I bought these games the other night and I've been playing Hitman: Blood Money for the first time.

I'm not sure why many people rave about it in a positive light as if it's a masterpiece and one of the best games ever. From what I can tell, it's not bad, but it's not great either. It's definitely no "magnum opus," nor anything close.

Here are some of the issues I have with the game:

- Your saved games become erased if you exit out of the game (except that it still saves what mission you have reached up to). So if you are hours into playing a mission, and then want to stop playing, you are forced to lose all those hours of progress. This is absolutely terrible design! Some of the earlier posts in this thread do not make this point clear. They say things like you get a number of manual save slots based on the difficulty you choose, but they omit mentioning the fact that the game erases all of those save slots if you close the program.

- The controls are extremely clunky & awkward & imprecise. Countless times, my Fibre Wire and Syringes have failed to activate even though I deployed them properly. Instead of using those weapons after I inputted the commands for him to, my character instead just punched the enemy and took their gun and then fired it at them, even though I never wanted him to do that. And a lot of times, he gets owned in a botched attempt at that process whilst they gun him down after he fails to take their weapon. In cases where he does take & fire their weapon even when I didn't want him to do so, the noise of their loud weapons attracts all the other guards who come and own me en masse.

- Likewise, countless times my character took his sniper rifle out of its briefcase and assembled right out in the open in front of everyone, even though I didn't want him to do that. It happens solely due to the clunky & awkward interface. Every time this happens, it also results in all the guards coming to own me en masse.

- The coin item (which in theory, is there in your inventory solely because it is supposed to cause NPCs to become distracted whenever you throw it) seems to be useless 100% of the time, except for the one time at the start of the tutorial mission when the tutorial tells you to use it as part of a scripted event.

- There is no good place to hide the bodies 99% of the time. And during the 1% of the time when there is a container, then the container only takes a single body, which makes it mostly useless anyway. Games like Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun handle this problem much better.

On a similar note, actually, Shadow Tactics also makes their items which the devs designed to be distraction items actually be functional as distraction items - unlike the Blood Money coin item of epic design fail.

Also, Blood Money doesn't let you hide bodies in closets, which is a ridiculous oversight/shortcoming, as putting them in closets would be much preferable to just leaving them on the floor out in the open where they are bound to be found (as the game forces you to do almost always, since most of the time, it offers literally nowhere else to put them).

- Blood Money still has omniscient AI which knows what you are doing based on no logical reason whatsoever, and makes the game vastly unfair against the player. This omniscient AI thing was also a problem in the first two Hitman games which I played on disc when they first came out. An example of this happening to me in Blood Money: I had my character climb to the highest level of the scaffolding in the Opera House mission. He was probably 75-100 feet above the stage, while the three soldiers characters (including one of the mission targets) are on the stage at the same time, singing to each other.

In the very same millisecond when I take my sniper rifle out, the characters on the stage magically know instantly, and then they immediately duck and cower. Nothing about that is the least bit realistic.

- On the other hand, when the AI is not being unfairly omniscient, it's alternatively being brain-dead. I.e. in that same opera mission, the second target stays in his box seat room 100% of the time. Even he sees his best friend and the other actors get sniped on stage, he just stays right there in that box. Likewise, he and his guards had a much better line of sight to my character than the characters on the stage did... at this point I had even come down a couple of levels from where the omniscient AI example that I just cited occurred...yet those much-closer characters were still largely oblivious to my character's presence.

- After my character hit both of the targets - one while he was performing on the opera stage, and the other while he was in his box seat - and I had also blew up the chandelier which caused it to crash into the floor, then I climbed back up to the highest scaffolding level and changed into a maintenance guy's clothes. Once I had done that, I walked all the way back through the entire building, and dozens and dozens of NPCs were still going about their day as if nothing at all had just happened. No one was panicking, no one was running around, no one was eagerly trying to run out of the building, no one was asking each other what just happened.

Their complete lack of reactivity to the deadly events that had just occurred was ludicrously unbelievable.

People rave about things that they connect to or they like immensely. It's not an objective criterion that makes such comments pop up. A game that player X finds astonishing, player Y might find uninteresting. They're just opinions. Just because you don't share the majority's or the minority's opinion doesn't put you or them in the wrong.

For example, save games are a game tactic. Not necessarily there for you to save your progress, as progress is made through familiarity with the map, enemies and tactics. Save games are there for you for trial-and-error on certain parts of the game, which is why you have none on the hardest difficulty.

It's true that the controls are not as fluid as in other games, but this adds to the difficulty of the game, and forces you to become more creative with your approach than simply trying the same method over and over.

There's a way to use coins, but again, you shouldn't rely on them solely to get by.

If you're to compare Shadow Tactics to Hitman, then you're most likely interested in a different kind of game.

As for body hiding, some players make a point out of not taking anyone out but their target. Again, taking bodies out over and over again is quite tedious, and does not make for very creative gameplay.

Most games don't try to be believable. They try to challenge you. Just because a certain game's mechanics don't relate to real-life physics, doesn't mean there's something wrong there. It suggests that you have to adjust your expectations to the game's demands.

Chess or even backgammon are not believable in the way you command your pawns or pips, but you're challenged to think a certain way to beat your opponent.

And lastly, the reasons you gave above, are also the reasons some gamers love the Hitman series.

It's all a matter of personal preference. Some people adore it, some despise it, and some are untouched.

I'd suggest you use your post above to post a review in the game's store page. There are others like you who haven't played the game before and will maybe end up buying it and not liking it for those exact reasons you posted above. It's good to have both sides of the coin.

Edit: spelling

There are some things you mention that make it sound as if your install was glitchy. As I don't remember having any issues with saves, the AI or the sniper briefcase. Personally. I had a great smooth experience playing Hitman: Blood Money. But will try the GOG version of it later on and see if I experience the problems you mentioned.

Oh the rep games we play!

Eh?

ah hitman, the game i never was able to completely play as I totally got tired of the sneaking and went balls out gangsta, resulting in insta death/failure. still had a blast with it

Hitman: Codename 47 is #399 on the all time bestselling list!
Hitman 2: Silent Assassin is #403 on the all time bestselling list!

https://www.gog.com/games?sort=bestselling&page=9

Hitman 3: Contracts is #447 on the all time bestselling list!

https://www.gog.com/games?sort=bestselling&page=10

Hitman 4: Blood Money is #1,127 on the all time bestselling list!

https://www.gog.com/games?sort=bestselling&page=24

Hitman 5: Absolution is #1,210 on the all time bestselling list!

https://www.gog.com/games?sort=bestselling&page=26

A lot of fair criticism there. A big part of people's love for Blood Money is nostalgia. It's a good game but it's not the bee's knees people make it out to be. Honestly, a lot of your issues were fixed for Hitman 2016, a much better game.

blood money > nu-hitman

Nice releases. Completed purchasing the series as available on GOG.
Now if you could somehow release the new Hitman games here. I realise some online portions will not work, but I guess most portions of the game can be made to work offline.

Does anyone know if the first two Hitman games work on Win 10? The GOG page only lists 7 and 8 as supported.

They may work on your specific configuration, but if GOG left out Win10 GOG can't reasonably support them on that OS, so if you'd buy them you wouldn't be entitled to a refund. You could also see what the Hitman forum says.

Thanks dude - much appreciated.

PS: Love your username - my favourite movie of all time is TBL.