Having played the three earlier Hitman games I had already became used to the stealthy action third person adventure. The fourth enstalment includes exactly the same style of play with multiple entrances, methods, kills and events. However the same problems from Contracts are still exsistent along with the minor changes. The two most noticeable problems are the terrible AI guards who follow very silly patterns and seem to be blind to the obvious pool of blood or out of place can. The second is one that seems to have been made worse in the new game, this being the fact that the attention bar seems to change a lot more slowly and reacts out of time usually with the actual events you may trigger (e.g: shooting a cop in the head and then walking through the crowd with a gun, usually the second action fills the bar not the first). This review you will now think is talking about the game negatively, but now when we look at the positive points, the negative problems seem to be insignificant to the positive side of 47's fourth version. You now have the ability to buy upgrades for all your weapons such as silencers and magnum rounds instead of searching for the weapons. Furthermore you get to choose the weapons you take to your job from the Agency's W200 sniper rifle to a Columbian's Shotgun you stole off him earlier in the game. Yet, to make this addition more unique you always earn a set amount of money every time you complete a mission, but then you can earn additional money based on your rating and side objectives such as taking a briefcase. The old formula from the original games is still there; multiple routes, multiple kills for the targets and multiple ways of hiding with new hiding places such as wardrobes and ledges. More over, there are new weapons such as the Anti Personel Mine and the excellent coin which is the perfect distraction for a stubborn guard. The storyline is very clever (*SPOILER ALERT*) as it has you enacting several missions earlier from the present day in which two men are discussing the ledgend of 47 and about his history of hit-jobs. It is only the last level which is present day which is preceeded with 47 running a hit on the White-House, it is from there that the last 'hidden' level arises in the present where Dianna has betrayed 47 and he must kill the people from the earlier sequences to hide the evidence of the ledgend of 47. This allowing him to track down Dianna for once and for all in a different game (Hitman 5 anyone?). The soundtrack is very unique and adds atmosphere in every level perfectly dragging you into the fear and perfection required in each hit. If you want to get all the high level kills for a slient assassin rating you're going to need patients as it is hard to do. Overall the game is very good and a perfect game for PS2 fans to buy. :)
From day one, the Hitman series has been an acquired taste. Its tough enemy AI, constant threat of detection and hundreds of life threating situations were definitely not for action junkies and gun crazy lunatics. H... Read Full Review
Let me start off by saying that I had previously played a Hitman game and hated it becasue I didn't get it. I did not understand how to play, so I returned it to the rental store and never looked back. Then I saw some us... Read Full Review
