Hitman: Blood Money

"Hitman: Blood Money is exactly the game it's expected it to be."

Stealth-based action games are a staple of the videogame universe. Forgoing the visceral thrills of more combat-driven titles, this genre strives for a more cunning and calculated gameplay experience in its titles. Representing a challenge unique in their appeal, such games offer a chance to utilize well-prepared strategies and silent maneuvering to achieve victory where brute force would be otherwise undesirable. While not for everyone, a significant enough number of gamers play these titles as to have created a handful of very successful franchises within the genre.

The Hitman games are one such series that has always occupied this space. Placing you in the role of the cloned super-assassin Agent 47, these titles have you traveling the world, tasked with performing assassinations on key figures in broadly varying environments. Renowned for its impressive mission setups and cat-and-mouse style gameplay, the Hitman series has become one of the predominant franchises in the stealth-game genre.

Agent 47's latest adventure, titled Blood Money, is also his first on a next-gen console, allowing XBox 360 gamers a taste of the Hitman titles' inimitable atmosphere. This new sequel promises a number of refinements to the game's tried-and-true formula, including a notoriety system and an impressive game engine that allows dozens of people on screen at once. Despite these additions, Blood Money stays very true to the series' core gameplay, for better or for worse.

Visuals:

Being a multiplatform title, the visuals in Blood Money must comply with the differing hardware specifications for each console. Despite this, the game manages to look somewhat impressive on each system, thanks to some very subtle touches in the game's animation.

Most of the game's character models look fairly realistic, and feature a solid level of detail. 47 is obviously the best-looking of the bunch, sporting his trademark suit with the same flair he always has, while small features such as the barcode on the back of his head and his somewhat muscular appearance jump out at you. For any given mission, only the mark or marks have a unique avatar, and these look about as good as 47's model. Each level's remaining characters are generic models, and these are noticeably recycled quite a bit throughout the game. It would have been nice to see more variety between them; however, given the high number of people rendered on screen in some of the more populated settings, this isn't so egregious as to detract from your immersion in the gameplay. Animation is very fluid for all of the characters, and the same traditional Hitman rag-doll physics are utilized for the bodies of incapacitated NPCs.

Each of the varied environments you'll visit to perform your hits ends up being the most flat-out extraordinary piece of the visual puzzle. From a Columbian vineyard to a Mississippi riverboat to a Vegas casino, every one of the locales is painstakingly recreated, and gives off just the right feel. The level of detail is also excellent, allowing for plenty of small flourishes in the background. On top of that, the graphics move along very smoothly at almost all times, only lagging when a large amount of action clutters the screen.

Cutscenes play before and after each mission to progress the storyline. These seem to use the in-game graphical engine, although they do look slightly better than the visuals from in-game. There isn't anything spectacular in this department.

On the XBox 360, the game shows a higher level of polish, with textures looking generally crisper and environmental effects appearing much more pronounced than in the other versions. The game's lighting engine in particular seems to have been tweaked a bit for optimal performance on the system, giving the shadowy surroundings 47 works in a darker edge. This edition of the game also supports HD output up to 1080i, which helps the game to look even smoother.

Blood Money showcases the best graphics yet seen in the Hitman series, offering up a striking array of visual effects and amidst a very technically sound performance.

Score: 8/10

Sound:

Hitman games have always featured a high-quality array of sound effects, and Blood Money is no different. All of the game's firearms sound appropriately noisy, and other types of weaponry make the types of sounds that you would expect them to make upon using them. The background noise in each level is particularly notable for its accuracy, and this helps set up the game's atmosphere even more effectively.

On the whole, the voiceovers in Hitman are very good. The only two major characters in the Hitman series, Agent 47 and his Agency boss Diana, see their voice actors return for this game, which is good news for series fans. The majority of the dialogue you'll hear from other characters comes during the cutscenes, and the actors here are believable enough. You'll hear generic conversation between NPCs during your missions, covering the mostly mundane topics that you might anticipate such people to chat about in such situations.

Jesper Kyd, the composer for each of the three previous Hitman games, returns for Blood Money, and his music again captures the tempo and style of the series perfectly. This time around the soundtrack includes more techno-type tracks than previous games, but these fit perfectly with the areas they're played in. Orchestral and choral music fill out the remainder of the bill, and these tracks also correspond nicely to the levels in which they're featured.

With Blood Money, the makers of the Hitman games have once again come up with an exceptional audio score. Every aspect of the acoustic performance compliments the gameplay superbly.

Score: 10/10

Gameplay:

At its core, Blood Money stays true to the gameplay that made the first three Hitman games as popular as they were. This new iteration gives 47 a number of new options for completing his assigned hits, but ultimately the experience should feel very familiar to veterans of the previous games in the series.

On every platform, the controls in Blood Money work very smoothly and effectively. The game is still playable in both first and third person, with the player able to switch between the two perspectives at the push of a button. In either view, 47 controls very well, never feeling too rigid or too loose. Gamers should become comfortable with the control scheme after completing the initial training mission.

That training mission serves as your introduction to the game's mechanics, both old and new. Pop-up hints will give you explicit instructions at each turn, offering you a chance to try out every aspect of 47's murderous repertoire in order to become familiarized with how to use them. Unfortunately, due to the ease with which this assignment can be completed, it may give players who are new to the series the impression that each subsequent assignment will be similarly straightforward.

In fact, the lack of a set structure in which to achieve your stated goals is the most distinctive aspect of the gameplay in all of the Hitman games. As with its predecessors, Blood Money will give you a briefing on your targets, offer a few hints on how to accomplish your hit or hits, allow you to choose your initial equipment, and then drop you off in the level to get the job done. The onus then falls to you to figure out how to complete your task most efficiently, which is the main attraction to fans of the genre. Blood Money is trial-and-error gameplay at its finest, although you will always have plenty of options to try.

47 once again carries his trusty GPS-style map with him, and effectively utilizing this is once more the key to success. This map offers detailed information on the layout of the area you're in, with markers to indicate the presence of points of interest, enemy guards, and your mark or marks. Of course, these bits of data are just pieces of the puzzle, and you need to figure out how to string them together to make your kills.

New to Blood Money are accident kills. These occur when a target dies in a manner that would seemingly be an accident, such as falling off a balcony or having a chandelier drop on their head. Initially, it can be a pain to figure out how to perform these, as they are once aspect of the gameplay that isn't covered during the training mission; however, once you're a few missions into the game, you'll learn to spot opportunities for them from a mile away. That's not to say that they're easy to achieve – each one requires a good amount of stealth and quick timing to execute. Carrying out a successful accident kill is by far the most gratifying way to complete your assignment, though, so you'll end up always looking out for opportunities to get them.

Of course, accidents aren't the only way to kill your prey. Every trick from the previous Hitman games has filtered into Blood Money in some form, so you'll always have an option to choose from. You can still change into the clothing of NPCs (instantly, in keeping with series tradition) you've incapacitated, allowing you to infiltrate areas you otherwise would not have access to. You'll be able to plant bombs, poison food, create diversions, and engage in all manner of sneaky activities to get to your targets.

Then again, as with all those previous Hitman games, you can simply choose to blast your way through the mission until you've killed your mark. The game strongly frowns upon such a course of action, as it will detract points from your post-mission ranking, but you do always have to option of going Rambo. Should you do so, you'll begin to notice the cracks in the behavioral artificial intelligence of the NPCs.

When you're moving through the missions, the A.I. does a respectable job of seeming like it knows what it's doing. Guards will walk their patrols, innocents will mill about, and your targets will do whatever it is they're supposed to, all the while oblivious to your intentions. Once you start shooting, though, guards become single-minded in their desire to see you dead, running headlong towards you without regard for their own safety. Innocents and your marks will simply run away, though with no exit points in the level, they're left to go in endless circles until you mow them down. It's a shame to see that these A.I. flaws still haven't been fixed, although this is quite possible due to the fact that you aren't supposed to trigger them in the first place.

Following each successfully completed job, you're treated to a generated newspaper page that chronicles your performance, given a ranking for your work (and a corresponding paycheck), and shown your new notoriety score. The notoriety system is a new addition to the Hitman series, and although it would seem to serve as a strong incentive to achieve a Silent Assassin rating, a poor implementation renders it nearly meaningless in the grand scheme of the gameplay. After each mission, if your notoriety has increased, you're given the option of paying various amounts of cash to reduce or eliminate the difference; unfortunately, the payments are always affordable, and so you never have to begin a new mission with any notoriety whatsoever, no matter how violently you played through the previous job.

In reality, almost none of the new additions to the gameplay are tremendously important. You can even complete the entire game without executing or paying attention to any of them. In lesser series, this could be a death knell – but, since this is a Hitman game, the gameplay stands well enough on its own to not have needed many improvements in the first place. It's still a new Hitman game, with the same exact type of gameplay, and so you should always know what to expect from it.

So, despite a lack of major changes or improvements to the basic gameplay formula, Blood Money still captures the spirit of the Hitman series perfectly, and is still as fun to play as any of its forerunners.

Score: 8/10

Story:

For each game in the Hitman series, the storyline has never been as important as the setup for each mission, and so the story for Blood Money barely manages to register as worth paying attention to.

This installment of the franchise sees 47 competing with a rival contract agency on several occasions, although such confrontations occur as part of the stated goals of the missions in which they occur. The plot ties in with the previous games in the Hitman series, including one assignment that offers you a chance to play through the MIA portion of the last mission from the previous game in the series, Hitman: Contracts.

The different settings and circumstances are the real stars of Blood Money, as the plot of the game only serves to loosely tie your jobs together.

Score: 5/10

Features/Modes:

Blood Money features four separate difficulty levels to play on, from Rookie up to Professional. The more difficult levels limit the number of saves you can use during each mission, as well as the amount of information present on your map. Outside of these multiple difficulties, though, there are no extra modes to be seen in the game. Luckily, due to the open-endedness of the gameplay, many gamers will want to play each mission through multiple times. For those gamers who aren't interested in multiple difficulty settings or repeat playthroughs, though, there isn't much value in the game once you've completed it.

Of course, the XBox 360 version of the game sports a number of unlockable achievements, which range in difficulty. The game doesn't utilize XBox Live in any way, which is disappointing, given the potential for at least some manner of leaderboards.

Blood Money offers the type of value that fans of the Hitman series have become accustomed to. Unfortunately, players who are new to the franchise might not feel that they're getting their money's worth.

Score: 6/10

Total Score:

With all stealth-based games, the gamer must approach the gameplay with a certain mindset. Titles in this genre have a tendency to frustrate gamers who are too impatient to fully plot out their moves, and Hitman: Blood Money is no different. The game's trial-and-error gameplay definitely isn't for everyone. However, for those who have enjoyed the series in the past, another round of well thought-out assassinations among the world's rich and infamous is just what the doctor ordered.

Gamers who have had positive experiences with the Hitman series in the past should definitely go out and pick up a copy of Blood Money. Fans of stealth/action games with mature content in them should take the game for a test spin before purchasing it, to see whether the gameplay suits them. Finally, anyone who doesn't fall into either of these categories should seek out a different title to spend their time with.

Score: 8/10 (not an average)

~~

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/05/06