by Have you ever wanted to be a bald, soulless, featureless shell of a hit-man? Me neither. But hey–with Hitman: Codename 47, you can reap the exciting benefits of such a life with none of the consequence!
Hitman: Codename 47 is the first in its long legacy of 8 games to date. Loading it up, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect as I’ve never even seen a second of footage from any of the 8 games (although I remember seeing a lot of promotional cardboard cutouts in Gamestop when I was a kid). H:C47, in spite of being a bit dated did not fail to impress me on a few fronts… just don’t look too closely at the graphics.
From what I can tell, you’re some sort of “produced” hitman, complete with nondescript features and a barcode on the back of your head. The tutorial is your last training mission, whereupon its end you must kill a guard, take his clothes and escape your prison under the watchful gaze of a mysterious man in front of a green-lit computer. I feel a bit stupid, but after trying the tutorial 3 times and failing, I had to look up how to do that last bit about taking the guard’s clothes which leads to my greatest complaint against the game; initially, nothing is intuitive. Take for instance environmental object interaction. In order to interact with a button that can do multiple things, you must first left-click on it, roll the mouse wheel up or down, choose which option you want, left-click again to exit the selection menu, walk up close enough to the object to interact with it, then push the interact key. Let me tell you right there, that for most games that would be enough for me to dismiss it on the grounds of unnecessary and confusing gameplay mechanics. Much can be forgiven though, once you get out of the tutorial.
The gameplay itself is a tried but somewhat underused pattern that hearkens back to 90’s gaming–choose your loadout. Each level begins with a mission dossier, something that pushes the plot forward a little bit and lets you know who and where your next target is. Then, from the funds you have available (which rollover from previous missions if you managed to save a few [thousand] bucks) you get to choose which weapons and gadgets you want from the list of things the agency can help you smuggle in. This is absolutely beautiful from an immersion and gameplay standpoint. First, it explains why you can’t tote in all the weapons you’ve cached up from your previous exploits and second, it lets each level become tailor-made while allowing a large amount of player freedom. Do you want to equip yourself to run in guns blazing? Do you want to take fewer bullets and try for accuracy to save on cash? Do you take a handgun with you as a backup to the sniper rifle in case things go south, or do you trust your in your skill and go sniper rifle only?
The levels themselves follow the same suit. While they are a bit small, you’re allowed to carry out the mission in any way and from any angle that you can find. Do you go for a clean shot from atop a building (if you can find one)? Do you take to the ground and silently kill off the guards one-by-one with your piano wire? The mission only gives you the objective, but lets you figure out how to accomplish them. No baby-hand-holding, no checkpoints, no mission markers. The way it should be.
H:C47 is not a perfect game at all. The controls are clunky, aspects of the game are not intuitive and its graphics haven’t aged all that well. None of that matters though, because at the heart of the game is something great–good enough to make it into Tier 2 in spite of its flaws. If you like creative problem solving and that sweet satisfaction of doing a clean run at a mission (avoiding the “cleaners” fees from being deducted from your reward) then this one’s for you.
