Hitman: Blood Money

Love the games but this is the only one with weird fu**inf controls first crouch is Lt but in the other one it's right stick. Hold b to swap weapons plus you can't customize the controls in settings.

As is more often than not true for my reviews of VGs, this is based on the PC version. This title is generally met with positive response. That is well-deserved. In almost every way, this is the greatest since the first, and in many, it's even better. This is incredibly smooth, every aspect of it, it's unbelievable how much effort was put into it, and how well and clearly it all has paid off. This is probably the best of the whole series. The freedom is quite simply extreme. If you think you can do it, it makes sense to do in the context of what your goals are, and you have or can obtain the means... you are enormously likely to be able to. This allows you to be creative with your main limitation being your own imagination. You can spend literally countless hours trying out and finding the just about infinite different methods of successfully taking out your targets, with varying degrees of secrecy. Unprecedented, at least for these. Talk about your re-playability value. Things that occurred in the others are considerably more available here. They manage to keep them from becoming flat and dull. I'd say it's because they have multiple applications, and are, honestly, darned fun to work with. Examples, you ask? How about the possibility of making your hit look like an accident? They do happen, you know. Barbecues malfunction. Heavy objects drop at inopportune times, for those that are under them as they do. Less attention can help a professional killer. That brings me to the notoriety. If you get seen or make yourself too noticeable... mass murderers tend to be... then you will, in fact, be tracked down. Your picture might get in the paper. Civilians can recognize you. That's gonna make a mess of your next assignment. Either you plan and sneak, eliminate them spot-on, without anyone knowing you were there, or you spend a hefty chunk of your reward... which also depends on your rating, the stealthier, the more... buying the trouble away. Furthermore, you always get to carry a tactical explosive with you. Sabotage or a crude... but deliciously effective, and usually untraceable... instrument to render members of the opposition, and that includes the ones you're specifically hired to remove, deceased. The choice is yours. You now always have a syringe of poison, and one that will sedate, and mostly two uses of each. They can taint foods, or you can go for the direct approach. This combination is good, and the next step for that. In this are intricately detailed briefings, more so than the others in the franchise, except for perhaps Codename: 47, as well. This makes hiding easier, both for yourself and for bodies. Someone pointed out that this does get a tad obvious... with containers big enough to hold a corpse found in a bunch of areas. The closets for the clone himself are somewhat inconspicuous. There are negatives in this... they're minuscule and seldom impact the entertainment, but not entirely nonexistent. The training bit has been brought up before, too. While it does, indeed, introduce a lot of what you can do in this, leaving little of it unrevealed, it fails in setting the tone, by not only suggesting you mow down the majority of all you meet, but largely forcing you to do so. Unwise. From then on out, every mission does let you attain the coveted SA, or Silent Assassin, if you do it right. The several marks in all of them, among other things, help ensure that this offers plenty of challenge, and to all, on account of the four difficulty settings, that are rather well defined, and you get to read precisely what each has and hasn't got, prior to any second of trying it. This has a profile system... for every completion, you can store your progress, although you aren't required to, if, for example, you weren't happy with how well you did. Note that you can't load what you've saved if you exit, if you stop playing, you have to start that one, over. The weapons of this are nice and cool, and you have a couple that you can upgrade... the iconic Silverballers, the nifty Spas 12, an M4, a Heckler & Koch MP5 and the infamous Walther 2000. We're talking, silencers, alternate ammo, accuracy, speed to name a few. The money for those would be another reason to go for "clean" play-throughs. You can now purchase "intel", hints. The level design is solid. The map leaves little, if anything, to be desired, as with most else in this. The interface is magnificent. The camera is now "loose", with 360 degrees of freedom. And without losing the solid control of 47. You can, as the developers put it, stage the attacks, view it from the angle you want as you go into action. The cinematic style of this is excellent. The cut-scenes are amazing, and, seemingly, in spite of the LOD on them, invariably in-engine. They're part of the source of pure, unadulterated awesomeness of this. The plot is intriguing and well-told, with a climactic and satisfying twist. The graphics are immense and masterfully done. This tops as far as the realistic movement goes, and the rag-doll physics. This supports a huge group of characters at an occasion, and the NPCs always have their own life. You can watch it play out if you don't affect them. The AI is astounding. The music... wow. I wouldn't rule out that it's more enticing and fitting than in the other three. Jesper Kyd outdoes himself. With one exception, this takes place in the US... and nowhere else. That doesn't have to preclude it from having interesting and diverse locations, and it doesn't. There are some stereotypes in this, along with language, particularly in aforementioned intro, that can get harsh, and strong, at times pervasive, sexuality, albeit no nudity. I recommend this to any fan of the others, and/or open games. 9/10

Hit-man: Blood Money (played on the PS2) creeped me out right from the start. Not in a manner quite like Contracts, the 2004 installment of the awesome series, but in a different way. The main menus consist of what appears to be the protagonist's, Agent 47's, funeral, while Schubert's Ave Maria plays softly yet hauntingly in the background. This is just one of the many ways that Blood Money twists with your mind and makes you question your morality and sanity. This is, no doubt, one of the best games of the year so far, and aside from a few glaring flaws, is the best installment yet in the Hit-man franchise.

The major flaw in Blood Money is the way it begins. The beginning is dark, melodramatic, and moody, taking place at an abandoned amusement park, but the structure isn't as smooth as levels in the other Hit-man titles, and the game leads you by the nose for the entire level, effectively removing the open-ended nature of the series. But when you are past this training level, it's Blood Money to the Big Leagues time, with 47 taking no prisoners in a dark, violent tale of conspiracy and intrigue. It's a very compelling story, combining the international appeal of Silent Assassin with the brutish, disturbing nature of Contracts.

One of the best additions to the game is the Accident system. This will change the way you play Hit-man. It allows you to place explosives, poison foods, switch items and loosen bolts to sabotage your target's lives in cunning displays of ingenuity. These 'accidents' (ranging from pushing people from balconies to fake suicide, to forcing chandeliers to fall large heights before hitting anything remotely resembling a target) play perfectly into the Notoriety system, which tracks your mission stats and compiles them into a faux newspaper clipping. These stats, including your hit ratio, number of times seen, and the amount of people killed, factor into how well the enemy will recognise you in the next mission. It's a great concept, but don't worry about this one in the lower two difficulty levels; Notoriety is barely recognizable on the Normal setting, and doesn't even exist on Rookie.

Hit-man: Blood Money is a very good game in danger of being overlooked by the average gamer this year. In 2006, we've seen the jaw-dropping Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, a game I consider the best stealth title ever. Later this year, we'll be getting Splinter Cell: Double Agent, promising a true, next-gen experience on the Xbox 360. Hit-man: Blood Money, however, should not be overlooked; it is a near-perfect example of how to do a game right. It is, by far, the most mature game I've ever played. The story is deep, involving, and serious. The games industry has a problem with maturity, leading to many doubting the veracity of gaming as a whole. Hit-man sets the bar for maturity, and all other games strive to that mark. Jesper Kyd's orchestral-eletronica soundtrack is also phenomenal (as always), being the best thing to hit my ears this year.

If you play any games at all, and care for intelligence in your entertainment, by all means, play Hit-man: Blood Money.

Now.

Hit-man: Contracts came in at the tail end of the standard definition era of video gaming. Two years later this, the 4th game in the popular series, came out - right at the infancy of HD gaming. It shows, but it's still a noticeable graphic improvement. For this entry IO Interactive have changed the controls and gameplay, which annoyed me at first, but you get used to it, even though they are still rather fiddly and you'll often select the wrong command by accident.

The story bounces around in time as Agent 47 travels to various locations around the world offing evil-doers. It ties into the story of Hit-man: Contracts rather tightly, which is not something I expected it to do. The killing and gameplay is still very similar and the game doesn't offer anything new in that regard. I think it is time that Hit-man starts introducing gorier deaths that obliterate victims or feature noticeable damage instead of the ragdoll effects after a sudden burst of red.

I liked this game, but for Agent 47's first jaunt into HD I would have preferred new methods of killing that would benefit from the better resolution. Maybe next time.

Graphics B- Sound B Gameplay B Lasting Appeal B+

This game has got to be one of my favourite games. I've had it for years and usually play it on my laptop when I just want to relax.

CONTROLS 10/10 The controls in the game are very easy to understand and using them for me is not a problem. I am using the default controls(w,s,a,d), and they are fine. Controls are customisable.

FUN FACTOR 9/10 Most of the levels in this game have no time limit, and this means you can take your time to do what you need to do. The missions have a very good story line, and not once in the game do you feel like you are playing a slight repeat of a different mission. There are 13 missions and each one has a completely different environment. I have played every mission countless times and each time I will try something different each time.

GRAPHICS 7/10 This game was released in 2006. At the time, the graphics looked very detailed. Playing it now looks very different to my first opinion. The detail in the environments is extremely high and I will reward that 5/5. On the other hand, the people let me down. In other games, they would have random clothed people so you would not see the same people twice(most of the time,anyway), but in this game, the number of different NPCs is limited. Another thing that caught my attention was that nearly every man in the game looked extremely strong. Plus, all women except for supermodels are chubby.

RE-PLAYABILITY 9.5/10 All the missions are re-playable. In each mission, there is no direct way of completing. There are a a number of weapons and secrets scattered around the maps. Every time you re-play a mission, you are very likely to do something different.

SOUND 8/10 The game has an exclusive soundtrack by Geoff Zanelli. The music is orchestral and suits the game perfectly.Although, I have heard snippets of certain scores in Hit-man: Contracts. It was very brief, but shows that some of the scores were made before this game. The voice talent is, well, talented! The accents are very authentic and the acting is brilliant.

OVERALL 9/10 As I said before, this game is very fun and has logic and meaning behind it. I recommend this game to anyone who likes this sort of gameplay.