Hitman: Blood Money

Although this is my first experience of the Hitman series, I have picked up some information about this one 'Agent 47' from playing the game. I know that he is a smart dresser, he's a perfect fit to any man's clothing, he can get changed quickly and he always folds his clothes neatly. He also cleans up after he makes a mess. In case you hadn't realised yet, he is a contract killer, but he does do all of the things I have just mentioned. Don't worry if you haven't played any of the other games, this game is great, and although in some ways the learning curve can be steep, the game has been made to accomodate for all skill levels, from first time players of the game to vetrans on the series. The difficulty levels provide great variety and degrees of challenges, as you can have dulled down A.I, infinite saves and more detailed maps on lower difficulty settings, but on higher ones have no save slots, super intelligent A.I and notority in full effect. Speaking of saving, the game does that very well. You can save after each mission is complete no matter what difficulty level you were on, but during the game you can make saves at any point, but different amounts based on the difficulty level. This works well to make different levels more challenging, as you might waste your saves early and have to go through a hard part of the game without being able to save after you have done it. These saves can be re-loaded if you are killed, but only last for one playsession, so if you turn off your console and come back the next day, you'll have to start from the beginning of the level.

The game handles like a standard FPS on a console, where you use one analog stick to move forward, and another to adjust the camera angle and make turns. Hitman: Blood Money can also be played as a first person shooter, or first person stealth action game, simply by tapping a button to change the perspective. In both it handles well and the transition between the two is usually seemless. In third person mode, the camera can also be used to look around corners before you go and walk down the wrong hallway. The problem that arises here is that the crosshair is your camera, and because the camera was made to be slow turning for ease of use, when someone is shooting you in the back, it takes ages for you to spin the camera around and kill them. This slow turning can seem awfully painful at times, but one shot to the head is an instant kill with even the weakest pistols, so at least there is some compensation.

While the game does cater for those new to the series, the general thought waves will take a while to catch on to you if you're new to the genre, or the series. After a while you realise what you have to do, but initially it can seem quite over whelming when you can see a guy and you just want to pop him with one quick shot, but you have to go through the map for what seems like an eternity, find the kitchen, posion some food that he will eat, and then wait for him to eat the food and die. The learning curve of the game is quite steep for this reason, but there are many levels for you to have fun on once you have gotten the hang of it. There is also a great tutorial mode level to start with that takes you through a linear level step-by-step, and teaches you most of the skills that you will need for later in the game. The level design is fantastic. If you've tried a level multiple times you can find a quick route to go through a party or a building and make the kills the level can seem quite small and straigh forward, but if you take the time to explore some levels, you'll see how much effort was put in to making them huge, interactive and full of lots of little secrets that you will only pick up when you go through a level multiple times.

The ways to perform a kill have increased, as you can make things look accidental, by rigging a bomb to a chandeleer, and then detonating it when a person is walking underneath it. The problem with this is that in some levels there can be a lot of trial and error, perhaps too much trying to get it right. You're given hints in your mission briefing, and the maps show points of interest, but getting a kill, or multiple kills just right can take numerous attempts, especially if you don't learn quickly from your mistakes. So while some would say trying to kill people in numerous ways to get it right, or trying to kill people in a different way each time you play a level makes for good replay value, I personally think that there isn't a huge amount of replay value in the game, as it's all storyline based, and once you've done all the missions, there isn't a huge incentive to go back through them again, although the level design and different ways of killing does make it a possibility. Either way, there's still many hours of fun to be had.

The storyline. While it is present, it only makes small appearances between levels, and feels disjointed in some respects. It is logical, but it doesn't relate hugely to what you are doing in the missions, it's mainly some people trying to track you down and you getting your next assignment. The action in-game makes up for this though, and the cut-scenes are graphically beautiful for the Playstaion 2. The in-game graphics are reasonable, but have been toned down to create a steady frame rate, so you can have hundreds of people on-screen, such as when you're at the mardi gras, with no noticable slow down. On higher end PCs and the Xbox 360, the graphics are truely fantastic. The music in the game is good, and is used to create suspense at dramatic times, but what I have noticed is that the intense and dramatic music often starts playing when nothing is actually happening on screen. For example, you simply walk in to a room, go through a door and pick up some ammo someone left on the ground, you turn around, no one is in sight, but your hear a loud crescendo, the music speeds up and continually becomes more dramatic, trying to foreshadow danger when your metre for being noticed is still at zero. This may just be a glitch, but it's annoying as it can sub-conciously make you hurry thinking someone has seen you and is on to you.

When you do die, the cinematic death is quite enjoyable at first, where you go in to slow motion, and the screen slowly fades red and you collapse to your knees in slow muffled agony before blood spills over the camera and oozes out in silohette form. This is cool the first few times, but occasionaly it fails horribly. An example was when I jumped off a high ledge, to see what the splat would look like. Agent 47 landed on his feet, looking perfectly healthy, and I thought he may have survived. Then out of no where, the red screen appeared, with me slowly dying, even though I was still standing up calmly. It's a small thing, but I thought I would point it out. Another point to be noted is that the game dictates how interactive you can be with any one object. For example a door. You walk up to the door, some will simply not be able to open, so no prompts will appear. Other will tell you to press X to Open, or X to pick the lock, or X to use your keycard etc. Speaking of doors, there are a lot of doors in the game. Pehaps too many as you have to open each one manually, and if you're standing too close - it doesn't open. This works well when you need to be able to close a door, such as if you want to kill somone in there without anyone seeing, but if you simply want to go through several rooms, you have to laboriosly open each door.

Weapons are fully upgradable which is nice because with some hard earned bling, you can pimp a standard pistol in to a dual wield pistol, with fast recoil, a scope, laser beam aim and a larger clip. The same applies for most weapons that you can pay money to upgrade. The general weapons of the game are good, as there are plenty of guns, as well as other things such as shovels and stun guns. 47 himself has some cool gagets that can be used for all kinds of things. These include fibre wire, syringes, coins for distracting guards, knifes and more. Syringes can be used from sedating guards, to poisoning a victim's drink so it is his last drink and there's a dead man, but nothing points to you. Small items such as fibre wire and syringes, even small pistols can be concealed in his pockets, for quick access, so you don't have to open your inventory and scroll through every item to find what you are looking for.

It's probably a bad idea ending on a negative note when the game is overall of a high standard, but one gripe I had was with interacting. In particular, the new jumping system. If you need to jump between two ledges, you simply walk towards them, and a custom animation of 47 jumping will be performed, but you have no influence over it. This also means that if you want to jump somewhere that the developers didn't want you to jump, you can't. I found this annoying when I was on a veranda and instead of walking all the way to the stairs, I just wanted to jump over the low rail, but I was not able to. A minor frustration, but still a frustration.

This game is great, as it makes improvements to the series, and offers different things to differently experienced players, from beginner to vet. The occupation of being a hired killer is quite limiting (not that I would know from real life experience), but the developers certainly did their best to make it as diverse and fun as possible, while trying to create sound controls, good sound effects and non-linear ways of getting the job done. Of course there's still room for improvement, such as possibly a few more levels and more storyline development, and there's the minor annoyances which pop up in every game, but on the whole, it's definately worth a rent to see if you like the genre, and a purchase if you do.

4.5 - Presentation

4.0 - Graphics

4.5 - Sound

4.0 - Gameplay

4.0 - Lasting Appeal

OVERALL

4.2/5