Hitman: Codename 47

The Good
The idea of being a hit man, assassin, murderer. Somewhy people tend to like being the bad guy. Here you are about as bad as you can get. You have absolutely no way to justify the acts you do in the game. You just kill for money and that's it. Althought how gruesome and wrong this might feel, it still, quite scarily, is FUN.

Most of the time you are playing this game as a puzzle game. This is emphasized with the lack of saved games. When you are committing a murder, there is no such thing as luck. Every single step, shot, crouch, door-opening, kill, at least should be planned before.

The game content, graphics and sound, are well done. They are not ground-breaking or superior to other games, but they get the job done. Special mention to the very life-like (yeah, right) bodies. And the camera work in in-game cinematics is just breathtaking. These guys should be making movies.

The Bad
The game's controls are awful. You have separate button for running, and it feels bad. Why didn't they do it in the standard way? Selecting your weapon and action is done like in Operation Flashpoint, with a little menu to select what you want to do. Unfortunately, you'll have to open the menu to see what you can do. And you must select an action before the menu closes and the menu is located in the middle of the screen, making all firing and aiming impossible. To make things even worse, I could not assign the mouse wheel to handle the menu, so it is even harder to get the right choice.

Also the lack of saving games in the middle of a mission is a bad mistake in a game like this. Althought it adds into the atmosphere of the game, it also makes it very hard even on the easiest difficulty setting.

While the camera works great in the cinematic sequences, your own head obscures the view in the game sometimes, further fustrating you.

The Bottom Line
This game starts off very promising and contains a lot of good ideas and excellent camera work, but is very flawed due to the bad controls and the lack of saving.

It is very hard to recommend this game, but I am sure that many people will love it. Just try before you buy.

The Good
This game has got to be one of the most wished ideas ever developed. After the way movies romanticized the hitman profession in such classics as The Killer, Nikita, The Professional, etc. it remained to be seen if videogames could do the same.... well, let's see!

For starters the game begins on the right track by setting itself apart from the pack with a distinctive style and feel thanks to a streamlined interface and some clever gimmicks (like the almighty hitman's laptop). The game takes you through a completely linear campaign that is subdivided in several open-ended missions. Each mission involves taking out someone, how to do so is entirely up to you (though there is just one or two "correct" ways). Each assignment seems to weave a larger plot-line that will ultimately reveal itself in the latest missions, however each mission is excellently crafted with a great sense of progression, and an open yet defined aproach to each.

There is a pretty large arsenal of weapons to experiment with, and equally, you'll get to experiment those weapons on a pletora of enemies and (get out of the way!) innocent bystanders. But if you are clever enough, you'll find that one of your best weapons is sneaking and infiltrating your enemies. Not only does the game allow you to sneak around and take your enemies clothes, but it also includes a lot of classic adventure touches that make the missions much more than just finding the right way to shoot your target. You'll have to extract information out of deranged sanitarium inmates, bartenders, prostitutes, or some of the other npcs that inhabit the slightly jaded world of Hitman making for a much more varied gameplay experience. Furthermore, Hitman's world is brought to life by a pretty spiffy graphics engine. The folks at IO really managed to create some cool visuals with many smoke and lighting effects as well as coping with an astounding amount of gameworld detail (take your character's tie, or the shadows for instance).

Of course the meat of the game is in the killing aspect of it, and the game deals almost perfectly with it. All of the weapons behave realistically, with great sound effects to go with them, and the enemy animations are incredibly cool when it comes to getting shot, strangled, dragged or even when they roll around trying to avoid your shots.

The Bad
Well, did you like all the nice things I wrote over there? Well don't get too excited, because this game takes all of that incredibly cool premises and shoots itself in the foot with them. There are just so many things wrong in this game that I don't know where to begin first, so I'll just go at it randomly, ok?

The control sucks. Pure and simple. As a previous reviewer noted you have a separate key for running... so what, right? Well, regardless of the fact that this is rather cumbersome and annoying Hitman apparently doesn't like it whenever you press both the running and regular "forward" key at the same time so our baldy friend just stops dead in the middle of a firefight whenever you do that. Cute, isn't it? The game handles using items and equipments via pop-up menues, which has worked before, but stops the game dead, since there isn't a quick way to access your weapons. You have to predict that you will be facing a confrontation and be ready to select your weapon or take a couple of seconds browsing through your equipment menu if you get surprised (or things just don't turn up as you figured)while your enemies chew you up (believe me, that "fast and furious" action will get a LOT more furious after a couple of these incidents). As for handling items, the game only makes available some options the closer you are to them, and always chooses the worst one first (one would think you would want to drag a dead body out of the way and then take his clothes, but what the heck, right??).

As for the enemies themselves they happen to have an incredibly stupid AI. They can be funneled into any corridor you want, and they will actually shoot themselves. And just try to confront someone at hand-to-hand combat for fun!

Something that is particularly offending, and that delivers a completely devastating blow to this game, is the fact that it doesn't take advantage of it's premise. Lots of movies have taken such moraly disgusting professions like the hitman's and cloaked it in an aura of romanticism and adventure while not condoning it completely. Hitman does practically none of these things, so it leaves itself wide open for a moral-bashing of epic proportions. And whose fault is this? Mr. 47 I'm afraid. You see, unlike other hitman characters, 47 doesn't react in any way to what happens around him. The plot revolves around his past, but you don't see him even reacting to that. He could actually be a way-wussier Terminator if you think about it! Blankly going from place to place spouting short and controlled (but terribly voice-acted) phrases, and taking out his guns from time to time. In essence, it is terribly hard to connect in any way with the character, he can't be neither our alter-ego, nor a credible character, since the game presents him to us in a very defined and cinematic way (effectively cutting our freedom of interpretation) but he is a complete Nimrod.

The most grievous flaw in this game however is the lack of a saving option. Lazy coding or over-pretentious game design? ("it adds to the atmosphere, c'mon, only wusses use savegames!!).... you be the judge. The fact of the matter is that most missions start with a slow pacing that requires you to judge everything and move inch-by-inch, and then end in an confrontation. Cool, uh? well, what this translates to WITHOUT a savegame feature, is that you will be wading over-and-over through lots of tedious, meager tasks you have figured out hours ago, only to try and see if you can beat that guy, or find that nuclear bomb before time runs out.... yet again. It's downright cruel, cheap and incredibly frustrating.

The Bottom Line
Whoa... that was a lot wasn't it? Well I'll make this short then. Hitman has a lot of promise and gloss, but after you take a good look at it you find out that this is no Nikita. Heck, it's not even Stallone's Assassins!!

The Good
Graphics: They are outstanding. Despite some walkthrough (bodies' going through walls and/or floors) they are great. The Hitman looks good, and with high enough graphics settings, you can actually see the numbers of the barcode imprinted on his head. The smoke effects from fire are good, and the world the Hitman operates in looks like a real world. Stuff flows with the wind, mirrors cast accurate reflections, water reacts realistically to your walking, walls look good with no sign of jaggies (usually on edges of objects which look like stairs), and overall good quality.

Presentation: The game is presented great. It has a fairly easy learning curve, lots of missions that aren't repetitive, a good selection of real-world weapons (no alien shrinkray here), stealth and action combined in a seamless transition.

Controls: Excellent. Hitman responds accurately to your input and without delay. Moving is as simple as pressing a key and using your mouse. Inventory, binoculars, sniper scope...everything is easily reached from the regular "WASD" setup.

Atmosphere: Creepy, yet real. Walk too close to a person and they will track your movements with their head, giving you a sense of being watched. This actually has some value, because if you kill someone or pull out a gun, they will always recognize you, even if you change your clothes. Speaking of clothes, when you kill someone, you have the opportunity to change into their clothes, thereby allowing you to blend it, which lets you walk around with more freedom.

Physics: Hitman has a great physics engine. Kill a guy sitting on a chair, and his body will slump over in the chair, just like you'd expect it to. Kill someone on top of a staircase and they will tumble down the stairs, laying correctly on top of the bottom steps and floor. In most games, you'd expect the body to just lay flat; well, not here. Here's another great example. You're dragging a body to a sewer grate to dispose of it. Let the body sit on the side of the grate with one leg hanging over the opening. The physics engine, combined with the weight engine, will let the body gradually seep into the opening until most of it's mass (depending on the bodyfat of the victim) gives and drops the body into the grate. It is amazing and must be seen to fully understand it's addition to the game.

The Bad
Almost nothing. The camera is awful, and tracks you in a over-the-top, third-person perspective. Not that there's anything wrong with that camera position (Tomb Raider anyone?), but it just doesn't suit the game.

The Bottom Line
The first game in the so-called "murder simulation" genre, Hitman: Codename 47 is an excellent game well worth your cash. It'll satisfy all your needs.