Tom's Comments: It's about time someone
brought Thief to the modern age. The title character has
a shaved head with a bar code across the back of it. He's
a cold-blooded assassin recruited from some sort of asylum,
but his voicework makes him sound more like a tired Midwestern
shoe salesman at the end of his shift. Hitman does look
great with a sharp distinctive style, but I'm worried that
some questionable design decisions might make it more frustrating
than fun. After playing the first five missions, my intial
enthusiasm has cooled.
Very much like Thief, the game is divided
into self-contained missions. You buy equipment (limited
by the money you've made on previous missions) and set out
to accomplish a handful of objectives. It looks like later
missions have fairly elaborate compound objectives -- get
the combination to the safe, sell the jade figurine, and
then kill the foozle, for instance.
But here's the clincher that could ruin the
game: Hitman has no ingame saves. This works fine for short
focused missions (you never hear people complain that Rainbow
Six/Rogue Spear have no ingame saves), but it's going to
be painfully tedious having to replay the slow early bits
of the longer missions. It does seems that some missions
have a few "resurrections" available to simply reset you
to the starting point without erasing any of your progress.
Another concern is the amount of variation
when you replay a level. So far it looks like there is none.
Objectives enter the target area at the same time and place
as the last time you played. You'll end up timing your actions
by memorizing what happens: okay, here's where the old man
crosses the street, now the policeman walks down the alley,
and in ten seconds, my target will walk through that door
with two guards behind him. The game would have more replay
value and wouldn't feel quite so much like a puzzle if there
were some degree of randomness in the world.
Finally, it looks like the missions are a
bit too structured for my taste. Thief encouraged you to
play around and try different approaches. Hitman seems to
shunt you through a pre-set sequence of actions. I'm currently
on a very long mission but my efforts at trying different
things haven't been rewarded. It seems like a straight A,
then B, then C approach is called for. Furthermore, without
an ingame save, I'm a bit reluctant to try new things.
Hitman does have a good-looking graphics engine,
although the mouse slides a little awkwardly, with that
strange cursor-on-a-ballbearing feel that makes it hard
for me to enjoy LithTech games. The third person perspective
makes leaning unnecessary and precise aiming occasionally
problematic. But the game's worlds are bright and well drawn.
So far I've only seen a Korean city, but one level has a
beautiful outdoor garden with a waterfall. I'm glad to see
Hitman doesn't resort to the dark vanilla Blade Runner style
of games like Deus Ex. I've had my fill of dystopia by night,
thank you very much.
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Publisher: Eidos
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Developer: Io Interactive
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Genre: Third person sneaker
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Requirements: P300, 64MB RAM, 3D accelerator
card
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Install options: 400MB, requires CD in drive
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Expected street date: Now
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to Early Hours
November 26, 2000
