Hitman: Blood Money arrives on mobile with some awesome new updates and a few annoying issues

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SHOULD I PLAY HITMAN: BLOOD MONEY - REPRISAL?

If you’re into the Hitman series, especially if you jumped in during the modern World of Assassination trilogy, Hitman: Blood Money - Reprisal is definitely worth checking out. I’d almost go so far as to say that it’s the ideal way to experience this beloved classic in the series, but while this new mobile port is excellent in many ways, it has some extremely annoying issues that hold it back from its full potential.

TIME PLAYED

I played about two hours of Hitman: Blood Money - Reprisal. That was enough time to finish the first mission, “Death of a Showman,” and get a solid sense of how mission two, “A Vintage Year,” works. While I did eliminate both targets in the second mission during a couple runs, I wanted to go back and start over both times because I had ended up having to eliminate too many guards and bystanders, and I wanted to keep my notoriety level low as I headed into the next mission—as Hitman oldheads know, Blood Money gets progressively harder as Agent 47 becomes more notorious and recognizable.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT HITMAN: BLOOD MONEY - REPRISAL?

• Updated controls. Probably the best thing about Hitman: Blood Money - Reprisal is that its control scheme has been updated to mostly match the modern run of Hitman games. After countless hours spent in the World of Assassination games, I felt right at home in this new version of Blood Money, particularly when I connected my Xbox controller with Bluetooth. There were still a couple quirks to work out, but overall, I appreciated this change tremendously.

• Assassination sandbox. Blood Money is, at this point, an old game. I was surprised, however, to see how much of it holds up, and how much of the modern Hitman stuff I like so much was already present way back in 2006. Levels consisted of open maps that let me seamlessly venture into buildings and explore huge interior areas. I could pick up improvised weapons, like kitchen knives and hammers. Most importantly, I could learn my targets’ routines and plot out perfect kills, either making them look like accidents or simply having them die in what I felt was the funniest way possible.

• Chilling out and being cool. There really aren’t enough games that let you do this, but fortunately, Hitman does. It’s such an underrated aspect of this series: I could just hang around in a garden party, people-watching to my evil murdering heart’s content. I’ve always appreciated that about this series, and I love that it’s part of Hitman: Blood Money - Reprisal too.

WHAT SUCKS ABOUT HITMAN: BLOOD MONEY - REPRISAL?

• Selecting anything is absurdly difficult. Trying to pick up a specific item out of a box, or open a door instead of peer through the keyhole, is a giant pain in the butt in this port. It’s not every interactive item in the game: Sometimes I’d have no problem pointing the camera at and highlighting the thing I wanted to use; other times I’d have to fight with it for over a minute to get the right UI element to light up. This is a huge problem when you’re trying to sneak through someone’s mansion to assassinate them, it turns out.

• Targeting issues with the fiber wire. Agent 47 is never without his trusty garrotte, because sometimes you just have to strangle a guy. Unfortunately, I found this to be shockingly unreliable while out on missions. I’d sneak up behind a guard with my fiber wire ready, and the prompt to take him down just wouldn’t appear. Inevitably, the guard would eventually turn around and immediately have some uncomfortable questions for me.

• AI issues. Continuing on from the little scene above, at this point I would start rapidly circling around the guard, who would slowly turn to try to face me, either to punch me or clobber me with the butt of his weapon. As long as I kept moving, he’d always be too slow, and so I’d keep doing this and spamming the takedown button until I lucked out and caught it while I was briefly positioned in the right spot behind him. It’s very silly. Guards have a few other weird behaviors, and I haven’t quite figured out all the rules about their line of sight, which seems suspiciously superhuman at times.

• Bad vibes! For all that’s aged well about Hitman: Blood Money, the tone and language definitely haven’t. In the early levels, its portrayals of Black people and sex workers in particular were pretty grating, especially after having spent so much time with the far more refined World of Assassination games.

PLATFORM TESTED

Android on Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra 5G phone