assassin
Retrieved suit: Yes
Accidents: 3
Close Combat Kills: 0
Bullets fired: 0

Unlike a lot of other missions, this is the only sure-fire way of getting silent assassin that I know, as long as you don't get caught doing anything deviant or stupid that is. I'm sure there are other circumstantial ways like sniping the targets from the gods and not getting seen or carefully placing bombs, but they would be very messy and from what I found, hard to replicate. One of the things I forgot to mention in my walk through is about the "top" level guards who rally around the second target and protect the star's dressing room. I've found no way of getting a suit from them (either sitting about or sedating one of them) without their body being found or cover being blow and even when you have one, there are two guards in the second target's box who don't move. Another off-the-cuff remark I wanted to put into the narration but didn't find the time is about the prop pistol: if you don't concentrate on the menus when you're trying to put the real pistol down, you can inadvertently put the prop one back down which nullifies camping out inside the dressing room.


Process

For those who are interested, I make the videos using almost entirely free software. To capture the videos I use Fraps which I bought a copy of (I'm not sure if the free version allows for videos but it's an awesome program for the money), I then join the huge videos together in VirtualDub and make a version that I watch while recording the narration. For that I use Audacity which I'm sure has a lot more features than I make use of but for just bashing out a recording it's great. Once I'm happy with the narration I mux out the audio from the original video files using either ffmpeg or VirtualDubMod and import it into Audacity where I then use the "Quickmix" facility to mix the tracks and then export them as a WAV file. I then use VirtualDub to do a 2-pass encoding in VP62 - which I've mentioned in a previous post - which can take upward of 2 hours (for a ~10 minute video clip). I then use ffmpeg to mux together the audio and video into an FLV file and voila, all done. I do the transcripts the old fashioned way (listening and typing) while the high-quality version is a quick 2-pass encode using XviD and a VBR MP3 (I use Nandub to plex it into the AVI file).

The entire process is fairly quick and the longest part is waiting for the VP62 video to encode which seems to take an inordinate amount of time. I usually run through a couple of iterations of the narration to get what I want to say out and fit it in time with the video but as I've mentioned before, this isn't meant to be a polished operation, just colloquial and informative.

Responses to “Hitman Blood Money playthrough: Mission 2”

ChaosTangent

Heh, well this is one of only two levels where there's a lot of sitting about, the second is in Vegas further on in the game and is one of my least favourite missions. I mentioned in one of my other narrations but didn't fit it into the final one: the cupboard hiding trick I only use on this mission and I don't use it again for the rest of the game; all other missions (apart from Vegas) there's minimal sitting about, so you can get trigger happy all you want.

Stevie D

Actually I'm getting inspired by these vids to go and try to do it properly myself...

Ah.

You just said "I cut out a minute and half of me sitting around in a cupboard"

Maybe not.
Respond to “Hitman Blood Money playthrough: Mission 2”

Community rules:

  1. Keep it civil: no personal attacks, slurs, harassment, hate speech, or threats
  2. No spam: includes marketing, pyramid schemes, scams etc.
  3. Notify of any spoilers: even if it's for something the post isn't about
  4. Your response may be edited or removed: if your response was in good faith, you may be contacted via email explaining why

Your address will never be shared

The following HTML tags are allowed: <b> <strong> <i> <em> <a href>