At first glance, it's not a bad game. The music is great (well, John Williams), the cutscenes look amazing for the time, and I appreciate the variety between levels. But the gameplay... oh boy. The controls are absolutely GARBAGE. You cannot remap them, just choose from a few very bad control schemes. You can use the mouse, but it's janky as fuck, and there is no mouse look either, so you better off just using the keyboard. But with that the controls still feel slippery and unprecise. While on foot, looking up and down is a chore too. In the spaceship parts you cannot see anything in 1st person mode, because your fov is like zero, and you have no idea where you are going, so you have to use the 3rd person view, but there is no crosshair in that view... Even if you have, the projectiles don't go where the crosshair is. The levels are hit and miss (hah) too. There are some cool ones, but some of them are complete abominations. For example the Beggar's Canyon, where you are on a bike. You have to destroy the other bikes before they reach Luke. How do you do that? Use your blaster? No, you have to collide with them enough. You have no indication whether they take damage or not, you just bounce all over the place, like a fucking pinball. This is without a doubt one of the worst stages I've ever played. Or I can mention the last level, where you are constantly bombarded from all sides, and you can do absolutely jack SHIT to avoid the projectiles, because you only control the turret. Some stages take like 5 minutes to complete, others are much longer. There is no save feature - there is a life system, which I am not fond of. If you're out of lives, it's game over. So much fun when one of the bullshit bosses (like the IG-88) kill you, and you have no choice but to restart the whole level. GoG made a good job with the game though - you can play on modern systems with 60 fps and widescreen resolutions. The question is, would you want to?
The Hitman series are one of the fundamental games in the stealth genre, and we can witness the birth of the iconic Agent 47 in this game. But as for the gameplay, it aged horribly. I have one major complaint with this game - the lack of mid-mission saves. Some says it makes the game more challenging, but I say it makes it a frustrating, trial-and-error ordeal. I know this is IO Interactive's first game, but saves were invented already back in 2000. How about limited number of saves? Like 2 per mission? Would that be good? No, one single mistake, and you have to start the whole mission from the beginning. Oh, and there is no "restart mission" feature. You fuck up, and you have to quit to the main menu, then load the mission from the mission selection every single time. The stealth rules aren't clear - you don't know whether someone will hear you or see you. You'll never know the potenital dangers, unless you played the crap out of that level. This doesn't make the game fun, this makes it frustrating - it just artifically prolongs the game time. And most of the time it isn't even your fault, the AI is very inconsistent- sometimes they see through your disguise for no apparent reason, sometimes they don't get suspicious even if I stand next to a pile of corpses, and I am the only one left in the room. Half the levels are not even promote stealth gameplay, but force me into shootouts with overwhelming number of enemies, like in the Columbian levels, which all suck big time. The UI and controls are clunky too. To say something positive, the music is great, and it creates a nice, dark atmosphere. And to be honest, when I FINALLY finish a level, it's immensely satisfying. But it only make me wanna skip the whole "gameplay" part, and see what happens next. Every other entry in the series is far superior, so I only recommend this game if you have the nerve and patience to endure the crap that the game throws at you. Otherwise, start with Silent Assassin.
