Hitman Blood Money (HD Enhanced Collection)

 I love the Hitman series and have done for a very long time. Some of my first experiences with a PlayStation 2 revolved around the quirky, bald assassin with a keen eye for sharp suits and homicide. Agent 47 to this day remains one of my favourite anti-heroes of all time. He is cold and calculated without coming off as a psychopath. So obviously I have played Hitman Blood Money before. In fact, I have played the game many times on both the PS2 and Xbox 360. But since it has been many years (and the HD enhanced collection featuring this game and Absolution was on sale on the PlayStation store) I decided to play through the game fully instead of picking my favourite missions as I usually would. The fact that around this time I was also hunting platinum trophies and I believed I could easily get one for this game also influenced my decision to get the collection on my most used console.. Blood Money’s gameplay loop of tracking targets, learning their routines, and executing a successful kill is arguably the best in the series. The maps 47 enters are rich in details and interesting ways for you to assassinate your targets and give the game great replay value.  The game’s thirteen levels each showcase the more cheerful aesthetic in comparison to the previous game. The game feels much brighter overall, and the visuals benefit greatly with the lighting and textures not aging particularly badly. The biggest negative I could heap on the game is strictly preferential. As a fan of the series, I believe Contracts and Silent Assassin have superior soundtracks that fit the tone of those games better. Do not get me wrong, Blood Money has a very good soundtrack but most of the songs are not as memorable as others from previous games in the series. The titles two main tracks though are excellent and IO again managed to fit an opera song into the soundtrack seamlessly to the point that now, I can't imagine Blood Money without Ave Maria. Some of the game's levels though do suffer in terms of scope. While A New Life is arguably the game's most popular level, its size feels far more restrictive than similar levels from the franchise some levels such as Murder f the Crows take fantastic concepts and don't really run with them. The thought that thousands of NPCs could spot 47 is exciting at first, until you realise that most of the level's NPCs do not react as they should because the devs did not take the time to program them all completeley. Still, it is hard to argue against Hitman Blood Money being called a great game. While it is not my favourite game in the franchise, I still have tremendous respect for IO’s vision to make the series more appealing to a wider audience and believe that this helped Blood Money, become one of the most popular stealth games of all-time.

Rating: Professional

9/10


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