Hitman: Blood Money
The bald-headed badass is back, and yes, he's better than ever.
Published: June 6, 2006
IO Interactive's Hitman series has always been something of an odd beast. On the one hand, most of the game boils down to little more than trial and error as you hunt and peck at a particular level until you find the specific sequence of events that the developers had in mind when they designed the mission. It's gotten better, no doubt, but as evolved as the level design and even the newer AI has become, it's still that same process of saving, attempting something, and then reloading if it doesn't work.
Ordinarily, I'd hate a game like this, but IO has found a way make it work. When you do finally slip in, winding your way through a crowd until you reach your target and pull off a hit successful without anyone around you being the wiser, it feels great, and that's something that no other game has really been able to duplicate. And so, even with all of the problems that the game still has, Blood Money ends up being the kind of experience you can only get from the Hitman franchise.
I don't want to short-change the improvements that have been made, mind you; subtle things like the AI actually warning you and treating you like the rest of the crowd instead of emptying a clip into your face let you push and prod the boundaries of what you can and can't do, and once you've figured out where those boundaries are, Blood Money -- more than any other Hitman before it -- allows you to execute your targets in numerous ways. Just so long as you know where the lines have been drawn.
The notoriety system, which basically tracks your kills, making the more bloody and raucous hits a ding on your record as cameramen and witnesses remember your face, means the missions are even more of a trial-and-error affair (though it's in a good way if you're a fan of going back and trying to do things right). Amusingly, the eyewitness reports are often grossly incorrect, but the dings do add up, and as you progress through the game, you'll start getting spotted earlier and more often. You can pay off some people to keep the heat off, but that money is better spent on the third major improvement: weapons.
As a hitman, you're getting paid by your clients (or they're paying the Agency, who's then paying you), and that money has to go somewhere. You'll pocket extra change for grabbing your suit (since you'll often have to ditch it to get anywhere), for hanging onto your custom weapons, and of course for killing your target without harming innocents, which can mean serious dough. Why not use it to attach a laser sight or a bigger clip or special ammo or a silencer to your weapons littering your smoky safehouse basement? Though you now have the option to just run up and rip a weapon from an enemy's hands before turning it on them, it's so much quieter to snipe them from afar. Then again, any weapons you happen to take with you stay in your arsenal, though you can't pour the same cash into tricking them out.
If you've never played a Hitman game before, this is about as good a place to start as one could hope for. The older, less newcomer-friendly game has softened a little; the controls are now even more context-sensitive, allowing you to choose from multiple tasks in the same area with multiple buttons rather than cycling through things, the AI is more forgiving for first-time violations, and there's even a blatant tutorial level that may actually hold your hand too much.
Once you've gotten used to the controls, there's just the storyline to digest, and even this does a modest job of filling you in on who 47 actually is (he's a clone, if you're curious, which is why he goes by a number instead of a name). The game's storyline actually turns the whole hunter/hunted thing on its head by having a hitman and a rival agency hunting the former hunter, and when coupled with an even more expansive set of levels, makes for an incredibly riveting experience. You want to play the level to see how elaborate they get, yes, but you also want that next snippet of CG that delves deeper into what's happening between missions.
Ordinarily, I'd hate a game like this, but IO has found a way make it work. When you do finally slip in, winding your way through a crowd until you reach your target and pull off a hit successful without anyone around you being the wiser, it feels great, and that's something that no other game has really been able to duplicate. And so, even with all of the problems that the game still has, Blood Money ends up being the kind of experience you can only get from the Hitman franchise.
I don't want to short-change the improvements that have been made, mind you; subtle things like the AI actually warning you and treating you like the rest of the crowd instead of emptying a clip into your face let you push and prod the boundaries of what you can and can't do, and once you've figured out where those boundaries are, Blood Money -- more than any other Hitman before it -- allows you to execute your targets in numerous ways. Just so long as you know where the lines have been drawn.
The notoriety system, which basically tracks your kills, making the more bloody and raucous hits a ding on your record as cameramen and witnesses remember your face, means the missions are even more of a trial-and-error affair (though it's in a good way if you're a fan of going back and trying to do things right). Amusingly, the eyewitness reports are often grossly incorrect, but the dings do add up, and as you progress through the game, you'll start getting spotted earlier and more often. You can pay off some people to keep the heat off, but that money is better spent on the third major improvement: weapons.
As a hitman, you're getting paid by your clients (or they're paying the Agency, who's then paying you), and that money has to go somewhere. You'll pocket extra change for grabbing your suit (since you'll often have to ditch it to get anywhere), for hanging onto your custom weapons, and of course for killing your target without harming innocents, which can mean serious dough. Why not use it to attach a laser sight or a bigger clip or special ammo or a silencer to your weapons littering your smoky safehouse basement? Though you now have the option to just run up and rip a weapon from an enemy's hands before turning it on them, it's so much quieter to snipe them from afar. Then again, any weapons you happen to take with you stay in your arsenal, though you can't pour the same cash into tricking them out.
If you've never played a Hitman game before, this is about as good a place to start as one could hope for. The older, less newcomer-friendly game has softened a little; the controls are now even more context-sensitive, allowing you to choose from multiple tasks in the same area with multiple buttons rather than cycling through things, the AI is more forgiving for first-time violations, and there's even a blatant tutorial level that may actually hold your hand too much.
Once you've gotten used to the controls, there's just the storyline to digest, and even this does a modest job of filling you in on who 47 actually is (he's a clone, if you're curious, which is why he goes by a number instead of a name). The game's storyline actually turns the whole hunter/hunted thing on its head by having a hitman and a rival agency hunting the former hunter, and when coupled with an even more expansive set of levels, makes for an incredibly riveting experience. You want to play the level to see how elaborate they get, yes, but you also want that next snippet of CG that delves deeper into what's happening between missions.
