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Hitman: Codename 47 Review
Mark Simons
00/12/0000
Hitman
The very premise of Hitman is likely to upset the moral majority; you are a cold-blooded killer working simply for the money, no āhonourableā motives here. Whilst this idea may not appeal to the families of suburbia, for the gamer it is very intriguing, you are not a good guy, but are you really a bad guy? Youāre not hell bent on world domination or destruction, youāre just doing a job, a very unusual job that very few people do, but itās a job nonetheless. The idea of creeping around, working in secret, avoiding detection, seemingly normal to those around you is inspired. If youāve played GoldenEye then you must be able to remember the adrenaline that was caused by sneaking around the Russian bunker, knowing that none of the guards had any idea that you were there. This is what Hitman is like for most of the game.
Most of the time you sneak around the levels, talking to people, killing people, hiding bodies, changing clothes and planning. You see being a hitman is not simple, oh no, you cannot just go in all guns blazing, as this often results in a large number of guards swarming you, and your target may well be scared off. Thatās not to say itās impossible to play through the game in this way, itās just a lot harder. Where Hitman excels is in its missions, although seemingly basic in premise, for instance you may be asked to kill a gang leader in his hideout, the way you go about this is completely up to you. If you were daring, and a dab hand with an Uzi then running through the level picking off guards may be a good way to do things. Alternatively you could poison his food, sneak into his hideout as a guard, or pick him off from a long distance with a sniper rifle, the beauty of it is that itās all up to you.
Everything about Hitman seems polished, from the front-end to the game itself, everything looks and sounds right. You receive mission data on your laptop, allowing you to plan and choose weapons for the forthcoming assignment. When you are in the game everything looks very nice, with some lovely textures, detailed character models ā“ and with a fair number on screen at once in places. The animation on the characters is particularly convincing, with a varied number of death routines that are always interesting. Of particular note are the shadow and cloth effects, which are simply wonderful, if you walk past multiple light sources then the characters will cast multiple accurately mapped wall hugging shadows, this effect is simply beautiful. The cloth effect is equally well implemented, with everything from large flowing banners to dresses and even plants in the jungle moving accurately in relation to anything thatās touched them. If you get hitman to walk through a large banner, instead of just passing through it, as in other titles, the cloth will actually fall and move over him, again this effect is very convincing.
Like the graphics the sound is equally well done, with a multitude of ambient sounds, accurate ā“ well, they sounds accurate enough ā“ weapon sounds as well as suitably disturbing death sounds. Choking, stabbing, shooting and explosions are all handled well, with choking being particularly unnerving. Throw in EAX and A3D support and the whole thing sounds wonderful, and immerses into the role of the hitman that little bit more.
For all itās plus points Hitman does have its failings, which is quite annoying because without them it would no doubt be a classic game. The first problem I had was with random crashes when loading levels. This is not a good thing, however a quick check around some Hitman forums revealed that the most likely problem was out of date graphics drivers. Sure enough after downloading the latest drivers the problem was fixed, a simple solution to a simple problem, but still highly annoying when I didnāt know what to do. The next bug was in a level that required me to detonate a bomb, everything was fine until I pressed the detonate button, at which point the game crashed to Windows. Bad thing. Another trip to forums revealed that this could be to do with the game or my computer not handling the number of dead bad guys, so I had to cheat in order to get past the level without it crashing, which is not something I want to be doing. No doubt patches will rectify these problems, but they were not what I was hoping for. The other problems with Hitman are more fundamental, the control scheme and the difficulty of the levels.
Hitman, as you can probably tell from these screenshots, is a third person game but it uses a control system that is very similar to the mouse and keyboard first person standard, and this is good, it works well, most of the time. The problem is that the controls are un-necessarily awkward, for some reason there are separate keys for running forward and walking, why they could not have just used the shift key to toggle between the two I donāt know, and this proves highly frustrating when youāre frantic. Also, for some bizarre reason this hard as nails hitman cannot run backwards, and again this can be very, very annoying when youāre in a rush. Using the mouse and keyboard in a third person game takes some getting used to, and after a while it does become more intuitive, but when youāre heavily under fire it seems as if the game would be better off in a first person view.
Another issue with the game would be the levels themselves, and mainly the difficulty level, which is pretty damned high, not really a problem if youāre willing to persevere, but the length of some of the levels can be most annoying because you cannot save, and if youāve spent a good while preparing the level and scooping it out, it can be very annoying to do it over again because you get caught or something. This is particularly odd as if you die you can continue the level for a number of times, but this is practically useless as all of the guards will be hunting for your. If the developer had allowed a certain number of saves per level then I feel the game would be a bit more balanced. The fact that you are left on your own throughout the levels can be a bit disorientating as there are not helpful hints to guide you on your way, this does allow you to feel more satisfied when you do complete a stage, but sometimes you are left tearing your hair out over what to do, although Iām not sure if leaving you to your own devices can be considered too much of a problem.
Comments
The thing about Hitman is, that despite its problems I always find myself coming back for more, when things are going well it is a quite wonderful game. The thrill of killing a guard silently, taking his gun and clothes, hiding his body and wandering past the enemy guards without them noticing a thing is rarely topped, and it is this feeling that brings you back for more, and more. The problems with the game can be very annoying, but as a whole I feel that these take a backseat when enjoying the title.
