Changed the form of play
The game has fundamentally changed its focus.The excitement and thrill of going through a level pulling off multiple ways of killing targets is over. The game has shifted its fun factor from pulling off assassination w/o being seen to completing levels with out being seen. most of these levels have no target and the ones that do dont feel like the old hitman games in my opinion. The disguises are useless because you can now only suit as police and special mission characters. You cant blend in because the cops all know you dont belong to the police force- i could understand if they did this on the professional difficulties but on normal?! Part of what made hitman great was dressing like someone else and pulling it off without suspicion now even if your dressed like a cop in a room full of cops youll still have to sneak around. The game is too much like a stealth shooter rather than being a hitman. It frustrates me because im supposed to be a cold killer who is supposed to kill people and all they want me to do is sneak around undetected- you even get penalized if you take someone out w/o killing them, this is boring to me. The freedom is gone also, you dont feel as though the world can change at any moment it feels like a liner path you have to cross. As far as the interface goes i hate the fact that im not standing in the middle of the screen like a boss and i hate that my guns arnt pulled from my holster like a badass. Instead guns magically appear in your hand- how weak is that, even blood money had more realism in this department. I also hate how when you get a kill with a silenced pistol guards automatically know who took the shot. So whats the point of the silencer? Another thing I dont like is the score sheet at the top left like I care all the time, I used to kill civilians like rag dolls just for fun and now they try to punish me in big bright red letters for doing my own thing. So as far as the story mode goes so far they could have hired better writers and lead designers for this. Why not a story where agent 47 has to kill 20 targets in a week in order to stop a catastrophic event from occurring? That would have been bad ass.. but no. lets make a game where you spend most of the time sneaking around guards and cops instead. As far as the contracts mode goes, its fun for a while but i dont see any longevity in it. The mode allows you to pick targets from certain levels, but those targets can only be cops, guards and other special characters, no civilians. This limits your options and makes it stupid. They also dont let you put your own weapons on the map or fix the routes of AI's to your liking in order to create a different experience for the player who is going to be playing these maps a routes over and over.. To sum up contracts mode- they had a great idea but they didnt expand on it or give it any depth for true forgers.
All in all ive said alot of negative things about the game but the fact is it is surprising re-playable. To steal from another review "it should be horrible, but its not." This game gives you pleasure while playing it just not the same as before. Like I said before they changed the games fundamental focus, if your the kind of person who enjoys sneaking past guards undetected then this is for you, if your looking for a hitman game like its predecessors this game has just enough hitman for you to play every once in a while. 7.5