Hitman: Blood Money (or why Steve Gaynor is nuts)

[bistromathics]

I picked up Hitman: Blood Money based on some of the things Steve Gaynor said about it (e.g., favorite game of all time). I sometimes like where he comes from in discussions, so I believed his opinion would be worth some salt. It was worth very little, if any, salt.

Blood Money is....well I'm not sure what the specific genre would be called - I suppose stealth - but basically a game where you are given a choose-your-own-adventure-style set of options to perform a given task. The biggest hurdle for any game like this is that it need's to remain consistent in what it will or will not allow in order to maintain the illusion. Blood Money's system is so bad at telegraphing what you can and can't do, it makes the missions incredibly frustrating.

note: i had a long-winded example, but it was too lengthy and poorly written and since this is an internet messageboard i will just state my opinion and click 'submit a new thread'.

[DanJW]

I love it, and think it's a great game.

If you want to kill people off with accidents (for the Silent Assassin rating) then it functions like an adventure puzzle game. If you want to use weapons then you can get more creative. On the whole I found the game very user friendly, a lot more so than the previous games in the series. what system were you playing on?

I know some people who never finished the game because they were intent on getting Silent Assassin on each mission before moving onto the next. Those people are lame. Setting personal goals is great, but I think that is nuts of you never finish the game because of it.

But perhaps it's just not your type of game.

[bistromathics]

In the third mission, you are told you need to assassinate an opera singer and his "friend (winky winky)" who, in their spare time, run a child molestation ring. The level setup is that the friend is in a balcony seat in an opera theater watching the singer practice. The hint you are given is that the singer is rehearsing a scene in which he is fake-shot by another performer. These guys take a break on a loop and go to their dressing rooms. There's a guard outside the singer's room.

I hid in the extra's dressing room (the guy that does the fake-shooting) to case the scene. During a break, he comes in, leaves the prop gun, then goes to the bathroom. This seemed like an adventure-game-style clue. But without the rigid limitations of an adventure game, figuring out what to do with the clue was an irritating mess. Also, if you fuck up, its gg (unless you want to guns-blaze your way out which I did not).

I picked up the prop gun and tried to see if i could put real bullets in it. I couldn't.

I tried taking the prop gun and replacing it with my real gun. Obviously in reality the actor would know the guns were different, but I didn't know how robust the system was. Turns out it was not very robust at all. Taking away the prop gun put the AI in a state where they would never return to the rehearsal. Awesome.

I thought maybe I could kill the actor, disguise myself as him, and then shoot the singer during the performance. The dressing room was a small, 1-room w/ mirror and glamor lights setup (I was hiding in the closet). I couldn't sneak up on him b/c of the mirror. Keep in mind the 'alert' in this game is ridiculous. If you alert one guy, even if you take him out immediately, other people come for you.

I was trained earlier that making a room dark will make it so people can't see you. So my plan was to make it dark, so that the guy wouldn't immediately see me in the mirror. I switched off the overhead lights, then systematically shot out all the glamor-lights around the dressing-room mirror...only to find out that these lightbulbs - despite being destructible - were just decoration. In reality, the room was being lit by an invisible lighting volume that I could not switch off.

At this point I was too irritated by trying to figure out the game's systems to continue. 6.333/10

[brkl]

Instead of doing something completely silly like that, you have to shoot the guy at the exact same time the fake gun goes off, masking the sound of your own gun.

It's not easy and not every clue is obvious or guaranteed not to be a red herring. Also, if you kill someone quickly enough after they've noticed you, others WILL NOT come after you.

[DanJW]

Or you can pay attention to your briefing at the beginning and

Pick up the planted coat from the cloakroom, which has a real version of the stage gun in the pocket. The reason the AI froze was because it was waiting for you to put this real gun on the dressing table

Or kill them in half a dozen other ways.

it is kind of a shame that lighting doesn't pay all the much of a part in the game I guess.

[bistromathics]

Or kill them in half a dozen other ways.

It's nice that there are half-a-dozen ways to complete a mission. It's just frustrating and a massive blow to suspension of disbelief when the game logic doesn't allow me to do it in half-a-dozen other ways.

It's an inherent problem with this style of game, and Hitman: Blood Money holds a magnifying glass up to its own seams a bit too much for my liking.

[DanJW]

Well if there were no limits at all, there wouldn't be much challenge. Or much game. Of course all games would be amazing if 'what if...'

Once you 'get' the game, it really is very good. Unless, like I said, it's just not for you.

[Erkki]

It would be nice if the systems were more robust.

Another thing is that the adventure-puzzle-style solutions ofter require insanely precise timing, finding which may require a lot of trial and error. For example the same mission you were talking about:

once I replaced the replica gun with the real version, I went across the hall to a room with stairs leading up to above the stage. there I set up a bomb to send down the chandelier to fall on the actor's admirer when he comes running down. getting up there, placing the bomb and getting down again unnoticed took tens and tens of tries, trying to match my movements with those of 4-5 different people.

Of course I was doing it without a disguise and maybe the adventure style solutions really assume you are disguised.

[bistromathics]

The glaring issue is that it is a game that taunts the player into testing its boundaries, and then doesn't gracefully handle situations that don't fit the rules. Another (totally unrelated) game that inspired a similar sense of irritation was Facade, which very quickly reduced itself down to a game of 'reverse engineer our text parser'.

[DanJW]

Of course I was doing it without a disguise and maybe the adventure style solutions really assume you are disguised.

Yeah, they do.

I read one guide written by someone who took great pride in never changing clothes and sniping every target, if possible.

I still think it's a great game. The only series that does what it does, and does it as well, is Metal Gear Solid.

[Erkki]

Yeah, they do.

I read one guide written by someone who took great pride in never changing clothes and sniping every target, if possible.

After completing the game once without paying too much attention how I did it, I've been also trying to remain in the suit in most levels and as ghostly as I can. It was a lot of trouble though, and I didn't complete the game in that mode. So maybe I should relax some constraints I set for myself and play some more.

[twmac]

You can complete that level in about 10 seconds and get silent assassin at the same time.

Walk up the stairs at the beginning and take a left, unlock the first door leading to the balconies either side of the admirer. If you time it right the security won't see you.

Shoot the admirer and then the guy onstage and leave in the ensuing carnage, no one will know it was you. Job done.

I really loved that game, because scenes like that make perfect sense to me. Just because you don't pursue their prescribed requirement doesn't mean you can't do it.

That level is particularly fun because you can kill the actor using a prop from above and shoot the admirer at the same time and still get Silent Assasin.

[bistromathics]

My point wasn't that it couldn't be done.

[Cigol]

I remember reading the same criticisms when the original Hitman was reviewed in PC Gamer. It never bothered me then, it doesn't bother me now. The way the game is setup helps make the choices feel somewhat more organic than they really are, and the more you play the more accustomed to its quirks you become - but either way you are supposed to fail, and fumble on your first playthrough. Silent Assassin is for completionists.

If I remember rightly there is a way of garrotting without alerting other guards, and there is ways of turning the attention off you if you do. So, whilst it's an inconvenience, it still gives you a way out.

[DanJW]

I think the system is robust enough that the AI can handle most situations, and give you an appropriate course of action as well. It's not instant game over (yeah the alerts are tough, but you can learn how to deal with them). You could have killed the guy in the dressing room, as you were trying to do. I've done it before and gotten away with it.

No game system is perfect or exhaustive, and frankly I think you just haven't clicked with the game yet.

Oh, and in Blood Money the key technique is to grab people as human shields, and then pistol-whip them unconscious. Quiet, and saves the sedative for special circumstances.

[Salka]

I am afraid I haven't played this game so feel free to ignore my opinion. However, I understand where Bistro is coming from in terms of it being frustrating that some things are possible but other solutions that people might think of, aren't. I've experienced this in other games before, and I hate it. In a game where you're supposed to think of different clever little ways of killing people, I can see that for some people it would be very frustrating. I am one of those people who would think of ridiculous ways to try and kill people

That said, I haven't played it, just pointing out where Bistro is coming from.

[DanJW]

So what? The developers are meant to anticipate every idea that someone might come up with and design it into the game? That's a bit silly to be honest. They have to stop somewhere, and wherever they stop someone is going to complain 'but I can't do this thing that is really obvious to me'.

[thorn]

So what? The developers are meant to anticipate every idea that someone might come up with and design it into the game? That's a bit silly to be honest. They have to stop somewhere, and wherever they stop someone is going to complain 'but I can't do this thing that is really obvious to me'.

Enough playtesting should come up with the most obvious options though. And bistro's example of replacing the prop gun with his own gun seems pretty obvious to me.

[DanJW]

It's a totally different type of gun, so no. It should have allowed him to put the prop gun back to restart the rehearsal (actually I think it does allow that). And however many obvious options you think you have catered for, players will come up with more. If you go chasing that goal then you end up with massive feature creep.

[Salka]

So what? The developers are meant to anticipate every idea that someone might come up with and design it into the game? That's a bit silly to be honest. They have to stop somewhere, and wherever they stop someone is going to complain 'but I can't do this thing that is really obvious to me'.

No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm just pointing out why people could find it frustrating.

I think that this

It's nice that there are half-a-dozen ways to complete a mission. It's just frustrating and a massive blow to suspension of disbelief when the game logic doesn't allow me to do it in half-a-dozen other ways.

is a fair point to make, no matter how good the game may be. There is always room for improvement and to make things better.

Your defensive reponse reminds me of the way some WoW players defend WoW's faults instead of discussing how they could be fixed in the future.

[DanJW]

I get that, but I'm pointing out that it's a problem that can never be solved, not until we have full virtual reality simulation, and probably not even then.

If this kind of thing bothers someone an awful lot, then they probably shouldn't be playing video games.

[Salka]

I don't think it's a problem that can never be solved. It can definitely be improved on, don't you agree? Think of early games where you couldn't explore areas that hadn't been set as walkable areas, couldn't open doors that were just part of the background, etc. There was usually only one way to complete the game or solve the puzzles, although some kinds had multiple endings or puzzle solutions. Compare them with Hitman: Blood Money, in which you have all manner of options and ways to complete missions, or MGS in which there's a whole bunch of ways to progress through the game. Stuff gets better all the time. If people had have just given up back in 1991 and assumed it was impossible to improve that stuff any more, then games like Hitman wouldn't exist now.

Saying that people who take an issue with it shouldn't be playing video games is a ridiculous thing to say. You can't tell me you've never found a flaw in another otherwise great game, or wished it could be improved on in certain ways. This doesn't mean you shouldn't be playing video games. I don't know why you would think or say that.

Essentially what you are saying is, "If someone thinks Hitman: Blood Money could be a better game, then they shouldn't be playing video games."

[DanJW]

Oh it can be improved upon, yes. But doing so requires time and manpower. Eventually you have to declare feature lock and stop adding stuff to your game, otherwise it will never get released. And no matter how well you have done, how much you have improved it, someone out there will say it is dumb for not including this other thing. That is what I mean by being unsolvable.

And as you point out this has been part of game design for a long time. Occasionally it does get annoying in this game or that game, yes, but if you still can't suspend your disbelief in a game that is as high quality and as widely lauded as Blood Money then I'm surprised that you can enjoy any games at all.

edit: anyway, enough hyperbole! Time for a cuppa

Edited April 15, 2009 by DanJW

[brkl]

It's kind of like demanding that any answer to a puzzle should be accepted. The whole game is about figuring out how the level works. If you could do it in one go the game would last about two hours.

[Erkki]

I don't think it's a problem that can never be solved. It can definitely be improved on, don't you agree? Think of early games where you couldn't explore areas that hadn't been set as walkable areas, couldn't open doors that were just part of the background, etc. There was usually only one way to complete the game or solve the puzzles, although some kinds had multiple endings or puzzle solutions. Compare them with Hitman: Blood Money, in which you have all manner of options and ways to complete missions, or MGS in which there's a whole bunch of ways to progress through the game. Stuff gets better all the time. If people had have just given up back in 1991 and assumed it was impossible to improve that stuff any more, then games like Hitman wouldn't exist now.

I agree with you, Rusalka. These things could definitely be improved. In my opinion the solution is not adding manpower, but making things more generic and procedural, but that is probably really hard to do and even harder to make it appear more than generic.

My experience in game development is only programming really small games as a hobby, so I have no idea how possible that even is while maintaining the production values of AAA games.

I think this is easier to solve in an indie game, where you can get away with simpler models and graphics. I would expect that the first game that gives us something like Hitman but with a more robust and flexible system where more options will just work will look more like Gravity Bone than Hitman. I could be wrong of course.