Imagine, if you will, a real-time strategy game where buildings could be constructed instantly, and didn’t require the use of workers. How could the game even function? As soon as a wall would go down another could take its place, and with no workers to micromanage, even the least experienced player could create an unbreakable defense.

Well, as you probably predicted, Stronghold Crusader is exactly that game, but this odd design decision actually makes it uniquely fun. Just looking at the box could tell you that the goal was to create a siegecraft RTS, and instantaneous construction plays with other mechanics to achieve that in a pretty elegant way. For one, if enemies are too close to a building zone, nothing can be constructed. This prevents enemies from just hammering the walls at long range without putting their own units at risk, since it will take them so much time and ammo to break down structures which pop back up anyway. That in turn means that walls aren’t the best target, the farms outside would be the better choice. These farms can’t be enclosed within the keep because they need to be built in grasslands, which often aren’t enclosed within building range for walls. So, just through the basic mechanics, players are actually attacking each other in little sieges: surrounding a town with their artillery, destroying the farms outside, waiting for their advantage to grow, and establishing a beachhead near weak points during assaults. Meanwhile, the players under siege can lower the food ration for a penalty, which can hopefully buy enough time to build up a force and break the siege. Trebuchets and catapults can be destroyed easily, and breaking into a castle even with ladders, assassins, tunnels, and stones takes a lot of planning, so each commander has to be clever with their strategy.

When compared to something like StarCraft or Age of Empires, Stronghold Crusader is a very simple RTS, but the way its simplicity creates such a unique flavor is something that impresses me year after year. I always revisit it when I need to relax, since it’s so fun to play in the classic childhood way of setting up the most defensive base ever and holding out as long as possible, or seeing if you can beat an alliance of eight easy bots. It’s not the best for dedicated and focused play, thanks to the slow pace and propensity of the AI to bug out, but the relaxing blend of creative defense and methodical attack gives it a meditative quality. With the genre being in something of a drought, I would love to see people give this game a second look, and take inspiration on how there’s more to the genre than being competitive.

before i write on anything else, i want to give a round of applause to hitman: blood money's save system, that which may be the finest the stealth genre has seen and deserves to be seen again. depending on the chosen difficulty, hitman offers you a number of saves; normal is 7, hard is 3, and there's none at all waiting for you on professional. the magic of these saves is they absolutely can be used anywhere you like, just as you may with a quick save, but, because of their nature as an expendable commodity, you can't really... well, savescum. hitman takes the strength and safety of a save system that relies on player input but without cheesing the experience of allowing you to quick save after every small increment of progress (and i am completely guilty of this in other games). the player is thus encouraged to try various different angles to see what decision or string of decisions best deserve being executed and saved, and which ones are best... not. am i making sense? it just feels super impactful every time i specifically save because there's always something BIG i accomplished, and i take some comfort in pulling off all the right moves that mentally let me save and advance (unless i accidentally hit 'restart' and then lost my saves, lol. lol. lol).

anyway, yes, it is a stealth game, and it is completely unlike any other stealth series. there are those like thief and dishonored where sticking to the shadows is your best offense, deus ex and prey where revealing yourself to those perceived friendly is a deliberate choice, and alpha protocol or metal gear where the stealth sucks and i assume you're not playing for that. but anyway, it's hitman that handwaves all that and, instead, invites you to walk among others--to be IN sight and to BE seen--to blend in like a backstage chameleon. it's a system that does require discretion--cornering those you've decided to kill and ensuring their passing is seen by none but your own bald faced stare. and it frankly never gets old.

perhaps the worst thing about blood money is how disgustingly clunky it feels when first playing (and first returning for another replay). everything feels so goddamn stiff and sticky and the controls feel like your keyboard's turned into a chinese fingertrap. you think it'll get better after the tutorial, but it sucks even harder for the followup mission because your options feel real limited. but a light switch is pulled with the following missions, everything coming together harmoniously, and suddenly you're effortlessly navigating complex buildings stabbing and choking and piano wiring every sorry son of a bitch who foolishly came into work well dressed. seriously, i've gone through this whole thing three times and this same experience always happens, and i think it'll happen to you, too.

i'm still gushing, sorry. whenever you successfully finish a mission, you're presented with... a newspaper, acting as your stats screen. how you executed the victim to how many rounds you fired to what witnesses saw what and how close of a profile they can draft of you--all this information and more gets covered in a cute, typed up report surely striking fear into whoever still reads newspapers. it's ridiculously immersive, and it even ends up influencing my decision to replay a level over and over with different play styles just to see what they'll write. now, you do end up wishing the range of what's covered could be even wider and have more fluff text associated with it (and maybe less ridiculous lines like "police found bullet casings belonging to Customized Hitman Classic Silverballer That He Painted White"), but it's still pretty cool. and it's moreso just unfortunate the concept wasn't expanded on in the tm trilogy.

what else... you remember how i mentioned that hitman's a game that turns away from other stealth games to do its own thing? well, you totally can do that, but you can also play things out like garret or jc denton (except with a lot more coin throwing), or you can try going full psychopath no russian (and the newspapers will certainly note it). you can execute targets in a number of ways, and it never has to be part of a path intended by the devs, either. sometimes you really do just stuff a mine inside a briefcase suspiciously placed just enough for a guard to grab it and bring it back to the station where you've conveniently lured the target to right on time to hit the detonation and make it look as if you weren't involved at all.

music by jesper kyd's an amazing touch, too. it's all these sorts of themes bordering on tension, suspension, danger... from the npcs' point of view. for you, these suites are your theme songs, and they fit the job perfectly as you meticulously garrote one target after another with your clown suited hands. visuals are honestly pretty cool: there's a range of environments that 47 visits necessitating a lot of new and unique textures/models, and that comes with a distinct feeling in each new mission. my favorites ended up being a drug rehabilitation center nestled up on a foggy hill and a fancy ferry navigating the mississippi, and it's both just because... i dunno. those are just really cool environments for a video game.

the clunkiness i mentioned that happens in the beginning of the game isn't quite limited to that part, though. there's other weird, stupid things that can occur during gameplay, like whether or not you'll actually pull of a successful fiber wire because you'll feel like you really should've but it didn't happen. sometimes guards really, really let you get away with some shit but other times they'll be completely on you with little warning. i don't want to make it seem like this is always the case, and you do generally have a good feeling of whether you're blending in or not, but weird things can happen.

the upgrade system kind of sucks, too. general weapon variety is already a bit samey--i ended up just exclusively using the silverballer and w4000 sniper this run because i wasn't looking to get into big fights and that made the rest useless. the upgrades are basically a two way straight where you're either making your weapons super effective silently or super effective loud and disastrous, so it could've been nice to have a bit more flavor and variety there. you also are able to earn the real good stuff... real early. and it doesn't feel like you really worked up to them yet. also there's a hideout/gunrange and i'm not really sure why anyone would go to it

but there's a reason why i keep coming back to hitman blood money, and small clunkiness nor boring upgrades is going to stop me from revisiting the same locales and targets with different ideas and approaches every time. also, the reason i really come back is the killer ending, which, despite closing off kind of a dry story, ends up being crazy satisfying somehow. you'll just have to play it to understand how that's possible.

What I ended up enjoying the most was the bungling I could get away with: A climatic mission in Vegas was turned into a breezy victory lap after a massive shootout in the hotel garage left me with my choice of disguises, able to move freely from party to party, cleaning up any remaining targets. This kind of choice isn’t novel, exactly, but I appreciate the willingness to let the player’s ineptitude drive the game as much as the designer's hand.

Want to give special mention to the ending as well, where your final three kills will likely be a guy in a wheelchair, a hapless priest, and a journalist begging for his life. There’s no pretense about who Agent 47 is here, none of the “aspirational” qualities that the developers talk about giving him with the modern entries. It’s a miserable, ugly world, populated by an assortment of caricatures- which is maybe why it connected with me so much more than the other titles in the series I’ve played.