This review contains spoilers
Blood Money has straight up some of the best level design in any video game. There's so much going on in every environment, so many memorable NPCs and little character details. This is really where the series takes shape, displacing 47 from his usual spy thriller haunts and into the miniature kingdoms of the rich and powerful.
Blood Money is also, by any definition, the ugliest Hitman game. From a game design perspective, Blood Money is timeless, but its caricature-esque art style is brutal, and the stereotypical characterization for some of the targets is beyond offensive, leaning in to the caricature-esque art to produce some really mean, borderline hateful bullshit. You encounter some of that bullshit in the game's bizarre opening level, in which 47 traipses through an abandoned amusement park full of stereotypes of black Americans. Then there's the fact that the design of, like 99% of the women in this game is derogatory, particularly once the game generates reasons to depict them in bikinis. The worst of it comes later when you encounter a little NPC named Skip Muldoon, who is A. the product of incest, B. flagrantly gay, C. a sexual deviant, and D. a fatphobic caricature of a fat person. And it's like - really, Blood Money? This is your imaginary of a target worthy of the player's derision? Skip Muldoon?
Some of this stuff is alleviated by the plot, which is the best in the series. The idea is that the ICA, 47's hitman/spy agency thing, is being hunted to extinction by other, similarly shady and powerful groups. As you get deeper into the story, you'll find that some NPCs have actually been replaced by spies who will attempt to trap and kill the player, which is a ridiculously cool role-reversal for a Hitman game.
I like Blood Money a lot, but my relationship with it is complicated by its regressive social attitudes. The much lesser-liked sequel, Hitman: Absolution, takes the series in a grindhouse cinema direction, which was seen as a non-sequitur at the time, but you can see all of the exploitative qualities people didn't like in Absolution already partially-formed within Blood Money.
Blood Money is also, by any definition, the ugliest Hitman game. From a game design perspective, Blood Money is timeless, but its caricature-esque art style is brutal, and the stereotypical characterization for some of the targets is beyond offensive, leaning in to the caricature-esque art to produce some really mean, borderline hateful bullshit. You encounter some of that bullshit in the game's bizarre opening level, in which 47 traipses through an abandoned amusement park full of stereotypes of black Americans. Then there's the fact that the design of, like 99% of the women in this game is derogatory, particularly once the game generates reasons to depict them in bikinis. The worst of it comes later when you encounter a little NPC named Skip Muldoon, who is A. the product of incest, B. flagrantly gay, C. a sexual deviant, and D. a fatphobic caricature of a fat person. And it's like - really, Blood Money? This is your imaginary of a target worthy of the player's derision? Skip Muldoon?
Some of this stuff is alleviated by the plot, which is the best in the series. The idea is that the ICA, 47's hitman/spy agency thing, is being hunted to extinction by other, similarly shady and powerful groups. As you get deeper into the story, you'll find that some NPCs have actually been replaced by spies who will attempt to trap and kill the player, which is a ridiculously cool role-reversal for a Hitman game.
I like Blood Money a lot, but my relationship with it is complicated by its regressive social attitudes. The much lesser-liked sequel, Hitman: Absolution, takes the series in a grindhouse cinema direction, which was seen as a non-sequitur at the time, but you can see all of the exploitative qualities people didn't like in Absolution already partially-formed within Blood Money.