Hitman: Blood Money for PC Review

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Hitman is a franchise with its own unique style of stealth gameplay. I know some of the games in the original series were marketed as giving players the choice of stealth or action but the real fun and challenge comes from solving the stealth puzzles. I’ll say it again, most of these are puzzle games disguised as stealth games. Veterans of the series undoubtedly know the very first game is quite different than the recent releases. It’s rewarding, punishing and inaccessible. The developers improved the formula in Hitman 2: Silent Assassin and I also feel it’s the game that firmly established the series identity. Hitman 2 was followed up by Hitman: Contracts which I can’t say was a big leap or innovative but the gameplay was refined enough to make the experience feel more polished and as a result, more enjoyable than its predecessors. After Contracts comes one of the most successful games in the franchise and the one that got me hooked, Hitman Blood Money.

Developed by IO Interactive and published by Eidos Interactive, Hitman: Blood Money was released for PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Xbox 360 in May, 2006. It was also included in the Hitman HD Trilogy for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 along with its predecessors, Silent Assassin and Contracts, and a remastered port along with Hitman: Absolution was released for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2019 as part of the Hitman HD Enhanced Collection. For this review, I played the PC version. I did install the AI Upscaled Cutscenes mod which makes the pre-rendered cut scenes look better by upscaling their resolution.

When a journalist meets with a former FBI director hoping to discuss a recent attack on the White House, he learns he was invited to discuss something far more important – the existence of the contract killer known as Agent 47 who many believe to be a myth. The two discuss 47’s most recent contracts and that his employer, the International Contract Agency, has been targeted by a rival organization which has been hunting down and killing ICA agents. Blood Money doesn’t convey as dark a tone as its predecessor, Hitman: Contracts, but does retain the series cinematic quality and the conspiracy angle in the plot gives off spy thriller vibes.

Blood Money is another entry that has been tweaked and refined for a more polished experience. The core mechanics haven’t changed. The game will take you to various locations around the world to assassinate different targets and this is very much a puzzle game disguised as a stealth game. Every map, minus the first one, is a sandbox with a puzzle to solve or you can say “fuck that” and simply shoot everyone in your way. How you go about your business is all up to you. The puzzle is, of course, figuring out how to reach your targets and eliminate them undetected. The first mission is the most linear and is clearly designed to show you the ropes but after that, you’re thrown into open-ended maps which give you multiple ways to approach situations.

Everything you’ve learned in the previous games still applies here. If you want to be the Silent Assassin, you’ll want to study the maps, enemy locations and patrol patterns, and take things slow. However, Blood Money does introduce some cool new stuff. It introduces a notoriety system, accidents, weapon and equipment upgrades, and a new difficulty called Rookie. The higher the difficulty, the better the AI, you get less saves, receive less agency assistance, and evidence can affect your rating.

The notoriety system is one of the bigger new things here. If 47 is caught on camera or seen killing people, his notoriety will increase and that means it’s easier for enemies in subsequent missions to recognize or detect him. You can steal CCTV tapes and kill witnesses but the latter can prevent you from achieving the Silent Assassin rating. You earn money for completing contracts or missions and the money can be spent on upgrades and to lower your notoriety. You do earn bonus money for achieving the Silent Assassin rating so to earn as much money as possible, you’ll want to try and remain undetected and only kill your targets. It should also be noted that money is deducted from 47’s payment for suit and custom weapon retrieval and damage control. So minimizing kills is always a good idea and you’ll want to be sure to retrieve your suit and any custom weapons before leaving a mission or leave the weapons in an ICA crate.

In our review of Hitman 2, I brought up the fact that I have a love/hate relationship with the rating system in these games and Blood Money is where I developed that relationship because this is the one I played the most. Everything about the rating system in this game just screams “don’t use guns!”. If you don’t give a shit about your rating, then it doesn’t matter but the notoriety system can make things more challenging. I’ve played through this at least three or four times on 360 way back when and at one point, I used a guide to achieve a Silent Assassin rating in certain missions and what stood out to me about the guide was that whoever wrote it was very clear about not bringing any firearms. Ever. As I was following it, I began to ask myself, why did they give us all these cool weapons if they don’t want us to use them? And eventually it hit me. They like giving you multiple options but always encourage stealth and you are rewarded for it.

As I stated in our review of Hitman 2, I want to be clear and say and I’m not holding any of this against the game or series. I’m just venting. I just like being the assassin who sneaks into a room and then pulls out a silenced pistol and puts a bullet in the target’s brain and then calmly walks away. I like stalking my target and then when they’re isolated, I whip out my customized submachine gun and put them down. I’m not saying I prefer to run and gun but I do like using cool firearms to execute targets and even enemies in my way or finding the perfect vantage point and then sniping the target with my powerful customized rifle. I also try to do the best I can with whatever the game gives me and in Hitman, that means trying for the Silent Assassin rating.

The rating system just generates an internal conflict that I struggle with. That’s why I have a love/hate relationship with it. That’s why it bothers me. I’ll stroll around the hideout and look at all the cool weapons and test them out which only drives me crazy because I know I’m not going to use most of them. At least not on my first run. Ultimately, it’s all good fun and I understand why the gameplay is designed the way it is. What I end up doing is achieving the Silent Assassin ratings and then play through the missions again “my way” so to speak. In the end, that’s what makes these games amazing. Freedom and options leading to a lot of replay value.

The new upgrade system is a cool new feature in Blood Money. 47 has access to custom weapons like the iconic silverballers, a shotgun, submachine gun, assault rifle, and sniper rifle, all of which can be upgraded or customized. You can spend money on different ammo types and attachments along with equipment upgrades like flak vests, health boosts, and faster lockpicking among some other things. You can find and use firearms in the missions and if you escape with them, they will be added to your arsenal but cannot be upgraded. In typical Hitman fashion, you can accumulate a cool collection of guns that can be taken with you on missions. And the game gives you so many reasons not to use them.

As cool as the firearms are, the stealthy approach can always be taken without them. That’s not to say you can’t earn the Silent Assassin rating by executing your targets with firearms but the game does give you so many other and often safer ways to do it. For example, fiber wire and poison syringes are quiet. It is fun sneaking up behind enemies and strangling them to death or poisoning them and now you can make deaths look like accidents like by sabotaging things and pushing people over balconies. In one mission, you can replace a prop gun with a real gun so the target is shot during a performance. The accidents add a whole new layer to the gameplay. There are so many ways to kill people now and successfully pulling off an accident is often immensely rewarding.

The AI has been tweaked and another reason not to use guns if taking the stealthy approach is that enemies can detect blood splatter which is typically the result of bullets and it will raise their suspicion. In my experience (with low notoriety) enemies can’t easily detect 47 when he’s in disguise. You can walk near and around foes without any trouble and it makes exploring and observing a lot easier than that of the previous games. Furthermore, you can now hide bodies in containers and 47 can hide in closets. He also brings a coin with him that can be used to distract foes and if your cover is blown and enemies start shooting, you can take people as shields which is pretty cool. You can also engage enemies in hand to hand combat and even disarm them.

If you decide to take the noisy approach and gun down everyone in your way, there is some satisfaction in that. I can’t say it’s as rewarding as solving the stealth puzzles but the actual gunplay isn’t bad. The way enemies ragdoll can look silly, especially nowadays, but it is one of the reasons why many guns feel amazing. Shots have a great sense of impact. Weapons fire sounds good and some of the silenced or suppressed weapons fire sounds amazing. With the right upgrades, the silverballers can be quiet but also sound powerful when fired. Bodies can go flying, blood will splatter, and bullets can cause particles and debris to fill the air. In the mission titled “The Murder of Crows”, I like shooting the targets in the bird costumes simply because I like seeing the feathers from their costumes fly into the air as their bodies drop. It’s little things like that combined with the audio work that add flare and satisfaction to the gunplay.

One of the things that really stands out about Blood Money is the missions themselves. With the exception of the first mission which is basically just a tutorial anyway, I don’t think there’s a single one I dislike. The maps are big but not so big that they feel tedious to navigate and the larger ones feature plenty to see and do. Every mission minus the first encapsulates what’s great about the gameplay and they all offer different obstacles and challenges to overcome. They’re all sandboxes with their own puzzles to solve. Blood Money does take you to different countries but most missions are set in the United States.

One of my favorite missions is called “A New Life”. Your objective is to eliminate a target in a witness protection program. But unlike a lot of the other missions, including those in the previous games, this one feels a little more grounded in reality which only makes it that much better in my opinion. The target is just a gangster who plans to turn against his former associates. So he’s like a typical target for a hitman but what really makes this mission stand out is the setting. It’s a generic quiet suburban neighborhood in San Diego. It’s not some exotic location. You’re not sneaking into a BDSM or masquerade party or running through a jungle populated with mercenaries or navigating around a Japanese castle full of guards and ninjas. Not that I don’t appreciate those kinds of settings but there’s just something more relatable about “A New Life”. It’s a simple premise.

Every mission feels distinct and several convey a sort of elegance. You’ll have to eliminate targets at a hotel and casino in Las Vegas, gang members on a boat travelling along the Mississippi River, and a porn tycoon at a mountain residence in Colorado. You’ll have to protect a VIP from being assassinated at a Mardi Gras Parade in New Orleans and prevent the president of the United States from being assassinated at the White House in Washington D.C. Most of the maps are intricate with plenty of routes and rooms and ways to approach situations and you can get pretty creative with kills and getting passed enemies or security. You can plant remote bombs on things like winches so the explosion causes something to fall on your target. You can stash items like weapons in things to be retrieved later like in another person’s suitcase for example or even put a bomb in a case so when the target opens it, ka-boom.

I think Blood Money holds up rather well, visually. Some textures appear blurry now but I can’t say I noticed too many eyesores. The texture work, lighting, and visual effects look good and the game features some nice looking backdrops. All the environments are well detailed and there’s a lot of little touches that make each location feel like a real place. I’m not just referring to visual touches but the audio work as well. People will interact and make comments, the streets of New Orleans are heavily populated due to the parade and actually sound heavily populated, and you can hear the muffled show and music in the opera house as you move around the building figuring out how to eliminate your targets. It’s just little things like that that can make a big difference in terms of immersion. Jesper Kyd returned to compose the soundtrack for Blood Money and once again did a phenomenal job. The tunes not only help elevate tension and drama but also add to the game’s cinematic charm. On the technical side, the game ran smooth and I did not encounter any major problems.

Blood Money is one of my favorite games in the franchise and is also one of the best stealth games ever made in my opinion. It’s definitely my favorite game in the original series. It adds a lot of cool new features and the formula feels almost perfected. It still retains the trial and error stealth and the gameplay and can be punishing but it’s also accessible. I can’t say I encountered too many issues with the AI. Whenever I got detected, it was always my own fault and I never got frustrated. Enemies and civilians are not overly sensitive. You can walk around guards and even stand near them in disguise without worrying about anything which is one of the best tweaks the developers made. But that doesn’t mean the game is a cakewalk, either. Higher difficulties certainly make things more challenging and the lower difficulties are perfect for easing players into the Hitman experience. Blood Money is definitely one of the best starting points. I invested a lot of time into this game on 360 back when it was in its prime, trying different approaches. The sandbox maps are not only exceptionally well crafted but also fun to explore and give you so many options that every playthrough can be different.

I would absolutely recommend Hitman: Blood Money. As of this review, I’ve played every game up to and including Hitman (2016) and feel confident saying this is a series that shows significant improvement with each release, minus Absolution which just feels different. The franchise has come a long way and Blood Money is where the original series peaked and the gameplay still holds up really well. Definitely check it out.