An epic game. Leads up to the events in Contracts and follows many missions after. The ending is cool and original.
Controls will feel the same as before if you had played the other games in the series. You can walk, run and strafe while shooting although there is no ducking or jumping. Depending on certain obstacles, you can cause a pre-loaded sequence to occur when jumping balcony to balcony, or jumping to the top of an elevator, or when sidling on a building ledge, or when climbing a ladder. This is still somewhat of an irritating feature that the programmers decided not to give you total control of 47 but is a minor flaw in the scheme of the entire game. What makes Blood Money as fun as the previous games are the weapons; such as the Silverballer, SP12 shotgun, SMG, M4, W2000 sniper, that all can be upgraded for better accuracy, or to more powerful rounds, or with silencers and laser sightings. Other various and unique weapons can be found within the twelve chapters, and can be stored in your hideout to be used for future missions if you wish. Equipment available for purchase include picklocks, Kevlar and flak vests, detonators and mines, painkillers/adrenaline (health boosts) and binoculars. And you always will have the fiber wire available for those Silent Assassin kills as well as knockout syringes and various poisons. You will constantly be on search for disguises and special items like keycards and documents to fool the guards.
The first mission is a tutorial, and makes for a good beginning where you are hired to kill the Swing King, hiding in an abandoned carnival (you will learn how to distract a guard's attention by throwing a coin across the room, will practice close-combat kills, to hide in storage lockers as guards pass on by, to use an enemy as a shield from crossfire, to snipe multiple targets, disable power boxes, set bombs and plant poisons). Next missions will take place at a winery (targets are a pair of brothers who make more than just wine), at an opera house (where you must kill a pair of high profile politicos, this is also the prelude mission where Contracts begins after 47 is wounded), an alcohol treatment center (where you must rescue a CIA agent and also cause the demise of three mob bosses), in a suburban neighborhood (once again you are hired to kill a mob boss but who is also being protected by FBI agents as an informant), at a Mardi Gras celebration (where you must kill three assassins before they take out their target; one of the better and more difficult levels in that the streets are crowded with people, flashing lights, many accessible buildings and some confusion as to finding the assassins before its too late), at a playboy mountain retreat (where you must kill a senator's son who was taped murdering a woman; another atmospheric level with hot-tubs in the snow and many guests at a Christmas party), on a passenger steam-ship (where you must kill the captain and six members of the crew among a ship full of civilians), at a wedding on the bayou (where you will need to sneak into a mansion full of shotgun-wielding guests and kill the groom and groom's father while leaving the bride unharmed), at a casino (where you must retrieve a briefcase and kill three targets before the exchange; requires some exploration as there are several floors and can be difficult to pull off kills with the many security cameras throughout the facility), in a business complex during a Heaven and Hell party (where you must kill two targets and others as you progress; one of the more imaginative and better of the missions where you encounter two main areas, one in white marble plazas where people dress like angels and listen to 'pleasant' music and the other in a red and black basement where people dress like devils and rave to electronica), and at the White House (where you will need to assassinate two people, one who was orchestrating setting you up and the other the Vice President; certainly one of the hardest levels in that security is very high and will take some patience and retries to complete but is an overall satisfying mission). And finally there is a bonus at the end of the game where 47 is supposedly put to rest at his own funeral while the credits roll (all there is to say is to tap the keys to get your heart-rate up and then see what happens next).
Blood Money does a great job providing interesting missions, targets and environments. There are multiple ways to take out opponents so the replay is pretty good. Graphics and music tracks are solid. Assassinations are satisfying and unique. Shootouts are not necessarily available as most missions are in a civilian environment where you will need to use a stealthy approach to get at your targets. It might've been a near-perfect game if there were a few more missions where you can kill an entire gang or are hired to kill larger groups of people. Blood Money requires all stealth if you don't want to have any witnesses, which one could say is the perfect assassin game. Otherwise those who prefer being rewarded for trigger-happy moments and exciting shootouts will not find it here. Even then, the game is still worth playing due to its unique characters, missions and environment.