Early Hours with…Hitman: Codename 47
Tom's Comments: It's about time someone brought Thief to the modern age. The title character has a shaved head with a bar code across the back of it. He's a cold-blooded assassin recruited from some sort of asylum, but his voicework makes him sound more like a tired Midwestern shoe salesman at the end of his shift. Hitman does look great with a sharp distinctive style, but I'm worried that some questionable design decisions might make it more frustrating than fun. After playing the first five missions, my intial enthusiasm has cooled. Very much like Thief, the game is divided into self-contained missions. You buy equipment (limited by the money you've made on previous missions) and set out to accomplish a handful of objectives. It looks like later missions have fairly elaborate compound objectives -- get the combination to the safe, sell the jade figurine, and then kill the foozle, for instance. But here's the clincher that could ruin the game: Hitman has no ingame saves. This works fine for short focused missions (you never hear people complain that Rainbow Six/Rogue Spear have no ingame saves), but it's going to be painfully tedious having to replay the slow early bits of the longer missions. It does seems that some missions have a few "resurrections" available to simply reset you to the starting point without erasing any of your progress. Another concern is the amount of variation when you replay a level. So far it looks like there is none. Objectives enter the target area at the same time and place as the last time you played. You'll end up timing your actions by memorizing what happens: okay, here's where the old man crosses the street, now the policeman walks down the alley, and in ten seconds, my target will walk through that door with two guards behind him. The game would have more replay value and wouldn't feel quite so much like a puzzle if there were some degree of randomness in the world. Finally, it looks like the missions are a bit too structured for my taste. Thief encouraged you to play around and try different approaches. Hitman seems to shunt you through a pre-set sequence of actions. I'm currently on a very long mission but my efforts at trying different things haven't been rewarded. It seems like a straight A, then B, then C approach is called for. Furthermore, without an ingame save, I'm a bit reluctant to try new things. Hitman does have a good-looking graphics engine, although the mouse slides a little awkwardly, with that strange cursor-on-a-ballbearing feel that makes it hard for me to enjoy LithTech games. The third person perspective makes leaning unnecessary and precise aiming occasionally problematic. But the game's worlds are bright and well drawn. So far I've only seen a Korean city, but one level has a beautiful outdoor garden with a waterfall. I'm glad to see Hitman doesn't resort to the dark vanilla Blade Runner style of games like Deus Ex. I've had my fill of dystopia by night, thank you very much.
November 26, 2000 |
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