Originally published November 2016

Hitman is a storied video game franchise that has gotten a lot of attention, both positive and negative, in the past few years. It started out with something like a cult following of dedicated fans with very little hope of ever reaching the popularity and recognition of big triple-A titles. A couple of terrible movies based on the series were made as well, which managed to bring more attention to the series, for better or worse. Square-Enix, known for their Final Fantasies and poor judgment made the very smart business decision to eventually acquire the parent development studios, Eidos, which made the Hitman games. Since that acquisition, Square-Enix has released two full-length Hitman games and a few spin-offs. While the road to releasing these two games has been rocky with its fair share of naysayers, both had done relatively well.

I've always paid some attention to the franchise and the various changes it's gone through. However, until recently, I had never actually played any of the games. Even though I'm a fan of stealth games, as I mentioned in my Mark of the Ninja review, Hitman was usually out of my reach or under my radar for one reason or another. The first game came out for PCs back when I didn't have a computer of my own to play it on. When the sequels were released for PS2 and other systems, I wasn't playing games nearly as much as I do now and simply didn't have the desire or time to pick them up. Finally, I got around to picking up a collection on a Steam sale a year back, which has collected digital dust since then.

Enough was enough though. It was time to finally give the games a try. After hearing so much about how they were great games for allowing players to experiment in their approaches to different situations, providing a Dark Souls gameplay experience to stealth assassinations, I wanted to see it all for myself from start to finish and review them if I could. I've found, however, that time has not been kind to the Hitman series. In fact, this franchise may be so deeply rooted in the past, the mechanics of the early titles don't function well enough to be fun. Without the nostalgia and extra knowledge fans of the series have, it's really tough to get into them.

Disclaimer: Rather than playing through to completion (because I just don't have the time and patience), I've played a few missions in each of these games to give myself enough of an overall (initial) impression. If the games suddenly get better at the end, I don't know because I never got to the end. What I do know is how long I was willing to tolerate the archaic game design before giving up (not very long).

Hitman: Codename 47

This game is little more than a tech demo, in all honesty. Back around the time this game was released, the graphical capabilities and physical interaction in video games that were featured in Hitman: Codename 47 might have been acceptable or even exciting to some people. Maybe the way the camera did the weird shaky-cam effect when you're talking to NPCs was "cinematic" for its day and made the game more respectable to people. Perhaps the fact that you could die really quickly in a third-person shooter that sold itself as a stealth game was thrilling. Having played it recently for the first time, however, and without any rose-tinted nostalgia glasses to cloud my judgment, a lot of this stuff is annoying or just seems like poor design.

If you have never played the Hitman games before and you have been playing games that came out after 2005, I would NOT recommend starting here for a multitude of reasons. To name just a few:

• The controls are extremely stiff.

• The actual concept of being able to assassinate your targets in creative ways is barely present in this game if it's even possible to pull it off. There's really only 1 way of completing your mission, and good luck even doing that and making it out alive.

• Extremely repetitive and boring for a stealth action game.

• The maps for each level are slight variations of the previous locations. It uses different road layouts, but the same textures and skins for buildings. I think the contact was telling me that I was traveling the world for these assassinations, but it really felt like I had just walked down the block in this low-res purgatory.

Apparently, there's supposed to be a story here about Agent 47's origins and who he's killing, according to Wikipedia. However, I didn't gather any story for the time I spent with it. I managed to make my way through about 6 missions before I finally felt I had seen enough of what the game had to offer. One thing I liked about it in comparison to the other Hitman games was how it had some really short missions to break up the lengthier ones that required a great deal of waiting and timing.

Another noteworthy mechanic was how the "agency" played into the missions themselves. Before each mission started, you had your list of objects, but you also had the agency resources available. Using your own funds that were perpetuated by successful missions, you could purchase guns, ammo, and upgrades. Showing up to the level loaded up with weapons was often a fruitless endeavor, however. This was due mainly to the fact that you're not really supposed to go around shooting everyone. If you do that, then your notoriety as a hitman goes up and the company will pay you less for the mission, or you might fail it outright. The use of your own funds to purchase your equipment to complete a mission, which is then reimbursed based on how well you did the mission, is a good idea, in theory. In practice, especially in a game as clunky as this one, it falls rather short. Still, they would continue to tweak and use this mechanic throughout the series and it would become less cumbersome as the games went on.

You could see some potential hidden under the surface of this 1990s tech demo with a pricetag. Some potential. There are moments where the game asks you to do more than simply shoot the guy, which is something few other games were doing at the time. However, I would argue that Hitman: Codename 47 is little more than a third-person shooter with stiff controls, the occasional opportunity to change your clothes, and strict mission objectives that prevent you from just being able to play the game your way. Unless you played this game to completion back when it came out and you hold nostalgia for it, or you just have the limitless patience necessary to try it today, stay away.

Do you agree or disagree? Is the Hitman series a special favorite for you? Tell me what you think in the comments here or on Facebook.

Fan of death metal? Check out my band on Bandcamp and Soundcloud If you like what you hear and want to hear more, head to HoundsofInnsmouth.com for more info!