Hitman: Blood Money stands out in my mind as one of the most fun experiences I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing in the medium. Despite being released in 2006, Blood Money's sandbox level design is unmatched, to a point where it has aged perfectly and still stands out as one of the most fun experiences within the genre even though it's almost two decades old.
Blood Money provides you with a plethora of extremely fun scenarios, offers ideas, but ultimately allows the player to utilise their creativity and make their own decisions as to how they'd like to complete the missions. Every single mission breathes personality and style, allowing the player to perform assassinations at an opera theatre, casino, Mississippi wedding, a wine vinyard, and a suburban neighbourhood, to name a few of the locales. I cannot overstate how incredible these missions are. Each mission is meticulous in it's design, offering several solutions to the player, and through a combination of stealth and brutality, players must overcome these challenges and successfully take out their targets through whatever means.
The player's actions are monitored throughout the game and are evaluated to the player via a results screen at the end of each level, but also narratively in the form of newspaper articles. These articles highlight the number of casualties that occurred, if the player is loud and obvious in their assassination you may develop notoriety between missions, which can affect your ability to perform stealthily in subsequent stages. Security may also gain an understanding of how Agent 47 looks, and so will be more aware of you approaching them as they will be on the lookout for you. This adds a level of complexity of player consequence, and is extremely intuitive for the time.
Although I appreciate the level and audio design, the character design in Blood Money is downright awful. I also had some technical issues replaying this game on modern hardware, cutscenes lacked audio at times, and I found the control scheme a little dated. However, none of these issues are anywhere near significant enough to take away from the plethora of praises I have for this title.
Blood Money's combat is also a little clunky, but I find that necessary. The game after all wants you to have consideration in when you decide to go loud or kill a non-target. The stealth mechanics work fantastically, the AI isn't particularly attentive, but I personally love that it is forgiving and almost cartoonish in it's approach for stealth. For example, being able to throw coins down hallways to lure guards is just fun to pull off. Even routes the game wants you to avoid taking may be circumvented by learning the game's mechanics and exploiting that.
My favourite mechanic is definitely the ability to incapacitate people of interest, and wearing their attire to disguise as them. This allows you to freely access certain areas, e.g. dressing as a chef to freely walk the kitchen and catering area, or dressing as a security guard to close the gap between you and your target.
Of course, for loud approaches there are several firearms that you can use, such as snipers, shotguns, SMGs, and the famous Silverballers pistols. But my favourite arsenal is that of your stealth equipment. Fiber wire to take out your target up close or even sedative and poison syringes to be used on people directly, or indirectly through food and water.
There of course are narrative reasons for each of the assassinations, and a fairly decent plot to connect the threads together. However, I found the story supplementary, it was not an important selling aspect to the game for me at all. That's the beauty of this wonderful medium, some games weave interesting tales with overarching plot threads that surprise you in ways that no other medium could. However, some games, like Hitman: Blood Money are purely and simply fun to play, and it's these innovative games that become timeless.
Blood Money provides you with a plethora of extremely fun scenarios, offers ideas, but ultimately allows the player to utilise their creativity and make their own decisions as to how they'd like to complete the missions. Every single mission breathes personality and style, allowing the player to perform assassinations at an opera theatre, casino, Mississippi wedding, a wine vinyard, and a suburban neighbourhood, to name a few of the locales. I cannot overstate how incredible these missions are. Each mission is meticulous in it's design, offering several solutions to the player, and through a combination of stealth and brutality, players must overcome these challenges and successfully take out their targets through whatever means.
The player's actions are monitored throughout the game and are evaluated to the player via a results screen at the end of each level, but also narratively in the form of newspaper articles. These articles highlight the number of casualties that occurred, if the player is loud and obvious in their assassination you may develop notoriety between missions, which can affect your ability to perform stealthily in subsequent stages. Security may also gain an understanding of how Agent 47 looks, and so will be more aware of you approaching them as they will be on the lookout for you. This adds a level of complexity of player consequence, and is extremely intuitive for the time.
Although I appreciate the level and audio design, the character design in Blood Money is downright awful. I also had some technical issues replaying this game on modern hardware, cutscenes lacked audio at times, and I found the control scheme a little dated. However, none of these issues are anywhere near significant enough to take away from the plethora of praises I have for this title.
Blood Money's combat is also a little clunky, but I find that necessary. The game after all wants you to have consideration in when you decide to go loud or kill a non-target. The stealth mechanics work fantastically, the AI isn't particularly attentive, but I personally love that it is forgiving and almost cartoonish in it's approach for stealth. For example, being able to throw coins down hallways to lure guards is just fun to pull off. Even routes the game wants you to avoid taking may be circumvented by learning the game's mechanics and exploiting that.
My favourite mechanic is definitely the ability to incapacitate people of interest, and wearing their attire to disguise as them. This allows you to freely access certain areas, e.g. dressing as a chef to freely walk the kitchen and catering area, or dressing as a security guard to close the gap between you and your target.
Of course, for loud approaches there are several firearms that you can use, such as snipers, shotguns, SMGs, and the famous Silverballers pistols. But my favourite arsenal is that of your stealth equipment. Fiber wire to take out your target up close or even sedative and poison syringes to be used on people directly, or indirectly through food and water.
There of course are narrative reasons for each of the assassinations, and a fairly decent plot to connect the threads together. However, I found the story supplementary, it was not an important selling aspect to the game for me at all. That's the beauty of this wonderful medium, some games weave interesting tales with overarching plot threads that surprise you in ways that no other medium could. However, some games, like Hitman: Blood Money are purely and simply fun to play, and it's these innovative games that become timeless.