An interesting start. Not a good one, but an interesting one. Some of the levels in Codename 47 are seen in Contracts due to Contracts being made on a short timespan and this being PC exclusive, they decided to put some of the levels on there.

But anyway, this game is terrible. Some of the levels force you into combat, AI is wonky. Also the worst offender to me is the fact you can clearly tell the concept IS there. This is another thing I have issues with in terms of almost every other Hitman game besides Blood Money (that I played)

You can clearly tell the concept is there and that it is being worked with. But unfortunately, much like Hitman 2, the concept isn't fully realized and the game overall is bad.

This game goes from killing asians till it becomes a copy of Metal Gear Solid 3 mixed with Indiana Jones...

Hitman: Codename 47, also known as Hitman 1 but not Hitman 1 (2016) I mean Hitman 1 (2000) god bless reboots title. To this game's credit, it's pretty damn impressive for a 3D "realistic" stealth game it may have bad missions, confusing objectives, terrible controls, and a putrid art style but it still is impressive for a game from the 2000s, do I respect it enough to actually do a full playthrough of the game? Dear god no I dropped the game when the jungle shit started and I was like "Oh god a giant empty forest map with boring objectives, fuck this shit I'm out" and here I am ranting about 1/4th of the game.
Though, to all of my compatriots reading this review thinking "I wonder if I should play this game...", one thing you can do is enable cheat, type "Giveall", and play against the rules.

Another thing that I thought was neat is the background story of Agent 47, it's probably the only remarkable thing from the game as I actually never really wondered "Who is 47?" and I don't think they ever tried to question that in the recent reboot trilogy.

Don't play this game if you love yourself, just watch a quick story resume like this one on Youtube and play the second or third entry which is most likely way better.

"A Hilariously Broken Stealth Game"

As the first entry to the franchise, "Hitman: Codename 47" is really rough around the edges. It's not a particularly good-looking game, with its poor antialiasing and reduced color palette making the game look even more aged than it already is. Its default control scheme is terrible, and adjustment is an absolute necessity in order to properly interact with the game. The dialogue is painstakingly bad and has some blatant racial stereotyping at many points. However, the title starts to form the groundwork for the creative "Hitman" series, despite being unable to properly implement many of its mechanics in this first mess of an entry…

Upon booting up the game, many settings and tweaks to game files need to be made in order to actually get it properly working. Once that mess is figured out, the opening tutorial starts… and man was this thing awful. The default controls were incoherent (resulting in even more tweaking of settings), and the introductory mission was just so broken and misguided. Voice lines would interrupt each other, objectives would fail to trigger properly, and there was no real, well, TUTORIAL. I had to pull up the control schemes multiple times to even get a gauge of how to make Agent 47 function, and by the time the first few levels were presented I was already at a disadvantage due to the sloppy introduction to the game.

The next few missions proceed to just throw you into procedurally larger areas and give you the objective of assassinating a target and occasionally completing side objectives. The first sniper mission is terrible and really doesn’t explain much of the mechanics. The next mission is a bit more interesting in that you have to take out multiple targets, but the real meat of the experience doesn’t happen until the third mission. This is where the first act starts to ramp up, and in doing so the gameplay starts to become more layered than I had originally believed it to be…

The third mission definitely gives some more interesting mechanics to think about. Hiding bodies was already introduced, but disguises and enemy pathing are very important here. The goal is to frame an assassination of the police chief on one of two gangs you are tasked with starting a war between, which is a really cool idea! However, it’s a bit janky though - you basically have to follow a very specific path to victory here, and it feels less like a feeling that there is creativity on the player’s part and more like a simple act of solving a puzzle. Much different from later games, but it is the first time in the game where a challenge is presented.

The fourth mission is where the game really starts to show how the “Hitman” franchise started to find its own identity, but it's also the mission which made me quit the game. You’re thrown into a much larger and more sprawling map than prior missions, but are given very little direction to work off of. There’s a lot of blind exploration, trial-and-error, and luck involved with these tasks, and while it builds up a really cool mission where you must interact with different characters and objectives, it feels super janky as you play more and more of it. The confusing map doesn’t help either, and it feels more like a really well-done experimental demo than a finished level for a game.

By this time a player might notice the poor presentation of the game. The graphical quality is just not very good, and both environments and character models look lesser in quality than one might expect. There’s a lack of smoothing on edges around the world, causing a jaggy look to lots of assets. This game’s budget wasn’t the highest, so there were likely some limitations on what could be accomplished in the visuals department when looking at the relatively unique style of game this one tried to become. The voice acting is also really bad. At times it appears to be really offensively racist, especially for Asian characters. I couldn’t help but laugh at the mixture of bad voice work and cringey dialogue, and it made the experience memorably bad. Not a good look overall, though it might be funny to you if you choose to “experience” it.

While the creativity of the series was starting to show itself, it didn’t mean that the game wasn’t unfun or extremely punishing in difficulty. Stealth is super broken here, and enemies are able to see and hear just about anything. There are no clean angles, and you have to start abusing the AI and weird “stealth mode” in order to clear some guards from certain areas. Then, there are strangely placed objectives (that are randomized each time for some reason!) as well as a weird escort mission with a…well…escort. It’s just a really lame cycle that repeats itself each time you fail, and you see the strings of the game’s AI being pulled left and right. I’m not saying the game has to be “easy” to be a fun stealth game, but the game offers creative kills and then doesn’t allow them to go unnoticed. Really disappointing, and I quit without completing this mission.

Overall, “Hitman: Codename 47” was a very flawed start to the franchise. It had some awful presentation, poor controls, and an unrefined gameplay loop. It contains a bit of the heart and soul of the franchise and where its gameplay would end up going in future installments, but here it was too sloppy to continue playing through. I would Not Recommend trying this one out, especially since a future sequel includes some missions from the first game.

Final Verdict: 3/10 (Poor)

A bunch of ambitious ideas and concepts that the developers simply didn't quite have the chops to bring to fruition. There is a seed here of what this franchise would become down the line, but it's buried under a veritable mountain of broken systems and janky gameplay.

So what's worthy of admiration here? Well, one can see that the developers had some cool notions regarding level design - there is an attempt (albeit unsuccessful) to give the levels a degree of openness and density that would eventually become a hallmark of the series. And the fundamental idea of leaving the player character to explore the level and devise their own way to achieve the objective is present in a few of the scenarios (the game would've been much better off had the developers fully committed to this ideal; the mandatory combat encounters here are both contrary to the spirit of the series and, not coincidentally, incredibly awful).

Alas, the strong foundational ideas sadly do not define the majority of the game's playtime. My personal play experience, for instance, was largely defined by a sense of bewilderment. A big part of this derives from the game's completely busted AI. The number of instances in which guards attacked 47 for seemingly no reason or ignored him as he strolled out of a room full of corpses was beyond counting. The failed attempt to develop dense levels also plays a role - these levels are labyrinthine, alright, but they are also hollow and redundant. Empty rooms, hallways leading to nowhere, and other forms of insanely inefficient architectural design are the primary features of the indoor spaces. Moving the action outdoors presents the opposite problem - there are hardly any noticeable visual indicators to follow, so it just feels like a giant field with the same model of a tropical tree repeatedly rendered ad nauseam. These design flaws make the sort of tense yet deliberative social stealth that Hitman thrives on effectively impossible to sustain.

As someone who is not above indulging in the sort of B-movie humor and Eurojank that this game trades in, I was able to push through this despite being frequently being lost and unsure of what to do next. If those features don't hold some degree of charm for you, then this will likely end up being a bit of joyless death march. Certainly, no one could be blamed for skipping to the more worthwhile sequels.

Preliminary definition: There is no video game that has ever been made that feels as successful as shooting in this game that tries to keep us from shooting.

In some ways it's still a good game. For example, the atmosphere, music, and story are still interesting. However, there are many bugs in the game and its artificial intelligence is very inadequate compared to other Hitman games. Codename 47 is actually the least stealth-oriented game in the main Hitman series (I'm talking about the series up to World of Assassination). This makes it different and attractive in a sense. Although the game has been completely transformed into a stealth game with Contracts, Codename 47's unique magic still continues. It is not a production that I can particularly recommend, but it still maintains its title of being a special production, as there is almost no other game that combines mafia and tension themes with action and stealth.

Codename 47 is still a very strong game, especially in terms of the feeling of being 47. You can enjoy the Hitman series even today. I've read negative comments about the controls, but I don't really agree. I think the difficult and cumbersome controls added a different sense of realism to the game. So, instead of changing the weapon with a single button, it felt cool to select it from the list and take it out of our pocket, and to throw it on the ground after finishing the magazine of the big gun instead of reloading it. I have no complaints regarding the basic gameplay. The part where the game is lacking or inadequate is that it does not leave the player with many options and the maps feel very empty. I wandered around the map for dozens of minutes just out of curiosity. This was of course a problem with most games of that period, but it seems a bit boring today. Other than these, I don't think the game has any major problems.

Hitman: Codename 47 é mais um game que entra facilmente na lista de jogos que envelheceram muito mal e que hoje em dia realmente não valem tanto o seu estresse e esforço diário para passar as demais fases que é garantido de dor de cabeça para os corajosos de plantão, em que, apesar desse game contar uma história legal que é sim, até que relevante para toda a franquia Hitman por explorar um pouco da origem do Agente 47 (de quem o criou e de toda a organização por trás disso), não é bem uma trama que por si só faça uma grande diferença nos próximos jogos da franquia e que se desenvolve por completo, já que, a história desse jogo foi resumida com o final desse bem no início do Hitman: Contracts que com isso dá para deixar de lado toda essa terrível experiência que você iria ter com esse Hitman: Codename 47.

São tantos problemas que chega até a ser difícil citar todos aqui, mas para começar não posso deixar de esquecer da sua dificuldade que mesmo para uma época ao qual os jogos normalmente eram difíceis esse aqui espanta de tão grotesco em determinadas fases, onde certamente você terá que rezar o pai nosso e ainda implorar para que você sequer consiga a luz para encontrar o objetivo da missão, em que se você ao menos falhar e for descoberto, nem que tenha chegado bem perto do final, já era, você terá que começar tudo de novo. (vale destaque nas fases mais difíceis do jogo que são as demais fases na Colômbia, a que é em um píer onde você tem que entrar em um navio e principalmente a última fase do jogo que não tenho nem comentários para aqui-lo), fora isso, temos uma mecânica que hoje em dia é insustentável por ser totalmente travada e tenebrosa até para os mais tolerantes nesse aspecto em que seus controles são confusos fazendo com que certamente você tenha que configurá-los manualmente nas opções do jogo e para aqueles que desejam jogar em 1080p terão que baixar um Patch que é disponibilizado na internet pelos próprios fãs do game que fará com que o Hud do mesmo fique minúsculo e que você sinta que tá jogando um simulador de miopia, fora que esse é um daqueles jogos que devido a sua época demora bastante para mudar o mapa de verdade mudando apenas alguns prédios e modelos, em que tudo carrega literalmente na sua frente (Draw Distance curto), mais ou menos semelhante ao que era nos famosos jogos de Playstation 1 onde quanto mais você andava mais coisas apareciam dado o hardware obsoleto da época, que convenhamos apesar disso não atrapalhar muito na jogatina incomoda demais o jogador para sequer saber onde é para ir ou o que pode ter á sua frente no game e como a ideia do jogo não favorece esse fator, fica realmente bem irritante.

Por esses motivos, eu certamente não recomendaria nem para o meu maior inimigo jogar esse jogo, mas se esses motivos não lhe convenceram de que é melhor deixar de lado essa experiência na minha visão frustrante, então realmente eu lhe desejo uma boa sorte…

The genesis of what would be the wide-spanning Hitman franchise, Codename 47 walked so its sequels could run. Being a bit on the older side, the game is a bit irregular in how it plays 23 years later. Most older games are clunky in movement, organization, or precise aiming. Hitman is meritoriously free of these issues. Where it does stumble is in its enemy AI, damage numbers, and its excruciating propensity to get you stuck on random geometry like foliage. The enemies must be trained by John Wick himself with how pinpoint accurate they often are, further helped by a very small player health pool that will have you watch Agent 47 collapse dramatically 4-5 times a mission on the low end. And for some reason, enemy aggro frequently persists even after retries, making restarts a necessity at times. Though sometimes even that’s not required, as some enemies will just shoot you on sight through no provocation. It makes for a tedious time when evading is regularly incentivized over openly disguising yourself or having fun with the missions.

Least counterable of all and most aggravating personally, Agent 47 loves nothing more than to find himself stuck on an errant polygon, doomed to strand me forever as I frantically move my mouse to free my foolish compatriot. The free-camera “camera mode” worked half the time to unstuck me, but a sizable portion of runs were completely ruined by this problem. Predictably, that would be the final nail in the coffin for me. After getting stuck for the umpteenth time I decided to cut my losses and quit the game after the jungle mission. Codename 47 is inextricably a part of gaming history, but there’s really no reason to play it over its subsequent titles.

Highly disappointed in my first ever visit to the Hitman series, though I am aware future titles are much better.

Terrible controls though they can be remapped, horrible camera, constant bugs and crashing, though the crashing may be due to Windows 10 compatibility.

Biggest issue with this game though is the very annoying trial and error style of game play, which wouldn't be such an issue if this game wasn't secretly linear.

I mean this game is secretly linear because they give you these open levels where it seems like a sandbox and you can do whatever you want, yet every mission is made with a highly specific method of performing the mission in mind. If you stray off this course, you shall suffer. This leads to the type of game that makes you want to have a walk through with you at all times, and I personally hate games like that.

The music and aesthetics are pretty banging though, and the idea is still very novel and cool. I just wish everything, and I mean everything, was done better.

To start off the year I decided to begin my backlog goals by playing through the first Hitman game, I originally wanted the original Metal Gear to be the first game I played this year but due to circumstances outside of my control, I decided to go ahead and start on Hitman. As well, I would like to preface this review with the knowledge that this is my first venture in to the stealth game genre, so take what I say with a grain of salt as this is all new to me.
The best way I can describe Codename 47 is that it seems like the framework for something greater. There are defiantly good ideas and mechanics, like the iconic disguise mechanic and the impressive AI pathfinding, but it is all bogged down by a severe case of linearity. The missions are not sandboxes; you are given your objective and there are specific steps you must take to get those objectives done, and any deviation results in mission failure. There are only about two levels that I can think of that offer the player some creative freedom. "Traditions of the Trade" and "Plutonium Runs Loose" are said two levels; the prior is a great example of what this game does right, and the latter an example of the worst it has to offer. "Traditions" takes place in a big multilevel hotel where you need to explore, learn NPC patterns, and gather information in order to complete the objectives. The level operates on it's own time and really gives the player opportunity to try out different routes. This is in direct contrast with "Plutonium" where it is extremely binary; there are only two choices and both are infuriating to no end. You either have to navigate through enemy patrol routes so that you can go to the other side of the map from where you spawn to grab a car bomb, after which the enemies stop patrolling and become stationary, which means you have to kill them in order to progress leaving a chance that your target might escape; or you go straight to the ship and try to complete all the objectives in one swift go, which doesn't go well because as soon as you take out the target all the guards come running towards you to turn you into swiss cheese. I will also take this time to mention that the gun play is dog water, it was clearly not designed with intense gun fights in mine, but it still asks you requires you to do so in some instances. But those two levels are extreme examples, most fall somewhere in-between and are generally enjoyable.
Overall, Codename 47 is ok, levels are fun albeit sometimes cryptic and infuriating; the story is non existent and not all that interesting, but both the story and gameplay offer a great base for future games to build off of.

Codename 47 is the very first game of the Hitman series that I like a lot but it certainly is a rough entry to it as much as I appreciate it's contributions to the later Hitman games and the gaming as a whole (maybe, with it's ragdoll physics).

The reason I'm calling it a rough entry is entirely due to the execution of it's gameplay mechanics. This game was by far one of the jankiest games I've ever played. The AI is an inconsistent piece of shit. You can do same thing exactly the same way in a level and somehow get through it without any problems while starting to get shot on the other and have no idea why that happened. I was so shocked each time this happened that I was wondering if the AI was sentient or not. Sometimes the AI feels clueless about anything that happens around them and sometimes they have either eyes behind them or they see something bad happening outside the very low rendering distance you have which can lead to very frustrating situations.

The combat doesn't work well due to the fact that for some reason Agent 47 in this game has the aiming capabilities of a stormtrooper even though he is the perfect assassin. The reticle is not at all an indication of where you are going to shoot becuase even if you're only 2 meters away from your target your bullet can completely miss your target which makes it more viable to either spam with your pistol or just use high fire-rate guns and hope your target dies. You could avoid combat like in the later games but I personally dont see it happening with the forementioned AI problems and level design on some of the missions.

Speaking of level design, indoor missions in this game can feel like a maze with how samey rooms and halls look like and outdoor missions are so big and empty that you can easily get lost due to low render distance. I will talk about some of the levels that I want to particularly talk about later.

All of these would still make the game very playable but there is one last problem that amplifies the problems above, there isn't a save system. Lack of a save system means you could progress far in a complex, long or a big level but one bullshit with the weird AI might mean it's all moot, you are restarting the level. I don't know if this actually true but I've heard the playtesters of this game managed to beat the game very quickly with save files so that's why the devs removed it which seems insane to me because I absolutely don't see how you can beat this game quickly without actually knowing what to do since the game doesn't hold your hand at all but at the same time I find it equally baffling how the devs decide to not add save files otherwise.

All of these complaints are the reason I actually dropped this game midway through the first time then finished it after playing all other Hitman games but the non-gameplay stuff is actually nice. In the current gaming climate where there are way too many remakes and remasters which I hate a lot, Codename 47 is the only game that I would like the see a remake of (Contracts levels don't count) due to these non-gameplay stuff actually being very promising. Most coherent plot of the franchise, Ort-Meyer is the best villain this series has to offer (Both points don't actually seem that impressive when you think about it) and I would like to see it more expanded in a potential remake. Missions have good premises which isn't executed this well with the level design but I think IOI can do them justice if they don't make it outright worse like some of the Contracts remakes. Jesper Kyd's music is as good as always. And that's it I think.

Now let's talk about the missions that I feel like there are things worth to talk about:

The Massacre at Cheung Chau Fish Restaurant: 4th overall mission of the game, this was actually the mission I dropped the game first time I played because it's the first mission the very perceptive civilians outright failing the level impacts you. After actually finishing it, I think it's a neat mission. It's on the more creative sides of the missions in Codename 47 and it has the most iconic line of the franchise.

The Lee Hong Assassination: 5th overall mission and the last of the Hong Kong missions, probably the most complex mission of Codename 47 but also one of my two favorite missions in it. You'd think with how long the mission actually is, no save system would take a lot from it due to janky gameplay mechanics but the mission actually flows very well. Everything leads to each other with the information you can get from NPCs. Also I felt like the AI in this mission isn't that problematic.

Find the Uwa Tribe: First Colombian mission, this is the worst mission in the game if you don't consider the gameplay. Racial insensivities aside the level itself is a gigantic empty jungle you can easily get lost and the level itself is mostly just running around it for 15 minutes. Thankfully the game has a compass you can buy so you don't have to check the map every 5 seconds.

Say Hello to My Little Friend: Final Colombian mission where you kill a discount Al Pacino is a big offender of the gameplay jank I talked about before. The first baffling thing about this level is the gigantic walk you have to do get inside the big campsite because for some reason the devs decided it was a good idea to spawn you on the other side of the entrance of it. On top of that this mission is the biggest offender of the inconsistent AI (especially around the lab) so have fun taking the walk of shame when the game feels like it.

Traditions of the Trade: My other favorite mission of the game takes place in a Hungarian hotel. Once again the mission is once again good at giving information via NPCs and also the level itself is the most non-linear mission Codename 47 has to offer which I think is the reason why I feel like you could put this mission as is on any of the future pre-Absolution games and you wouldn't bat an eye.

Plutonium Runs Loose: Now the real worst mission of the game, 11th overall mission and the final mission of Rotterdam. I think most players who played this game will also tell you how awful and frustrating this mission is. Much like Say Hello to My Little Friend, this mission also suffers from the inconsistent AI and the huge walking and waiting times it has. On top of that the level forces you into combat with how it's designed and the non-combat stuff you need to do on the level is much riskier which leads you into much more failures in this huge level in a game with no save system. Seriously, fuck this level.

Meet Your Brother: Final mission of the game is a combat level, which the Hitman series actually really likes to do a lot in their final missions even in the future games. As much as the concept of this one goes I think it's one of the better final missions of the series. The real problem with this level is that the combat mechanics of the game forces you to just wait in a corner and kill your targets one by one which takes a long and mundane time. The two (!!) instant kill mechanics you can be hit by after you do that is downright evil.

As much as how frustrating this game can get I think I'd still recommend it to a Hitman fan that wants to play pre-WoA/Absolution/Blood Money Hitman games and at least try it out. I personally didn't have the patience to finish it the first time around and moved onto 2: Silent Assassin instead which I think is also fine to do.

One of my favorite memories from when I was a kid was playing "Hitman: Codename 47.” It was a time when I had to wake up really early to catch the school bus, and I was always so tired in the morning. Thankfully, my parents let me play the game for a short while, maybe just 30 minutes or less. This helped me stay awake and made the start of my day much better.

I didn't care much about fancy graphics or complicated game physics back then. I simply enjoyed the game. I was super determined to get through it, solve puzzles, and complete missions. I used to have conversations with my friends about the game's missions. We would talk about how I completed them and the challenges I faced. Finishing a mission felt like a significant achievement for me. The first mission, the training one, was really tough. I can't even count how many times I tried to finish it and escape from that place. It was a big challenge, but I never gave up.

What's funny is that I could play the same mission over and over again without getting bored or tired. There weren't many games to choose from at that time, but "Hitman" was special to me. It was my go-to game, and it made my childhood a lot more exciting.

Wow, I can't believe one of my favorite trilogies, World of Assassination was created from this mess of a game. I honestly don't know where to begin with how truly disappointing Hitman: Codename 47 is. Almost everything about this game is just bad.

Right from the start the game throws you into the tutorial without really being helpful, and it felt like they never really fully explained the fundamentals of the gameplay. They never even walked me through on how to drag the bodies. I had to look up the directions on how to do it because Eidos was too lazy to include it into their tutorial. Not to mention I kept failing because the game never told me to switch disguises during the "training" mission.

The actual gameplay is just pure frustration because the game gives off the impression that it's stealth game when it is not. It's an action game, but an extremely unfair one. Even on easy mode and with a Kevlar suit, enemies' bullets eat through your health quickly and there's no healing items at all in this game. Trying to switch to a weapon during combat is a nightmare because chances are you're going to die before you even get a chance to defend yourself, and there is no melee combat, so you have to use a weapon of some type like a sword or gun.

It also seems like every enemy in the game is hyper aware of everything you do. For example, if you're right behind enemy and you pull out a knife to take him down silently, he automatically hears you and alerts the guards in the area which pretty much guarantees you're dead. You can't pull out your fiber wire around enemies because if you do than you're dead, but somehow you can get past a metal detector with it though. Nothing in this game except for switching out disguises, has stealth elements.

There was one level, after going through a series of objectives you get a vial of poison to take out your target. I put on my disguise, poisoned the food and brought it out for them to eat. I was like "Finally, I get to do something that feels like how Hitman should!". Sadly, instead of just killing my target and completing my mission, the game decides that it's the perfect time to turn what would have been a really cool moment into a stupid cheesy action scene and threw a bunch of enemies at me which forced me into this chaotic shoot off.

I suppose now would be a great time to mention that if you die in this game, and you almost certainly will, you'll have to restart the entire level all over again. No joke. This game only saves in between missions and has no manual saves whatsoever. Even more annoying, not all the cut scenes can be skipped, so be prepared to hear some of the same dialogue over and over again. I'd like to tell you that because you get checkpoints on easy and normal that it might make it more fun to play and lessen some of the frustration, but it honestly makes it far worse. If you happened to die on either easy or normal than the game spawns you at an awkward checkpoint and all the enemies that killed you will still be alerted and will attack on sight making the checkpoint system worthless.

Usually, this the part where I'm like "Well, the game kind of blows, but the art style is cool though". This one of the few times where I can't say that. This game's art style is ugly and off putting like the loading screens or cutscenes. Granted some of the assets weren't that bad like some of the trees and such, but a lot of the assets were just repetitive to the point all it did was make the levels look bland and boring afterwhile. Then again, the almost all of levels themselves are unnecessarily large and half the time were just empty, like Columbia which is one of the worst levels in this game. I hated that mission, a mixture between Tomb Raider and Scar Face. Not a whole lot of originality in that level.

As for the story, there's not really much there. You find out a little about the targets you're supposed to assassinate and 47's backstory, but other than that the game's plot is about as deep as a puddle. There is no environmental storytelling that helps elevate this either and personally I found it to be boring.

Overall:

While I'm glad I had the opportunity to play this game, I can't honestly say it was a pleasant experience. Hitman: Codename 47 has got to be one of the worst games I have ever played, and I had to use cheats about three levels in to finish the game and I still didn't enjoy it. If you have to use cheats to finish a game and yet it still feels miserable to play than I think there's a major problem. I highly doubt that I'm going to play this again.

Pro:
+ some of the songs on the soundtrack are good
+ cheats

Cons:
-boring story
-awful combat
-poor level design
-no manual saves
-various glitches and bugs
-awkward controls
-ugly art style

Man, I love Hitman. I've always been a fan of the Hitman series since I first played them who the hell knows when as a teenager when I first picked up Blood Money. The experience was clunky, a bit confusing, and obtuse as hell in many ways, but goddamn was that some of the most fun I ever had. Years went by and until I really grew up I didn't visit the series in full but now that I have, lemmie tell you, this first one is skung as shit. Hitman Codename 47 is a jank ass experience that often feels incredibly stilted, obtuse, and downright wild in so many aspects of its core gameplay design. Yet all the same, much like Blood Money and every title after it, the world it sets up and the sandbox it puts you in are amazing right from the get go. So many sets in it are actually incredibly impressive for the time and even today look pretty good. The amount of ways to kill people is not nearly as diverse as later titles sure, but the experience is also a fundamental building block the series would go on to use. The story is, well, it exists and is fine but also it's goofy as absolute shit, which I like, so I'm a bit biased here. Overall I still highly recommend smoking it today, there's a lot of heart on display here.