IO Interactive made a real attempt to make Hitman: Blood Money more approachable than its predecessors. The whole control scheme is rehashed, with context-sensitive buttons replacing the PC-feeling dropdown lists of actions. Agent 47 can now sneak around at quite a clip, making strangulation a lot more convenient to set up. He can automatically climb and jump at appropriate moments, too. There is an intro tutorial mission which painstakingly takes you through every bit of how you can go about the practice of assassination. At heart it’s the same again, though. I can tell because of how terrible I am at it.
Back when covering Silent Assassin, I talked about the requirement for patience being a serious problem for me. That’s the case again for Blood Money, especially playing on PS2 with its ponderous load times (and save times). On further reflection, though, it’s one of several issues that make me and playing Hitman a uniquely poor match. There’s the requirement of a certain level of imagination, and there’s the navigation of 3D space. And most of all, there are these three factors combining together. It completely makes sense for looking at the map not to pause the game; it’s central to many of its mechanics. But I have enough trouble finding my way around streets in real life, and processing that stuff as fast as is needed to sneak around really isn’t for me.
Playing the game isn’t the only way to engage with it, though, and the Hitman series is particularly suited to taking in via Let’s Plays. Watching someone else more spatially gifted do the business of imagining their way through a world of pure assassination is much of the fun and none of the frustration. And Blood Money ups the stakes once again in letting players pull off unlikely deaths masked as accidents, and in giving them ever-more-devious new distractions, disguises and ploys to get there. In one of its levels you can use tranquiliser-laced food to eliminate a troublesome guard dog, which is literally a Secret of Monkey Island puzzle.
It’s also a good way to take in the stylish aesthetics, which are as keenly thought through as ever. Blood Money does a bit more setting its killings in context, showing you newspaper reports on them after each level and leaning a bit more into the motivations behind them. At least until it inevitably turns towards conspiracy territory about getting at Agent 47 himself, all a bit old hat. Changing away from a world tour to having almost every mission set in the USA is a refreshing change though, and helps to avoid some of the most insensitive and racist nonsense of the previous games – admittedly a low bar.
Three and a half games into the series, it hadn’t changed much, but it also had done enough to show it didn’t need to. It had certain similarities to Eidos’s other big globe-trotting, 3D-space-exploring, sequel-generating series Tomb Raider (which also pretended to kill of its lead character at the end of its fourth entry), but Hitman had got this for without falling into the same traps. Not releasing an entry every year, for a start. But more so, the variety of narrative and gameplay possibilities means that even as the parameters levels are set within barely change, a new set of them can be a more enticing prospect. Whether playing them or watching someone else do so.
Top of the charts for week ending 20 May 2006:
New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, DS)
Top of the charts for week ending 27 May 2006:
New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, DS)
