The Professional is one of my favorite movies of all-time, so I went into the latest Hitman game with visions of playing as my own Leon, though I'd been spurned of such dreams a few games ago, as Hitman 2: Silent Assassin was less than stellar with its extreme difficulty and annoying "try and try again" mentality. With Hitman: Blood Money, has the franchise finally found the perfect formula, or must I once again put out a hit on it?

THE STORY SO FAR
You play as Agent 47, a baldheaded clone with a UPC label tattooed to the back of his head, whose job is death dealing as a lethal and trained assassin. The game seems to be independent of the rest of the series, so a newcomer can easily jump in and understand the story. Told as a series of flashbacks, Agent 47's missions are retold as two individuals (one reporter and one upper echelon government official) talk about all the times Agent 47 have influenced the world by things he has done, and how if the cloning abilities that created Agent 47 got in the wrong hands, an unstoppable army could be created.

That is the frame story and the main narrative, but a lot more time is spent actually dealing with the missions, though there isn't much story there other than acting them out and making up the story as you go. You'll be given a dossier of the various people you'll have to kill and any other targets you must reach or intercept, and then off you go to the mission where the events unfold in a "choose your own adventure" type story, as you search the layout, trying to find the best way to accomplish your goals.

The narrative is interesting enough, but the draw is most definitely the hits and not the motivation behind them.

GAMEPLAY
As you start out any given mission, things will be initially daunting, and it will probably remain that way for at least one or two runs through the level, so that you can get your proper bearings and not be overwhelmed with the scope of the levels and how open they are. Typically, after starting a level, I never tried to accomplish anything, other than run about, try a few things, and see just how far I could get under certain limitations. Unless you are a veteran of the series (and maybe not even then) it is almost a given that you will never succeed in a mission on your first try through.

The great thing about Hitman, which is also incidentally one of its flaws as well, is the fact that there are so many ways in which you can complete your objectives. For example, in one level, you must kill a man who is being protected by the Witness Protection Program. There are several ways you could complete this level: 1) Kill the FBI agents in the van, take one of their outfits, and walk straight in and kill him, 2) take down the caterer and make your way inside that way, or 3) Go to the local vet, grab some tranquilizers, head to a nearby home, climb the tree house, grab the air rifle, load it up, tranquilize the dog, creep through that door, and then kill the guy that way. Those are only three options, and I'm positive those aren't the only way to complete that mission either.

The problem is that there are so many options, you never know which one will really work the best until you put the plan in action and try it out, which comes down to the "try and try again" mentality that has plagued the series from day one; though I found the mechanic more tolerable this time around, it still often proved a chore more often than not. With its lack of an ability to save during a mission and then continue later at another time (any saves done during a mission are lost after you turn your system off), if you find yourself running low of time, you'll curse when your carefully placed plan doesn't turn out right, and you must instead resort to "run and gun" tactics to hopefully survive long enough so you don't have to play the mission over again for another 20 minutes the next time you start the game up. And while you can go "run and gun" from the get-go, it is infinitely more rewarding to be sneaky, because there are some rather clever kills I'd rather not mention here so as not to spoil the surprise when you stumble upon them.

An interesting gameplay mechanic is the idea that one mission carries over to the other, as you must be careful of who you alert, if any cameras saw you, and if there were any witnesses at the scene of the crime who could accurately pick you out of a lineup, causing you to have a higher alert level when you begin your next mission; this sense of continuation makes it feel like one long, living story rather than a series of unconnected missions. If you do leave a trail of evidence behind, you can easily bribe the right people to lower your warrant level, ensuring that your face will never be recognized the next time you go on a mission.

The controls work well enough, though they do prove a problem time and time again. The camera can become wonky, the inventory system is broken in design, and the way you interact with objects varies from button to button, sometimes forcing you to hold it down and then scroll from a group of choices, though this isn't always apparent right away.

Beyond the trial and error gameplay, the difficulty is also a factor that hampers the game slightly; though your disguise isn't as easily blown as it was in past games, several times I was caught off guard for one reason or another that was never made clear by the game. For instance, during a Mardi Gras mission, why am I not allowed to go into a party with a bird suit on, but yet in that same mission two old guys don't think anything is fishy when I'm climbing up crates and shimming along ledges, all so that I can wire a piano to crush someone?

GRAPHICS
Though the character models are still nothing to rave about, the environments are nice and varied, as you'll never see the same thing more than once. A rehab clinic begets a normal suburbia, a suburbia begets a Mardi Gras celebration, a Mardi Gras celebration begets a porn lover ski lodge during a Christmas party, etc. The environments are reflected well with the graphics, with special note going to the Mardi Gras level in particular; I don't know how they managed to fill the screen with so many walking NPCs, but it was a cool technology trick, and made the level more realistic because of it.

SOUND
The music…wow! Completely orchestrated, Hitman: Blood Money features one of the best game soundtracks I've heard in quite some time. The opening number alone – the one that cues when you start the game and load the title screen – is so hauntingly beautiful I could just sit there and listen to it play out over and over…and I have. The voicework is okay (especially the cutscenes), but it suffers slightly when you get into the actual missions. The sound effects, meanwhile, get the job done, as events happening sound just like you'd expect them to in a real world situation.

IN CONCLUSION
Though I'm still sitting here wishing I could live out The Professional movie, I guess I'll have to wait and hope for a possible sequel to ever get that feel and nostalgia back. Hitman: Blood Money is a good game when things are working out well, but when you run into a setback (like playing a mission over and over because you were too slow or because you didn't have enough time to finish it in one sitting) the fun instantly picks up its ball and heads for home; it doesn't want to play anymore. When it works though, it can be quite the addictive puzzle/adventure game, as you search about your mind to find that killer id, and think for perhaps (hopefully!!!) the first time, "Hmmm…now how would I kill this person?"

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