Video Games Suck - Hitman: Blood Money

Old Bald Balls is back, this time his annoying cue ball head will continue to take up the middle part of your screen as you run around on a murderous rampage.

GRAPHICS

Its more of a graphics update than an evolution of the Hitman series. There is the usual AA, bump-mapping, Specular lighting and use of soft shadows but there is a seriously low polygon count. There is really no visible facial expressions from NPCs or your character. The movement of models is fluid and resembles human beings pretty well.

Okay guys throwing in the usual graphical enhancements isn't enough, its barely better than Hitman: Contracts! Nice textures and rendering of environment, ugh too fucking small in terms of map size like you're in a toy box. ALOT of the environments are linear with right-angles everywhere and doesn't feel DirectX 9 at all. However there are huge fucking variety of locations you visit, so yea you feel like James Bond especially when there are alot of titties to shoot which is great because its a great mix of eye candy colour and confined/large scale areas to stop you quitting and googling porn instead. There is one map which is fucking amazing, its a carnival in the busy streets and yes there are thousands, not hundreds but thousands of people walking on the streets, wearing different clothes, doing different things and walking in independent directions! Fuck there are so many people in that particular map like you've just stepped onto Rome Total War battle scenario! Thousands....and you have a large gun..hmmm fun. Why is it just that one map impressed me? It was a one-off easter egg surprise while the other maps are plain in comparison!

Yes there are tons of models in each map walking around and doing their own routine shit. So it does feel like the previous games that you're in a public place and trying to avoid everyone. The insides of buildings are a little bare, maybe a table or bin here and there and not enough interactive objects to use tactically or to be knocked over in fire-fights. All doors seem to open both ways which is a fucking ingenius invention!

You'll be too focused and wrapped up in stealth and killing people in various ways to even think too much about graphics.

SOUND

Straight out of the Opera, its all classical music which suits the mood. THe music varies and goes louder without warning to give you the tension feel. So when you've done a killing the violins start playing like you've just thrown the cat out the window or the whole fucking Orchestra starts playing in a fire-fight when your cover has blown.

There is hardly anything in the way of background map sounds or coming from surroundings, its basically music, doors opening and MOSTLY gun shots. The double handguns are just as loud as ever. Oh and a few screams from your victims. I do also love the sound of lead penetrating flesh.

GAMEPLAY

Stealth is the key to the game! Fuck he still walks like a wooden plank and he runs while swaying like a pigeon trying to eat breadcrumbs. The ragdoll effects are over-the-top BUT thats what I love about Hitman games, a quick round to their chest and they fly into orbit with their limbs and joints lying on the ground in a distorted fashion! Hey its not realistic but I'm not complaining as it adds some humour. There is a Tension Meter to monitor how close you are to getting busted.

There is a pointless portion after every mission where you get to read news articles regarding the consequences of your actions and how clean you were in making a clean getaway, bribing newspaper editors etc. Pointless and boring, fuck off trying to do something unique in a lazy way to attempt to make the game more realistic.

Its the same style of play, you sneak around using various disguises to move more freely around certain areas without getting raped. Now you have to be careful HOW you MOVE as well, loitering or climbing in front of people causes suspicion.

For a professional motherfucker he isn't very agile, okay so NOW he can climb shit, like boxes, walls or ledge jumping. Apart from that the most frustrating thing is that he has no combat dodging moves, he can't fucking roll or anything. When the guns start blazing at your ass the ONLY thing you can do is run into a room with one door or passage and just pick them off as they come though. He still runs like a complete moron, more like jogging...errr people are shooting!!! Sprint NOT jog foo. Previously you could tap a button and baldy draws and fires straight away WAY faster than his enemies...I noticed this time you'll be quite lucky as you now react much slower than before and the enemies are just an inch behind in reaction time. You're no longer Clint Eastwood and you draw so fucking slow in this game, my god don't fucking get me started on how it takes to reload guns, it takes forever!!! like 5 seconds or more.

This leads to me bitching about the AI now I mean come on, the best tactic in a fire fight seems to be running and backing yourself in a corner....the whole map full of enemies come streaming at you one by one to be killed like Lemmings ending with a like Bosnian War type mass grave of 25 men in a 5'by 5' square floor space as they neatly stack upon eachother's bodies. I've just killed a guard sleeping one room without any witnesses around with a wire strangler and no CCTV, okay why is the tension meter rising??? The guard in another room gets suspicious even more of you because he telepathically knew something was wrong in another room a fucking mile away!! Very advanced AI huh, then at the complete opposite end when you're not detected you could be standing on top of bloody bodies and the security just walks past not thinking just because you're the only one left in the room it might not automatically mean its you that is commiting genocide. They casually walk past their dead comrades without further investigation.

There is limited amount of weaponary and only a few are practical to use. You'll be basically stuck with the pistols and SMG...the others aren't practical to carry around or use to its full-effect. There is an upgrade system between missions where you earn money and spend it on customising your guns. I only upgraded Pistols and SMG, no point to upgrade the shotgun, M4 or sniper as they defeat the stealth purpose of the game, well upgrading the M4 is useful near the end of the game. But I found myself just wanting to make money just so I can finally make my weapons complete silent.

Alot of missions and variety of scenery, but each individual mission is too short, like 30 mins or 45 mins max if you take it slow. Its really only the variety of ways to kill and trying to hide the evidence which makes this game good.

STORY

Story? Well its pretty simple. You're a cold-blooded Hitman which is great because you don't need to worry about killing innocent bystanders as long as you get the job done. These are actually the final missions before Hitman gets betrayed and meets his end so there is a movie sequence after every mission in which a CIA uber agent talks about the past missions where they failed to capture him but eventually they do in the most stupid way of all. The ending is disappointing well actually the Main Menu background scene is a dead giveaway so 90% of people will know what will happen anyway.

Graphics are only as good as Hitman:Contracts, they just add in some extra shit. But then you don't really give a shit about the graphics because its so fucking fun finding new ways to kill people. Damn good game but a little surprise here and there but too short.

7/10