Hitman: Blood Money (Xbox 360) > Reviews > Best Hitman Yet?

Author's product rating:   

Advantages:	Multiple ways to complete each level
Disadvantages:	A little too hard .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Hitman Blood Money
Rated 18
Publisher: Eidos Interactive.

=== The Story. ===

At the beggining of the game we see a flashback to a Baltimore amusement park, where a ferris wheel ride collapses due to maintenance neglect, causing the death of dozens of innocent people.
We then see a man sat in a dimly lit office, looking at a picture, which we find out is the mans son, who died on that same ferris wheel. He then picks up the phone and calls the agency, and orders a hit on the amusement parks owner.

After completeing this mission, there's a cutscene including a reporter and the former FBI Director, Leland "Jack" Alexander who are talking, about cloning and the things that Agent 47 has been upto. Leland is showing the reporter recent news articles of assasinations, which brings the reporter to believe the consipiracies about the actual existance of the notorious Agent 47. And through the rest of the game, we play the missions as flashbacks to what Leland and the Reporter are discussing.

The more we play the game, the more the plot starts to unravel, and we see the true extent of the reason Leland invited the reporter, with a shock ending which doesn't turn out to be as it originally seemed.

=== Silent Assassin Weapons. ===

Throughout the game, you can collect lots of different weapons, from pistols to shotguns, to assault rifles and sniper rifles. There's also weapons such as nail guns.

But to make the most out of the game, and complete the missions with a Silent Assassin Rating (Best Rating), its a better idea to not actually use weapons at all. Apart from the silent weapons you have throughout the game, these include:

# Sedating - You will be carrying 2 syringes with anasthetics around with you on every mission. If you are spotted carrying them, guards will naturally attack you.

# Poisoning, Just like the anasthetics, you carry 2 around with you on each mission, but instead of just sedating they kill the poor person who is on the recieving end. It's best to only use these on your main targets, because if used on civilians or police officers, it will be counted as a unnesscary kill.

# Pistol Grabbing - You can sneak up behind people and if you have a gun equipped you can use them as a human shield. You can also do this to knock people out without killing them or wasting sedatives. You can slowly walk with the people before you knock them out which is good for dragging them into a secluded spot. But when you do knock them out it can be very noisy, and any nearby guards will come to investigate.

# Fibre Wire - This is any assassins weapon of choice, although it does kill enemies instead of temporarily stunning them. You can carry this round at anytime because it is small and hard to see when in your hand. You can also use this to kill enemies who are in lifts, by being inside the roof hatch, you can drag people up onto the top of the elevator, and hide their body there.

# Accidents - Each mission usually has a set out way in which you can kill your main targets while making it look like an accident. These include things falling and crushing your targer, or "Accidenly" falling down the stairs.

=== Disguises. ===

Throughout the game there are lots of restricted areas, where you need to go to beable to complete the missions. To get to these places, you must either find uniforms lying around, or neutralize somebody and steal their uniform. The uniforms you can wear include, Police, waiters, guards, patients, FBI and clowns.

=== Disposing of Bodies. ===

Due to the fact that if you neaturalize somebody and steal their clothes, if anybody else finds the persons body, your disguise will basically be useless, because everyone will be looking for a man in a clown suit for example. So throughout the levels there will be things like garbage bins, laundry baskets. Noone will ever look in any of these, so you will be safe to go round doing the rest of your mission without worrying about the consequences. You can also hide bodies in toilet cubicles, although if anyone walks into the cubicle and sees the body their your disguise will be blown.

=== Frisking. ===.
When you pass guard posts, dressed in the wrong type of uniform, you will be frisked by people to see if you are carrying weapons. It will only pick up metal items, so any guns you are carrying will be found, although your syringes, mines and fibre wire will not. There are many ways to get past this though, such as hiding your weapons into a donut box, and then dressing as a delivery man to get passed the guards. They will still frisk you but will not find the weapons are they are hidden inside the box.

If you stick to doing all of thse things carefully you will stand a much better chance of becoming a silent assassin.

=== Missions. ===

There are numerous 'hits' you are given throughout the game. These are basically contracts which you must perform while trying to go along unrecognised. These can range from, being in a theatre and hiding in the actors dressing room, then as he leaves to go to the toilet, you switch the prop World War 1 pistol for a genuine one, so that the actor will accidetly shoot your target who is also a actor, and you will get away with it. There's also a Mardi Gras level in New Orleans where you must walk through huge crowds with cops everywhere, while taking out a couple who have been hired to assassinate a councellor.

The missions are very smart because you can play them in multiple ways, with different results. You can make it look like an accident, poison your target, or you can just go in with guns out and kill as many people as possible, although this will give you worse rating and increase your notoriety.

=== Notoriety. ===

This game as a very good notoriety system. If you are seen by witnesses, you kill people who don't need to be killed, and you leave bullet holes everywhere, the police have much more to go on when trying to find the identity of the assassin, and you notoriety will go up. Which makes the newspaper article at the end of each mission tell you things about how you did and if they know who you are. If you keep killing people throughout multiple missions, your nototiety will increase to the point where the police have photographic evidence of you and you are wanted by everyone, thus making missions much harder because civilians will run away and go tell the closest police officer, who will then try to take you down. You can however bribe witness, police or change your identity for a set price, which will bring your notoriety down. If you complete each mission, without any witness, and make everything look like an accident you will be rewarded with a silent assassin rating, and noone will be any wiser of your presence at the scene of the crime.

My Opinion.

This is an excellent game, and definetly the best in the Hitman series so far. The many ways to complete each mission adds a great replayability factor. I've complete this game 4 times. I did the first time by myself and didn't do too good. Then I played through using multiple walkthrough found on the internet. And each one had a different way of playing the missions while still getting silent assassin ratings, which keeps the game interesting and give a new experience with each playthrough. The graphics are pretty good, certain levels such as the suburbia level show this off very well.

I got this with a bundle when I first got my Xbox 360, and at first it was very hard and I didn't enjoy it much, but then as soon as I used a walkthrough I couldn't stop playing it.

There's a Hitman 5, confirmed for release on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, at the end of 2008 or beggining of 2009. And I simply cannot wait to play it.

Overall with the cheap prices you can get this game for now ( Roughly £15.), it's definetly worth a purchase and I think you will enjoy it as much as I have.

5 out of 5 Stars.

(Also posted on Dooyoo.).