Hitman: Blood Money

The sound in Hitman: Blood Money does its job, helping to make you aware of your surroundings, as well as giving you that sense of feeling that you’re actually there as the Hitman, attempting to carry out your next job.

The music can be nicely soothing with some good operatic moments, however at times of caution (or rather if you’ve been caught out) then a faster paced piece of music plays which nicely helps to add to the anxiety you feel at those moments, and your choices at these moments can be critical. 

We would highly recommend a silencer at the first opportunity you get to customise your weapon of choice. A silenced weapon is extremely handy, helping you get away with carefully shooting your way through the level. It is also handy when a dog decides to bark and pester you, a nicely placed shot to the head will make short work of Wolfie – oh don’t get upset it’s not as if you have to kill dogs, there are other ways of distracting them if you look hard enough!

There isn’t too much to say in regards to the graphics department of Hitman: Blood Money, as it is certainly the games biggest weakness, its Achilles heel if you will.

Perhaps it would be harsh to say that the Xbox 360 version is more of an afterthought, but the graphics are not what we expect when playing a next-gen game.

The game does look slightly better than on current-gen consoles, but not by much. It definitely has a better framerate, and some nicer effects, but is easily comparable to current-gen versions overall. 

Thankfully the really beauty of the game is in the gameplay, it is a good single player experience. The graphics however are a big disappointment, we were certainly expecting more graphically from a next-gen title.

The controls definitely do their job, becoming second nature to the game within a short amount of time. It must be said that the first level of the game is one of the weakest and pails in comparison to most, if not all, of the missions after - possibly due to it being one of the most linear in the game. It does however, act really well as a tutorial helping you become accustomed to the controls as well as giving you a good taster of what is to come. The first level also does well in helping to show how you can control your character to accomplish your objectives in different circumstances.

Thanks to the controls layout, sneaking around becomes extremely easy. Timed correctly it’s easy to pick up a weapon, steal a videotape, or even pick up some donuts without anyone seeing. It is hard to fault the controls really; there weren’t any instances where we encountered problems that couldn’t really be blamed on our clumsy fingers or poor timing. It did take us a while to figure out how to throw a coin, which embarrassingly we only found out how to do on the third to last mission!

Final Word

We were a little disappointed that there were no multiplayer aspects of Hitman: Blood Money, something that adds to our feeling that the Xbox 360 version seems more of an afterthought, and more of a port of a current-gen game.

Ok, so the graphics might not match those of what one would expect to see in a ‘next-gen’ game. However, the game really stands out as one of the best single player experiences we have endured since the Xbox 360 launched. Although it could be argued, that it’s due to a lack of single-player focused games on the console overall.

We really did enjoy the game though, and can hold our hands up and say that we didn’t find the game easy either, even in Normal mode there is a lot of challenge there, and the non-linear aspect of the game translates enormously well, pushing you to choose your movements wisely, so expect a lot of trial and error. As well as all this, the non-linear gameplay helps add some (albeit limited) replay value. In hindsight however, our lack of patience really showed from time to time, and caused us a few problems here and there, so take note!

Overall, it is certainly the best Hitman game of the series, and if you’re looking for a decent single player experience on the Xbox 360, then it’s definitely worth giving a go. If you can, download the first level demo to get a taster of the game, and trust us when we say it gets a lot better than that.