Hitman: Codename 47

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.

I picked this game up on sale for $1 and got about 4 hours of gameplay before the frustration set in. As others have stated, its the first in the Hitman series and it's just not fully baked yet. A lot of great ideas that are executed poorly in this first attempt. Fortunately, the sequels do a much better job of delivering on those ideas but my advice to skip this one entirely.

I can't believe nobody made a hack for this game so it can save during a mission. The games is awesome and especially for the time it was released. I remember it blew me away, because it gives you a lot of freedom to do things in several ways and the stealth elements are a lot more than just 'avoid being seen'. Being able to switch outfits with your victims and taking their places was and still is a thrill. The first missions are quite short and it's great fun to play them without any sort of save feature, it brings a lot of tension and suspense. The thing is, after about five levels, missions become really long and unplayable without saving. I'd say get this game if you find it on a discount. But I'd rather start with any other of the 'good' Hitman games (pre reboot: Silent Assassin, Contracts or Blood Money).

I never understood the allure of this game. I found it rather clunky, and I was not drawn into the story/motivations for the character. Not my cup of tea, even though I generally like this kind of game.

If you've played later entries in this franchise but not yet this it definitely will take some adjusting as there were a number of things they hadn't quite ironed out yet. With that said there is a lot to love here and you can very clearly see the early beginnings of some of the stuff they mastered later especially by Blood Money. One thing to keep in mind is that there are levels in this game that you simply can't complete remaining stealthy and ghosting your way through the entire time and some frustration is experienced just by trying to figure out which ones. It's one of those that is more enjoyable on replay once you know what is expected of you in the various levels. It doesn't quite have the openness to you discovering your own solutions as later entries do and I wish that they had been more honest with themselves about that because there are multiple times in this where you'll come across something and it'll look like an alternative solution but it's unworkable. This does fair pretty well with the gradual drip feed of the backstory in a series that sometimes struggles to provide a compelling plot. A little too much of the time the game is basically you figuring out what you're meant to do and then just do it. This is also one of those early IO Interactive titles where for some reason they were married to this thing of weapon recoil that I can imagine is accurate to real life but is frustrating in games where even a single missed shot can mean failure and having to do a bunch of stuff over again. I really wish they had opted for the kind of focus aim that we saw not that many years after this came out but even if you're standing still taking your time to aim you might miss. The weapon selection is quite good and I cannot hate a game where if you feel confident that you only need one bullet and one specific gun it 100% allows you to buy exactly that and only that and save money for later. It just makes you feel like a complete badass.