couldn't resist looks like a nice way for a giveaway so check your pm
and
Have Fun

Hi Herr Schnuff!

Hi everyone

where's the hippo logo?

EDIT: OH! It's a hippo with wings!

Thanks. Suspicion would be... level of alertness? Or other people's tendency to recognise you? How do you mean jumpy? Sorry for the bother, I just don't really know what the system is like.

Also, what about other things: level design, variety, mission flexibility, even the length of the game?
Et tu, Brute? Everyone is doing licurg's sinister bidding :P

Suspicion is implemented here as how much before people (guards or other civilians) recognize your disguise and basically cause mayhem by panicking (civilians) or attacking you (for hostiles). In Codename 47, if you wore a disguise, you were perfect. If you didn't kill anybody outright, nobody can see through your disguise. In Silent Assassin going forward, they made it such that your disguise isn't perfect. If you wore a guard's suit and started acting strange, you could raise suspicion that would eventually trigger alarms. This in particular is fine tuned with each and every game so if you played Blood Money and moved backwards, you may feel that the suspicion level goes up way too quickly.

Don't feel sorry. I'm more than happy to talk about it. :D

This new avatar of yours is the fanciest hippo avatar I've seen yet :]

I wish humble or groupees would do a brand name razorbalde bundle - this beard is getting all grizzly adams! O_o

Thanks. What about the rest of the stuff? Level design, variety, replayability, game length (number/size of missions). Anything to be wary of, or is Blood Money a strict improvement on the first two? And do you have any opinion on Contracts and how it compares to it?

Okay... I sort of forgot about all of that. Hitman... pre-Absolution prides itself on level design. There are some really big sandbox missions in the old games that really make the games replayable after you're done. Plot is really not that essential in these games. I don't quite remember how long the games are, but the general size of the games are like more than 10 missions a game, perhaps even closer to 15 to 20.

Contracts is an odd placement in the Hitman series. It's clearly a "by the way" kind of entry as it's made by IOI while Blood Money development was happening. It's remixes of the first game and a few new ones, but I really see it as some expansion pack to Silent Assassin. If you haven't played Codename 47 and do not like it's hardcore unforgiving difficulty, Contracts is definitely more palatable and takes the old game for a more refined spin.

Good to know. I don't really value difficulty for its own sake. So, care to compare the older ones(1/C,SA,BM) in terms of sandbox-iness, variety, replayability or are they equally good?

Okay... Hitman: Codename 47 is the crudest of the series in my opinion. Over all, it's got a very, very good Hong Kong series of missions, one very good Budapest mission, and a series of forgettably bland missions. Over all, Contracts is a better game, but some of the great Hitman C47 missions it remixes loses some of its charm.

Silent Assassin is a lengthy game, the missions have good variety but the Japan mission series is just down right ugly. Level designs in this game are generally superior to C47 and Contracts in terms of variety, but Contracts' suspicion and gameplay plays better.

Contracts has some very good missions, but there's a lot of rehash happening here. The first mission also kinda sucks and the last mission sucks too but ties with one mission in Blood Money. The elimination of the mission load out for first time playthrough also really hurts the game.

Blood Money happens to be the game with the best balance and best level designs, in my opinion. Lots of exotic locations and it has the most developed iteration of the old Hitman games. It also expands a bit from previous games with an upgrade system and notoriety. It's basically the perfected version of the Glacier 1 games.

Thanks a bunch mate! That's probably as good a summary of the lot as I'm likely to find ;)

No problem! And if you're in doubt, download the demo. I believe all the games come with demos to try out! :D

Oh the anniversary is all most over, here goes another key:
Driftmoon - Desura
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