Hitman: Blood Money Demo

way late night impressions from a long-time Hitman fan

* If you are unfamiliar with the Hitman series, this is an awful demo to check out. It's a tutorial level and 100% linear. The entire strength of the series comes from how open ended the missions are, and none of that can be seen here (if you've never played a Hitman game, go download the demos for 1, 2, or 3 just to see why the series is so great). It's kind of odd that they would build such an elaborate level just for a tutorial, seems like a waste.

* They took out leaning... This earns a rather significant "WTF". Leaning has been in the series since the original, there's no reason to remove it.

* Bullets don't seem to penetrate doors anymore (bullet penetration was introduced in Hitman 2). I'm going to check into this some more, it's possible that this is just a graphics bug (e.g. the decals may just not be rendering when they pass through a door).

* The new graphics engine looks and runs great (I'm using a 6800 coupled with a more-than-modest Athlon 2100+).

* The new moves (disarms/shoves/human-shield) are all very nice additions. The disarms really help 47 seem like the fucking badass he is.

* Throwing knives :D (There is a knife stuck in the closet door in the room with the scientist, equip it and use the throw key).

* The new looking-through-a-peephole effect is handled very nicely. You no longer feel like you have a cardboard keyhole attached to your eye.


Anyway, negatives aside (no leaning = booo), I'm still 100% set on buying this game on release day. It remains my 2nd most anticipated game of the year (after Oblivion).