Hitman: Blood Money Review

Hitman: Blood Money is an excellent game, regardless of the platform youplay it on, be it Play Station, X‐box, or on a PC. The game places you in the feet of alegendary and fictitious assassin: Agent 47 (or 47 for short). Being a geneticallymodified human clone, 47 was specifically created to be the perfect killing machine.Throughout the game, you will get the chance to make him live up to his purpose.

Blood Money is a mostly non‐linear game. You are usually required to kill acertain person and escape the scene alive on every level. Specific levels may haveother objectives such as retrieving documents from safes, or ensuring the safety of aspecific person. There can also be secondary objectives, which you are not requireddo in order to complete a level, but doing them can result in a larger monetarypayment upon completion of the mission. Other than that, you are free to dowhatever you choose in order to complete the objectives. The missions vary inlocation and themes, from a mountain resort, to a Mississippi cruise boat, and evento the White House. There are many ways to kill a target, from straight out gunningthem down in a shoot out, to arranging their deaths to look like accidents. However,it is very obvious that the game stresses stealth over action, especially with themission rating system and the notoriety system. After the completion of a mission,the game assigns you a rating based on the people you killed and your overallstealth. If you manage to kill only the assigned targets and raise no suspicion onyour part, you will receive the highest rating of “Silent Assassin”. The game alsoencourages achievement good rankings by having the player receive a monetarybonus. It also punishes non‐stealthy players with the notoriety system. Dependingon how you completed a mission and how much suspicion you aroused in theprocess, you can receive a higher notoriety rating. Higher ratings result in betterdescriptions of you, ranging from inaccurate drawings to a color CCTV shot of you.This can result in more difficulty in the following mission, as characters willrecognize you as a threat more easily and you can raise suspicion on yourself doingsimple actions such as running. However this can be treated by certain actions suchas bribing the local police chief or receiving a new identity.

The game play of Blood money is extremely fun and allows for differentstyles of play. The Artificial Intelligence of the game characters is fairly good, and itvaries depending on the difficulty level. An interesting feature is that characters willfollow blood trails made by bleeding bodies, resulting in the eventual discovery of abody unless you take the necessary measure to hide it. This forces player to utilize“bloodless” methods of killing, such as a poison syringe, or a garrote wire, in orderto ensure that the body will not be discovered. Another interesting way of killingpeople is through the use of a “suitcase bomb”. By placing a mine inside a suitcase,the player is capable of detonating the bomb within the suitcase and killing allnearby characters. The game engine could do with a few modifications though. Aclear example is quickly discovered when the player utilizes bladed weapons intheir deadly arsenal. Once thrown, a knife is unable to be recollected from a deadbody, which forces the player to engage in close combat with a target for prolongeduse of the knife. Also another annoying problem is the fact that you are unable tosuit clothing of a dead body while it is engaged in motion, such as sliding down thestairs. Despite these small bugs, game play is easy to master, and because of the nonlinearstyle of the missions, it is possible to retry a mission again and again, whileyou search for all the ways possible to kill a target. Another achievement, which youcan attempt to achieve, is to collect all the possible weapons within the game. Whenyou visit your hideout, you might notice the outlines of several guns on the wallswithin the armory. These outlines represent the gun or weapon that you have yet tocollect. Within the game, there are several unique guns, which you can collect bysimply retaining them upon completion of a mission. They are then added to youarmory at the end. Although custom made weapons are generally more powerfuland more accurate than any other gun once fully upgraded, you only have access tothese higher upgrades during later missions. Because of this, it is beneficial to collectweapons which offer more firepower than your custom made weapons, until youare able to access the higher level upgrades.

Game play rarely makes a game enjoyable singlehandedly, and good gamesoften have a good plot to complement the game play. Blood money offers aninteresting plot, which explains the reasons for why you take on certain missions.Blood money is set in an interview between a journalist and a government official.During the interview, the government official explains through flashbacks your prioraccomplishments. It is during these flashbacks that the game play takes place.However, it is clear that the official is not revealing the full story to the journalist,which becomes evident near the end of the game.

In the end, the official and thejournalist attend the cremation of your paralyzed body. However an ally manages tosupply you with an antidote and you are able to eliminate all witnesses and re‐enterthe business of contract killing. But, in order to fully understand the plot, you willhave to buy the game and play it yourself, which is highly recommended.

In general, Hitman Blood money is a great game. It incorporates great gameplay with an interesting story line, while also incorporating a great deal of nonlinearity,which allows anybody to replay the game again and again. Dishing out thecash to play the game is in my opinion, a great investment.