Hitman: Codename 47

The Good
While there is a wide range of weapons available to you in this game, it's hardly a "shooter" - your path to success is paved with stealth, sharp observation, and careful planning. It's even more of a "sneaker" than the Thief series.

Enemies will watch you constantly, and if they study you long enough, they will remember you. If you do anything suspicious while they're watching (like, simply drawing a weapon, or killing someone) they will attack you, or run off to alert other enemies. The alert will spread like wildfire, so if you are caught, you have a short amount of time to take out the runner, before he can get to another enemy. Learning their behavior and patrol routes becomes vital; simply killing everyone will more than likely result in you failing your mission due to excessive "clean-up" costs. Besides, you'll almost always lose in a straight-out gunfight. Not only can you not dodge effectively, but you can't even jump. When drawing a gun is required, you must choose your targets wisely.

There is a great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction when you complete a mission in the cleanest possible manner (such as - not only sparing any innocent bystanders, but never being detected at all). It's possible to take out your target, and casually stroll away, past confused and alarmed enemies.

Another option for deception is stealing the uniform of a slain guard. The type of uniform you're wearing determines the areas you can enter in certain missions. Some of the uniforms available in the Hong Kong missions are amusing - "I am a Red Dragon Triad elite guard. Ignore, for the moment, that I'm a six-foot Westerner with a barcode tatooed on my head. Oh, and these aren't bullet-holes in my uniform, they're... um... cigarette burns."

But with that bit of humor aside, the ability to change your clothing is not only very useful, but also required. Not only do uniforms determine what areas you can enter in some missions, but they also determine what weapons you can wield openly (some weapons, like the AK-47 assault rifle, are too large to conceal). Studying your enemies' weapons is worthwhile - if a bunch of guards are wielding AK-47s, you can too. But you wouldn't want to run around in their uniform with, say, an Uzi equipped. That will certainly look suspicious.

The physics engine is also very well-implemented. Bodies are affected by gravity, so if you kill someone and decide to dispose of the body in a storm drain, you just need to dangle it over the edge, and it will slump into the hole. Dragging a body through a doorway, or around a corner, can sometimes be tricky - their feet may get stuck on a corner, and they slip out of your hands, costing you precious seconds. Hanging banners, and even Hitman's necktie are affected by wind, and your own movements.

If you're big on surges of adrenaline, there are more "close calls" in this game than I can count. Killing a guard, and dragging his body away to conceal it, and quickly putting on his uniform and holstering your weapon just before another guard wanders into sight is only one of many heart-pounding situations to be had in this game.

The Bad
The graphics seemed somewhat dated and blocky, even though the animation was very smooth.

The interface is very non-intuative, and you may end up redefining a number of keys. To start with, "R" is not Reload, as one may initially guess - it holsters your weapon. "1" is actually reload. The right-mouse button or spacebar brings up the "use" menu, and to select different options, the "G" and "T" keys are used to scroll up and down in menus (the manual says that you should use your mouse-wheel to select different options, but I don't have that type of mouse. It took random experimentation to figure out how to select different options). The manual is, unfortunately, very vague and unhelpful all-around.

Also, there is a high frustration factor. Whenever you fail a mission, you must start over from the very beginning; there is no save feature. While I suppose this could be chalked up to "realism", the game quickly starts losing its fun-factor when you're replaying the same mission from scratch for the Nth time - especially when you were just about to complete it the previous time (some of them are fairly long and involved).

I also wish it were possible to set additional challenges for myself. For example, when you purchase weapons and ammo at the start of each mission, you can decline to purchase any excess weaponry if you desire, and enter the mission with minimal equipment. On the missions where a gun was actually required, I would have liked the ability to purchase only one round per target, eliminating any margin for error. But, ammo is sold in entire clips only. One can't have everything, I suppose.

The Bottom Line
I would recommend this game to the "Thief-powergamer". You know, the type of person who plays Thief on the highest difficulty setting. Hitman is essentially the same experience, but I feel that it's more rewarding. A casual gamer (such as myself), on the other hand, may become a little frustrated at the need to restart lengthy missions from the beginning, whenever you fail.

The Good
A garrote may not be the best way to a man's heart, but at least it's clean and quiet.

The Bad
How do I save this thing? Oh, wait... I don't.

The Bottom Line
Hitman: Codename 47 is a game that created a bit of a controversy when it first arrived on the scene. While the idea of killing people had been part of the computer game experience for a very long time, HC47 went a step further than your average man-shooter. Here was a game where you weren't just killing people because they were your enemies, in kill or be killed scenarios. No, you were performing carefully planned assassinations because that was your job. It was a distinction that struck a chord with some gamers.

I'm not about to start arguing whether this was indeed a step too far in the wrong direction, but I am going to say that, personally, I don't have any moral qualms regarding this game. Partly it's because I simply don't let works of fiction, regardless of the medium they're in, get to me in such a way. More importantly, it's because, as far as I recall, the game doesn't actually reward you for killing civilians or police officers. In fact it penalizes you for it. What's more, your targets are very much of the criminal variety.

The missions you're presented with as 47, the titular character, aren't just individual set-pieces that you have to figure out and then perform to a certain degree of excellence in order to succeed in killing your target. They also form a narrative that slowly unfolds, shedding light on 47's mysterious past and origins. Without spoiling anything, it's enough to say that, while the story isn't terribly original, it proves to be mildly satisfying. And, hey, you get to visit quite a few countries not often portrayed in games.

Speaking of visiting... while good for the time, the graphics haven't exactly aged well. However I find that this to be true for most 3D games of this era, late 90s - early 00s, so you can't really fault the game for being a product of its era. The sound design is pretty good overall, though the voice acting is pretty insipid.

The levels themselves are well thought out, for the most part, and present all sorts of challenges for you to overcome. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately... more on this below) most levels aren't exactly long. As you might expect, as a hitman, it's best to kill your targets as quietly as possible, so the gameplay rewards being able to accomplish the task with as few "incidents" as possible. Any sort of extended firefight is counterproductive in this game.

The AI is good: civilians alert guards if they see something suspicious, enemies react to gunshots or to dead bodies, they call for backup etc. The game combines scripted sequences with reactive elements quite well. In it's day the AI would've been all the more impressive.

Unfortunately there is one major downside to this game and it pretty much ruined my enjoyment of the game: there are no saves in this game during missions. Not even checkpoints! You go in, you screw up... you start over. Slowly finding your way through a level, making a mistake near the end and having to repeat the whole thing... that to me is frustrating. I'm sure there are some gamers out there that enjoy this sort of challenge, but to me it quickly becomes an exercise in tediousness and repetitiousness. It's not a good sign when you start hoping that the next level will be a short one (they usually are). Even though this was obviously an intentional design decision, it's hard to forgive a PC game that doesn't have any sort of in world save.

The problem is compounded by the control scheme and the inventory system which often feel like they're forcing mistakes on you. One particular thing that irks me is that the game treats walking and running as two different things; in most games you use a key to alternate between walking and running. In HC47 there are two separate keys for walking/running, so if you're walking and you want to run, you must first release the walk button and then switch to the run button.

Worse than this is the inventory system which uses scrolling exclusively. There are no hotkeys for different weapons/items. This makes access to your inventory both slow and imprecise. You can get used to it, but it's still a bad system in a game where you have to be quick to react to changing situations.

If you can look beyond these problems, there's a good game underneath that can be very rewarding to people with plenty of patience. However, if you can't get past these things or if you're not a patient sort, you'll probably just quickly get frustrated with the game.

The Good
Though it isn't perfect it is a great game! The array of weapons is nice, many different "killing toys" to choose from. The reality of the sniper scope is... well... realistic. The scope bobs up and down, it doesn't stay perfectly still, this not only makes the feel more real but adds to the difficulty. The story behind the game plays out very nicely and ties in very well once you complete the game. Hitman is very addictive, i began my game and played for a while... four hours later i decided it was wise to take a break (it seemed like an hour passed at best). The graphics are sweet, as one reviewer noted, on high res mode you can nearly read the numbers tattooed on the back of his head, sweet! Another reviewer was complaining about the separate run button... why? The separate button makes it very convenient to change from running to sneaking up on a dude and cuttin' his throat. i found that assigning the 0 / Ins key on the numpad makes it very easy to toggle between the two.

The Bad
The AI can be too smart at times, it seems that if one guard knows i'm "not on the level" then nearly all of them do.... but it doesn't happen that way every time. The cut scenes aren't half bad but i find myself cranking the volume up to hear what the hell they say and most of the time i can't understand them anyway due to the foreign accents. The voice overs are... "without enthusiasm" a bit of feeling would have improved this aspect but it's not that big of a deal. Again with the AI, sometimes enemies will walk through doors or they will be near a wall, i'll fire away and they'll fall through the wall. The game runs smoothly... until loads of guards etc., hunt you down or the area you are in becomes cluttered w/ crap, the game slows badly and gets quite annoying. However don't let this all discourage you, it's still a killer game!

The Bottom Line
Being 4 years old now you can probably pick this one up very cheap, by all means grab it!

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.

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
MobyGames’ rigid review structure is sometimes annoying. ;-) Please start reading below…

The Bad
Avid computer gamers mustn’t be oversensitive. We’re used to a fair amount of violence in our favourite hobby. We’re well aware that “problem-solving” often involves a machine gun. Although we wouldn’t admit it in public, we’re proud to define progress by the number of limbs that can severed from a digital human body. With technology came realism, with realism came gore, you know it, what’s the big deal? Indeed, what’s so special about a game like Hitman? A game that isn’t exceptionally gory, in which not a single limb can be severed? It’s the single fact that Hitman declares cold-blooded, insidious murder an acceptable subject for home entertainment, with a realistic directness never known before. It’s the disturbing certainty that modern entertainment has breached the last boundaries, those of morality as well as simply those of taste. And it’s the alarming realisation that we don’t care.

We should care. Not because of a new-found conscience or a sudden prudery, but because the ever-increasing tide of violence threatens to wash away our common sense. The alarm bells are ringing: Hitman introduces a new quality of aggression.
What discriminates the game from the Counter-Strikes and Soldier of Fortunes of this world is the perfidy. The hitman does not react to hostility, he anticipates it. His victims are not his enemies. In any given 3D action game, your choice in a hostile world is to defend yourself or die. However poor this justification may be, it is still somewhat reasonable – call it self defence, call it second degree murder. In normal 3D action games, you react. In Hitman, you act.
The world of Hitman is peaceful. The one who starts the bloodshed is you. You have to take the initiative, attack without having been provoked, backstab unsuspecting humans. Cowardice is a virtue in Hitman, and so is unscrupulousness: you have to kill innocents – passers-by! – to prevent them from alarming the guards. What’s worse, and what discriminates Hitman from all those related movies from “Léon” to “Assassins” is that the game has no critical undertone whatsoever. In Hitman, killing is an end in itself, and a fun one at that. The perversity is the complete absence of alternatives – you have to KILL, there are really no other options, not even to knock someone out. This gives your actions a gruesome logic: the previous murder justifies the next one. Those are the lessons that Hitman teaches, and believe me, you’re going to learn them quickly.

But hey, it’s only digital! We’ve heard all that fuss about violence hundreds of times before, it’s only the scaremongering of the ignorant. Yes, possibly. But it’s not that we gamers are blessed with immunity against ignorance, especially when our hobby is criticised. We know nothing about the influence of the media on personality, but that doesn’t prevent us from having a conviction: we are sure that computer games do not reinforce aggression in kids. After all, we’re the best examples for this thesis, aren’t we? Even if we suspect deep down that our confidence is one third optimism and two thirds indifference, we prefer to cry out: Heck, what’s wrong with wanting to have some fun? And we certainly insist on our right to decide for ourselves whether violence means fun for us or not. Entertainment is our ultimate justification.

So what’s the problem with Hitman? Is it about morality, that outdated value? No, it isn’t. It’s about responsibility. The responsibility of the developers for their target group, which simply cannot be denied. To propagate violence without a though about the consequences is blatantly ignorant. But there’s also the responsibility of us, the gamers, for our hobby. When the uninformed public, prodded by the yellow press, looks at computer games, they notice a Hitman. They notice the blood, the violence, the killing. You know all too well which judgements are formed on the basis of such impressions. If we justify games like Hitman, we gather voluntarily in our niche as a blood-thirsty minority. We are doing ourselves no favour with that. The gaming scene is grown-up enough to accept its responsibility for itself. We should declare Hitman as what it is: the ill-considered perversion of a game.

The Bottom Line
Do we really need a murder simulation to have fun? I for one don’t.

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
Some good points about this game is the variety of weapons you can choose for this game. Also, if you have already beaten the game you can just go in to levels and have a shootout just for fun.

The Bad
Some of the levels were too narrow. You had to do things a certain way. And some of the levels toward the end were almost too challenging, taking the fun out of the game.

The Bottom Line
A fun, yet challenging game with the ability to do many things.

The Good
Hitman: Codename 47 is one of the best games I've ever played. I loved everything about this game. The storyline was excellent, as was the level design. Also, there were many costumes you could steal, complete freedom!

The Bad
The graphics were a little too blocky for my liking. They could have improved them a bit, since this game was released in 2000. Also, the engine was not optimised enough, and sometimes, you couldnt talk to mission critical characters. Other than these little gripes, great game!

The Bottom Line
Buy and play this game. It's only $20. Then buy Hitman 2!

The Good
The Hitman game series succeeds on the simple truth that there is nothing quite like a the prospect of killing in cold blood to get the blood pumping. On that front at-least, this game delivers.

The Bad
I am sure you have all heard of the Hit-Man series? Unfortunately, not many people know that the early games in the series are rather unimpressive. So what is it that makes it such a poor game? It's not the graphics, they are acceptable and it's not the physics they are good. It's not even the A.I. because that more than suffices. The sad fact is that the game is impossibly hard, even on the lowest level of difficulty. I never got past the first two levels! The game does have a tutorial, unfortunately this only tells you how to fire a gun and the basics of the movement. For the first mission you are sent to a unknown city block and told to assassinate a gang leader in the Buddhist park there. What you are not told, is how to evade the 30 or so guards, how to avoid the chain gun wielding helicopter and then how to leave without being spotted. The guards are paranoid of anything that moves and the moment you pull out a gun they shoot you to oblivion. Turns-out (I read a walk-through) that you have to climb a unknown elevator somewhere in the area and get to the roof, assassinate the gang leader and then hide before the manic copter sees you.

To be fair to the game, I am sure it appeals to some people, if you are a fan of the genre or just like impossible problems you may enjoy this. Still If you get anything out of this game you have done very well.

The Bottom Line
It's Not: very understandable, fun

It's: Very twisted