Hitman: Blood Money - Reprisal - Review

I was working in videogame retail when Hitman 2: Silent Assassin released and as I was a Nintendo fan, I picked it up on GameCube. I adored the game and was hyped to hear that Hitman: Contracts was on the way, but it didn’t come to GameCube, in fact ignoring those Cloud releases, which don’t work in Australia, Silent Assassin was the only entry in the series to land on a Nintendo platform. That has been changed with the release of Hitman: Blood Money – Reprisal, but is this a great addition or one that has arrived a little too late?

The story of Blood Money is a good one, it has lots of twists and turns, people being tricky and of course, Agent 47 just not giving a damn throughout most of it. The only real issue coming into the game now is that unless you played the proceeding three games recently, there is going to be a story thread that won’t make a whole lot of sense to you. The game is mostly told via recounts, with a journalist by the name of Rick Henderson meeting with the former FBI Director, learning about a series of assassinations that took place around the world. From there we begin to learn about these missions, as we play them, it is a great way to experience what might normally be a series of disconnected events. The later half of the story does swing into more of a focused tale and even though the game is 18 years old, I won’t spoil how it ends. The only major issue as, I said before, that there are proceeding story elements that you won’t get from just playing this release alone. I would have loved to have seen a history of the other games included, just to round out events so that things here made more sense. It isn’t that you need to have played the other games, this one does stand alone as far as its own story goes, there are just elements from the others that would provide more context here.

I am sure that at some point, someone asked why Blood Money was given the port treatment and not the first game, that is due to the overall improvements to the gameplay. Bloody Money was the first that let you take down targets via staged accidents, improvise weapons and even have Agent 47 climb over things. While I am sure the others would have been greatly enhanced by the folks at Feral Interactive, there is only so much that you can do before you start changing fundamental aspects of a game, so Blood Money works from that point of view. This is also not the first time that Blood Money has been given the port treatment, being brought to both the Xbox 360 and Xbox One generations, with numerous upgrades each time. While those upgrades were mostly cosmetic, there were some fixes thrown in, making this game one of the most polished of the original series.

As far as the gameplay is concerned here, it players almost flawlessly. From sniping targets in the opening mission to sneaking through the restricted wing of a rehab facility, things just work when you want them to. The core of the game is the same as all the others, even the recent series reboot, you need to find a way to take down your target or targets. While not ideal, you can literally run up and shoot them in the head, but just be prepared to run if you do. If you want the best rating, then taking out your target, with no one the wiser about it, that is the way to go. The game provides a whole host of options for you, there are the previously mentioned guns, but you can also poison a sausage or rig a gas line to explode. You get a series of intel burst at the start, but then finding out the rest is up to you in the game, which is where the challenge comes in.

For the most part the game played out exactly as I expected it too, lurking in the background and taking down targets as I could. There were a few additions to the game that made things a bit easier, with the minimap being one of them, as it now lives on the screen. Originally the games map was only available via an on-screen overlay, and that is still here, but now you get a small version of it on the display at all times. The game also lets you know when you are being considered strange, which was very helpful when I was trying to be sneaky. A very welcome addition to the game was the Instinct mode, which actually made its appearance in Absolution, the game that came after this one. Basically, at any time you can hold down a button and the game highlights elements that you can interact with, folks that are important and so on. The game does also include motion control and while it works, I am so used to playing Hitman without it, that I didn’t use it for long.

For all the good that the game does, there are a few issues that I encountered within it. I did have one singular instance where the prompts on the screen went weird, almost as if the button images became QR codes. The game quickly fixed it, but it was very noticeable whilst it was happening. The other issue I had was that some of the enemies would occasionally stop in place for no reason and only upon leaving the room would they start up again. They were not watching me, nor was a I being suspicious, but they were just stopping. It didn’t happen a lot, but it was weird enough that I remembered it. Perhaps the most concerning issue were the flickering and then vanishing people, on one level a bunch of people would be walking around and then just flicker, eventually disappearing. This is not to say they were just invisible, but rather they were not present in the game anymore, it was an odd thing to say the least.

On the games presentation there are good and not so good elements to address. First the not so good, the game looks great, but you can tell its an older game with the character models, this is nothing against Feral Interactive, just a note on the overall age of the game. Where things fell apart visually was with the backgrounds of the world, as they would often flicker quite a bit. Of course, when I was inside locations, they were out of sight, but as there are just as many exterior locations, it is something you will see a bit. The other weird thing is just down to the overall quality of the pre-rendered cutscenes, which again are a product of their time. While those are the not so good, there is still plenty to enjoy here, the locations are as detailed as I remember, though some of the surfaces shine a little better than before. One particular map has a lot of people on it and while yes, they are clones of a small selection of folks, it is still great to see the Switch display all that in detail as it was something I was concerned about. The game is also quite stable, running at a locked 30fps, even when I screwed up and had heaps of guards descend upon me.

The audio is just as nice as the frame rate, the dialogue in cutscenes is nice and punchy and the music helps set the stage nicely. In game there is a good blend of main lines and background vocals to make each location feel like its full of people, even when its just a handful of folks. I did notice in one stage, whilst waiting for a waiter to return that some of the lines repeated a lot, but it was only that time, so not a huge deal. Across the board though, the game audio is great and sounds quite nice when playing on the Switch’s internal speakers.

Hitman: Blood Money – Reprisal is a great release of one of the best games in the series. The missions can be very challenging, even on the normal difficulty and getting that Silent Assassin ranking will be a real test for most players. The game looks and sounds great in almost every level, but a few visual issues do mar the experience from time to time. While the story is great, I would have loved to have seen a recap of events thus far, mostly because there are some beats that feel incomplete without context, but that would only be a plus to a great story. Feral Interactive may not bring out dozens of games on the Switch, but with each release they prove why they are one of the best studios around for porting games to the platform. Hitman: Blood Money was a cult classic before and now it’s a verified icon as Reprisal is magnificent from start to finish.

The Score

9.0

Review code provided by Feral Interactive

The Pros

The gameplay is as fun as ever and the enhancements brought to this release make it more approachable

The story is one of the best from the original and has enough twists that new players will be surprised…

The Cons

… I do wish though that there was a recap of events thus far, if only to provide context to some beats

A few visual issue do pop up from time to time, along with a few repeating voice lines, marring an otherwise delightful package