Difficulty:

Very Hard

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Solid"

When I first played this game, and was informed by a friend that you could CHOOSE between stealth, and running in there with an assault rifle, I thought, nah, a game like that could never deliver the goods. I was very surprised. It did. On the first play through the game I adopted the run n' gun method, finished it in a few hours, and left it on the shelf. Then, once I had finished MGS3,a nd fell in love with stealth again, I thought, why not, lets go for top stealth rank on every mission. I'd be lying if I said that I accomplished what I set out to do. Certain levels, I just couldn't get above halfway on the stealthmeter, and one level, the rock solid final hit, I couldn't get a better rating than 'Mass Murderer'. Two of my favourite levels though, two of the five(ish) I completed on Silent Assassin is a rehash of an old PC level, set in a luxury hotel. This level epitomises what I love in the stealth genre, it has a face in the crowd mechanic that Assassin's Creed was to adopt years later. The 0.5 knocked off is for irritating AI. As soon as a dead body is found it HAS TO BE YOU, obviously. That said though, it does encourage you to be much more careful, making the game a lot harder to beat. Poor graphics don't even mar this fantastic effort! Bring on Hitman 5!