Hitman
Hitman: Blood Money has, cautiously speaking, been a surprise enjoyment for me. Yes, I was a little upset at the tutorial telling me how to aim and throw a quarter while leaving out any tips on firing a gun (unless I just missed them), but I felt a sincere chunk of pride and accomplishment when I made it out of the first real level with good ratings (and a bonus, no less).
The secret seems to be knowing how to deal with getting your “suspicion” meter up to the critical red levels. Of course, if you misfire a tactical SMG in the middle of a pedestrian area, you are going to die. But the secret is getting noisy in a confined space, where you can really quickly and quietly take out everybody who saw you.
It’s not what I would call forgiving, but neither is the world of a professional assassin. You can get your meter down, and the AI is a little deaf when it comes to stuff happening on the floor above. So, that helps.
I really like the tactics of stealing clothing, which seems to be one of the major strategic choices for getting past security. For instance, in the current level, I have found a men’s restroom with a large container (about the size of a deep freezer). I think I can lure a guard in there, knock him out, steal his clothes, and put him in that tank. Presumably, I wouldn’t be detected by doing that. A similar tactic worked in the first real level.
A love-hate aspect is the fact that you are given all the back story you could ever want, but you aren’t really told where people are going to be and what’s going to kill you right away. Now, this is realistic and therefore cool, but in a game it really kills that instant gratification of looking at a situation and knowing exactly what you will need to do. You have to die embarassingly a number of times just to figure out where you’re going to have a problem.
Although I had already blown my cover before getting to it, I really enjoyed climbing up the scaffolding in an opera house, getting up with the stage lights, and setting up a shot on the stage performer. This is not Super Mario Bros.