Hitman Blood Money Review

Now I know I haven't written a review since April (Dino D-Day) so I missed games like Duke Nukem, Alice the Madness Returns... um Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale, none of them I was really panning to review well may Duke however I was still very busy and so I only played it a little bit but what I did play of it... It was pretty awful so much so that I got artistic all off a sudden.

Anyway Hitman. The only Hitman game I had played before Blood Money was the very first one; this was a good few years ago. What I can remember back then was that it was fun but extremely frustrating due to AI that could see though your disguise in a matter of mini seconds, now I play Blood Money and I wonder why I haven't heard of this game as much as i have.

You play as Agent 47 the world’s greatest and most secretive assassin, (Ezio eat your heart out!)well that's what the game tells you fact of the matter if your anything like me well... let’s say secretive and to be honest greatest is not what you would call him if your anything like me, think more along the lines of loud, clumsy and maybe a bit trigger happy. 

The best thing about this is that the game lets you do this, you muck up by being spotted carrying a pistol in your normal suit it's not game over you still have a change just go James Bond and go guns blazing with your pistol picking up other weapons on the way. The bad thing is that the controls don't really support this type of gameplay. Controlling 47 isn't really like controlling a tank but its close. Shooting is very easy to do and getting headshots are a little too easy to get in my opinion.

The main aim of the game is to assassinate certain people with little notoriety and to make it all seem like he just happened to accidently trip and fall over a balcony head first into a pit of spiky rocks. The way you do this is to silently sneak up on people (such as security guards) kill then or sedate them. From there you take their cloths or anything else important like key cards, from there you casual walk around the area looking for opportunities to take out your targets without being noticed. Sometimes you’re completely stumped on how you’re meant to do this but after a good 5 or 6 times of trial and error before getting it and then it just seem easy. 

After every mission you get ranked on how well you did by how noisy you where, how violent you where to people who are not your targets (guards, citizens and so on) your finally given a notoriety rating out of a hundred which will affect you on later missions by how well people can spot you and become alerted to your presents this is easily fixed by bribing police chiefs or threatening witnesses. You’re finally given a name on how well you did (for example "The Ghost" or "Silent Assassin"). Added to this game is the cost that the agency ( where you get the missions from) hast to pay to get back your suit or any custom weapons you may of dropped, which affects how much money you get payed for the mission which then open up upgrades for you weapons.

Talking of Weapons I didn't really use any of the rifles or shotguns in the game, I always carried my pistol but that was it, apart from the weapons I already got by default (fibre wire and syringes) however seeing how you can play this game in a different ways I can say I never used them because I was always the sneaky type of assassin by you may if your choosing to use a sniper rifle or assault rifle to rush in to your missions and quickly take them out.

I only have to gripes with the game, one of them I can't really blame them and the other one is a design destitution. The first grip is the AI, sometimes you put on a disguise but your still not aloud to go to curtain areas, the game sometimes doesn't make this very clear and if you go into a area that you’re not allowed to go too by one millimetre every single guard will come running after you guns blazing! 

My second and final grip is that there's not Level Editor! This game is prime for a Level Editor and it wouldn't be that hard and I could see some very talented people making fantastic maps but unfortunately there isn't one and so when looking online for some sort of community group to get Hitman 1 to work on Windows 7 (if anyone knows how to do this on Steam please email me) there was little to no one still on any message boards however it's slowly growing thanks to another Hitman game coming out soon. (I’m looking forward for it).

All in all Hitman Blood Money is a very enjoyable game very well polished well rounded game, I finished this in around 10 hours which is a good length it never lacks or becomes boring, once you start the game your stuck playing it to the end. I pick the whole collection for around five pounds (it was the Steam summer sale) but if you want to get the collection now it's now £17.97 but you can get Blood Money for five pounds. For any type of stealth pick it up, you won't regret it.

Liam Hackett