Recently completed this game I've played better fps games, but it's certainly ok. This game has annoying hit-scan enemies, frustrating enemy placement, clunky movement & bad audio. There are many annoying quirks. You're an angel that even gets a flying jump power, but your fall damage is pathetically severe. Switching powers is clunky in the heat of battle. Much of the story and dialogue is also quite simplistic and ridiculous with often laughable voice acting, and to top the negativity off there is a cursor bug thing that makes the game minimize and maximize when accessing the menu and loading between levels (running on windows 10 at least) But the gist of the game is pretty interesting I suppose. Having a angel/demon flavor in a shooter is certainly fresh and having these many angelic powers are quite fun. You unlock a good amount of options to play with. It's a game that deserved a sequel to improve on the good elements it has. one thing I'd tell buyers of this is that if you play on a modern resolution (1600x900 and up), run the Direct 3D launcher of the game. The default launcher on GOG galaxy opens a version that is sort of 'resolution locked' on a lower resolution. Yelp review conclusion: average
I am pleasantly surprised. I thought this first game would be one I just play to understand the Witcher storyline, and expected it to be not that fun in terms of gameplay. I was wrong. Let's get the bad things out of the way first. I don't like this engine. I believe it is the Neverwinter Nights engine, because of (probably) its ease of use to program in, but your movement feels lightweight and floaty like an mmo. Third person games should have some weight and physicality behind the movement imo. The combat is weird and clunky too, timing your clicks correctly to preform the next combat sequence. But this actually wasn't as annoying as it first looked. The combat is very much varied enough even if the actual 'striking' part is simplistic and a bit awkward. The depth comes from the character skill upgrades, your different fighting stances, your magic use and then the potions you consume to buff yourself depending on the enemies you're fighting. It kept me entertained and focused enough, but didn't suck me into the action. The best parts about this game are its setting and story. And quest design too. This is a game that gets better the further you get into the story. The first chapter is the worst part of the game, but it gets progressively better with a very good 3rd, 4rth chapter. The story and world just has a certain believability that gets brought in a good way. The customs of the worlds denizens, the social & ethnic dynamics and conflicts, the way the magical fantasy elements are integrated in the world and a pretty believable medieval political landscape. This excelent world is then further enhanced by the player interaction. The dialogue is generally good, often even clever and funny. The personality of Geralt translates itself in a good way to player choice and interacting with the world. He's a stoic, badass, alpha male womanizer but is also deeply moral, refective, sometimes doubtful and highly critical to what the people of this world signal to him.
So this is the first Hitman, and therefore the oldest and clunkiest. I think people are right to say this is the worst one out of the first 4 games, BUT it's still a 4 out of five stars for me and I really reckommend playing this sitle. There are some structural diffrences between this game and it's sequels, the biggest one for me is that this game doesn't have a fleshed out end of mission rating system. You just need to complete the missions, guns blazing or silently doesn't matter, the only penalties you get is for killing civilians. There is a suprising upside and a glaring downside to this design approach. The upside is that you won't be OCD'd into somekind of perfectionism you can sometimes have if the game has a rating system (restarting at any breakout of violence etc..). Just getting to the end of the level is your ony goal. Coming from the other Hitmans this might look like a negative, but it's suprisingly liberating and it's fun for atleast 1 hitman game to have this approach. I also reckommend playing this game on one of the hardest difficulties so that playing stealthily becomes more of a necessity then an optional playstyle. The negative is that this game's level design isn't as 'open' as the later titles are in the sense that there aren't a multitude of designed ways to complete your objectives/assassinate your targets. You are lucky if there is more than one. The designers clearly have much more of an intended 'path' for you to take and this is made worse by some heavily scripted things happening that force you to certain actions to tell a more 'cinematic' story. This gets in the way of player freedom and is forced. So that's a negative. The levels are pretty varied. There are few locales you go to broken up in different levels resulting in the final level where you assassinate the target you came for. The quality of the levels are a mixed bag, some good some less good, but if this game has one thing going for it it's the mood the soundtrack adds to the already atmospheric levels. This was, arguably, Jesper Kyd's first soundtrack for a somewhat bigger title and the soundtrack is superb. It adds a lot of class. All by all an interesting trip into the roots of Hitman. I reckommend it and even greatly reckommend it to Hitman fans.
