Hitman:Blood Money

Hitman: Blood Money is a 3rd person action/adventure game released by Eidos in 2006. The game is a continuation of the popular Hitman franchise in which the player takes control of the mysterious assassin, Agent 47.


PLOT

The majority of the game takes place as flashback sequences that occur through the meeting between a journalist and a former FBI Director, “Jack” Alexander Leland Cayne. The two discuss a number of contract kills over the past two years (2004-2005) and Agent 47's involvement in them. The reporter, Rick Henderson, arranged to interview Cayne in regards to a recent attack on the White House. It quickly becomes clear that Cayne's real intent is to discuss his views on human cloning and his obsession with capturing the genetically engineered super assassin. Cayne lies about many of the details that he gives Rick Henderson such as stating that 47 stole cloning data from Ort-Meyer to sell to the highest bidder.

The story of 47 is gradually revealed as the player completes the various contracts they receive. The main story really begins when Diana informs 47 that they are the only two left in the agency. It is implied that the others have been systematically wiped out by Mark Purayah II and Mark Parchezzi III - two of The Franchise's best assassins.


Diana finally decides to close down the agency but not before she gives 47 one final contract. This is the mission "A Dance with the Devil", where 47 must infiltrate a party at the CIA headquarters and take out the assassins who are trying to kill him. Once this is complete he and Diana split the funds and go their separate ways. 


After what seems to be 47's final contract he is approached by an old CIA acquaintance named Smith (who 47 has previously rescued from a rehabilitation clinic in the mission "Flatline"). He requests that 47 take on a mission to kill the men who are trying to assassinate the President of the United States. These men are Vice President Daniel Morris and Mark Parchezzi III, who are both working for Alpha Xerox. This is a political organization which owns "The Franchise" and wish to monopolize the cloning facility that created 47. They want the President taken out before the elections so that he is definitely not elected and so he cannot forward his pro-cloning policy. This would prevent Alpha Xerox from attaining the monopoly on cloning. 

During this mission 47 successfully kills Morris and also finally takes down Parchezzi in a shootout on the roof of the White House. After this mission a newspaper article is shown which states that the authorities believe Parchezzi to be Morris' assassin. As he is now being hunted by both enemy operatives and the police 47 retreats to his hideout. Here he is approached by Diana without warning which instantly arouses his suspicion as they rarely meet face to face. She proposes a plan which should secure both of them safety from "The Franchise". As 47 is considering the idea and reading the briefing he expresses his doubts about its success. However, before he can say any more Diana injects him with what seems to be a poison. 47's body is quickly surrounded by SWAT members, and Diana, announcing that bringing down 47 was "surprisingly pleasant" is inducted into "The Franchise" by Cayne, it's founder. 


After this event the plot suddenly returns to present day, with Cayne and Rick Henderson, where 47's body is about to be cremated so that rival cloning companies cannot take a sample of his bone marrow and no more non-defective clones can ever be made. Diana approaches 47's body and places his signature Silverballer pistols on his chest during his funeral and kisses him after applying lipstick. It then becomes clear that the "poison" that Diana used on 47 was actually a fake death serum which is used earlier in the game and that her lipstick contained the antidote. This shows that this was Diana's true plan to save them both and she did not betray 47. The game can then end in one of two ways. As the player watches 47 lying on a pedestal before he is cremated a faint heartbeat can be heard. If the player does not react in any way then 47 will be lowered into the crematorium and will perish. However, if the player keeps spinning both of the analog sticks then 47 will come back to life and the player will have to control him as he takes out all of the witnesses to his revival. Many of the witnesses try to escape but it becomes apparent that Diana has locked the gates of the exit and no one survives except 47 (and Diana, who had left earlier). 




 


The game ends with a cut-scene in which Diana states that she has made the Agency operational again using the funds of "The Franchise". She is on the phone with someone who she refers to as "Your Majesty". Diana then says to this mysterious person that the Agency has lost track of 47. The game finally ends with 47 in a brothel having a conversation with a traditionally dressed Chinese man on what can only be assumed is another job. 




Hitman: Blood Money, the fourth installment of Eidos' successful murder-for-hire series, slickly builds upon the franchise with more of its gripping signature stealth-action gameplay. All 13 of the game's missions are well crafted and challenging, but after four iterations of this series, I felt a need for a new challenge. So I created my own task, one particularly appropriate for a game that asks you to become cold-blooded murderer Agent 47: Break all 10 of the Commandments. If I'm going to sin, I might as well go all-out.

There are approximately a dozen missions in all and most of them takes place somewhere around the United States such as an Egyptian-themed casino in Las Vegas, a rehab clinic in Northern California and also the Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans. As 47 complete all these missions, he discovers a mysterious agency that is threatening him and his employer and slowly learn and reveal their motives, all this leading up to a climatic and unexpected conclusion.

Like in previous games, Hitman offers open-ended stealth gameplay where in all the missions, you are required to exercise caution in eliminating the target and escape undetected. All this requires careful planning and stealth but if you do make a slip-up, you can always run and gun away eliminating everyone in your path. This will of course considerably affect the money and rank that will be given to 47 at the end of each mission. Of course, if you are observant and careful, a single round of bullets is not even required for the missions.

The game offers two camera angles that is the default behind the back angle and the first person perspective. It also offers a wide array of realistically modeled real-world weapons of pistols, rifles and also submachine guns. However, blood is not necessarily needed to be on 
Agent 47's hands as there are alternative methods to eliminate the targets. Poisons, explosives, knives and other accessories are at the disposal of 47 to eliminate the targeted enemy most of the time. You can even arrange for an accident to happen on your targeted enemy to avoid killing the target directly. This can be tricky most of the time but if you accomplish it and complete the mission successfully, it will also give you a higher ranking and more money for these types of cleaner kills. 
Planning an attack in the missions is pretty straight-forward like in the previous installments of the series as there is a GPS real-time map that lets you locate all the other characters including your targeted enemy. Tougher difficulties show fewer characters, make enemies more lethal and also limit the amount of games saves during each mission. Music in Blood Money is rather impressive with a combination of choral tracks and a few other soundtracks that further add to the ambience in the game. Voice acting and sound effects are generally reasonable as a whole. Unfortunately, artificial intelligence in Blood Money is not perfect under close examination but it still does a believable job generally. If you decide to shoot your way thorough the mission, you will find that the enemies would only stand a chance to beat you only in sheer numbers. However, artificial intelligence in the game is not all that poor as the characters can patrol the place, chat among each other or even go for a break to smoke or to go the bathroom.
At normal difficulty setting and above, there is also a notoriety system that is gained by leaving a trail of corpses for the other guards to find out. The higher the notoriety system is achieved, the easier for enemies to recognize Agent 47 in the next mission. However, for a fee before the next mission, you can bring back the notoriety down to nothing which makes this an irrelevant aspect of the game.

At the end of each mission, there is also a sleek feature that tells you the headlines about what happened in detail in a dynamically generated newspaper but this gets predictable after a while as the game progresses. Other trivial issues of the game are the changing of clothes by 47 to disguise himself throughout the mission. Like the previous installments, 47 changing the clothes seem to look as abnormally as ever as he magically wears the slain enemies clothes while the old one is neatly folded nearby. The characters in most of the missions also look repetitive especially in the mission of the Mardi Gras celebration. However, all these issues are just insignificant ones that could go unnoticed easily during the missions.


Every level is constructed to let you off your prey in any number of ways, so the hard part is deciding how to make your kills. I staged unhappy accidents like sabotaging a backyard grill to incinerate a target. I sniped the bottom of a glass-bottomed hot tub at that smutmeister's mountain retreat so that everyone in it fell to a spectacularly messy end. I put live ammo in an actor's prop pistol. 


Sometimes I do think if Agent47 is descendent if Altair or Ezio. But the fact that 47 is clone rules that out. Come to think about  it he could be cloned using their genes. Nice family. :)

Overall the game has hardly any negatives though the folded clothes gets on my nerves (were does he find time to fold it ??!?). Keep walking and plan the assassinations to make it look like an accidents rules out the gunning and shredding people. Takes time but the gameplay is awesome and worth. So I'd recommend it if you got patience and the nerves to be an assassins.