Review: Hitman’s HD Collection proves nostalgia is not our ally

DISCLAIMER: A review copy was provided by the publisher.

Platform: Xbox One (reviewed) and PS4

Developers: IO Interactive

Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

MSRP: $59.99

Hitman is one of my favorite gaming franchises, one that has evolved into something incredible from its infancy. It started rather as very clunky, very linear series, slowly expanding into something larger as time went on. Around Hitman: Blood Money, it hit its stride.

Blood Money was one of the first big significant titles on Xbox 360 when it releases about half a year into the console’s lifespan. It provided players with small sandboxes (in comparison to what we have today) that allowed them to find creative ways to get to a target and kill them as discreetly as possible.

Hitman: Absolution then took it back a bit by focusing heavily on story and making levels more linear again. While there was still sandbox-y elements, it wasn’t the game many fell in love with six years prior. So, with IO Interactive having rebooted the series to great success, how do these games hold up in the new HD Enhanced Collection?

Truthfully, if you’re a newcomer to the series, you’ll be better off sticking to the new games and if you’re a longtime fan you may not want to taint your fond memories of these games. This collection doesn’t particularly do anything to ruin the games, they’re mostly in their original state (which may be a problem in of itself) but they’re relics of a bygone generation.

This is going to be very disheartening to hear as it was for me to realize when playing through it again but Blood Money is super clunky and lacking in really enjoyable gameplay. Maybe that’s because we’ve been very spoiled with Hitman content that we can invest dozens upon dozens of hours in within the last three years alone. Maybe it’s because game design itself has evolved so radically or at the very least built upon what Blood Money did to the point where you can’t even see the foundation laid beneath what we have now.

I frequently found myself trying to do things that I knew could be done but there was a level of jank preventing me from doing it, causing the whole mission to be flubbed. This wasn’t just the main game, this happened in the tutorial as well. I tried to grab someone as a human shield, 47 just punched the guy. I tried to push someone over a railing, 47 just headbutted the guy.

There are even instinctual concepts that have seeped into my brain with the new Hitman games that are noticeably lacking in Blood Money. Like clockwork, I’d kill someone and try to hide the body and then realize that if I’m not hiding them in a closet or container, I pretty much had to drag them out of sight with a few exceptions like a garbage truck. Still, I couldn’t toss them into a body of water and other places that feel like no-brainers, it kind of breaks your brain.

That’s not to say that it’s totally lacking, you still have some clever assassinations like sabotaging someone’s grill at a party, causing them to catch on fire when they go to use it but it definitely lacks the pizazz of today’s Hitman. The assassinations in current Hitman are much more complex, there are many layers to them, in Blood Money, you’re usually poisoning, sniping, strangling, or dropping something on someone’s head. As stated, there are exceptions but they’re not as frequent or layered as many might be striving for.

I can feel some people rolling their eyes as they read this, I’m criticizing a game from 2006 not having the intricacies of one from 2016 or 2018. I get it, hindsight is 20/20 and it’s not totally fair but it’s something people might want to be aware of before shelling out $60 for this collection.

Absolution does feel much smoother in comparison to Blood Money, it has better controls but it’s far more guided than both Blood Money and modern Hitman, making it an odd filling for the canonical Hitman sandwich. More handholding, more story-based, it’s not exactly what Hitman fans like which is why it’s considered the black sheep of the series.

So, what is IO Interactive doing to try and sell this bad boy for full retail price? Besides capitalizing on nostalgia, both Absolution and Blood Money are in glorious 4K/60FPS this time with Blood Money looking clearly better but you may find yourself thinking “Well, this is just exactly how I remember it looking.” It probably is but our memory does that for older games, that said, Blood Money does look nice as well as Absolution.

They’d probably have a tougher time holding their own against many games by today’s standards but they have been given a nice touch-up, however noticeable it may be to someone who has played it before. This collection also boasts refined controls but as far as I can tell, they’re not very different and if they are, they’re not helping a game like Blood Money.

The Verdict:

These games are not bad games, that should be made clear, they’re just games of their time. Holding them up to the light reveals many flaws, especially when held up next to their current iterations in the series. IO Interactive hasn’t done enough to make these games worth revisiting in their current state, had they given Blood Money the full remake treatment, there is extreme potential for this collection… but alas, they have not.

While Absolution holds up far better than Blood Money and both are technically quite smooth, they’re not worth $60 especially when you can play both through Xbox’s backward compatibility feature for far less or get them on PC for even cheaper. Should they drop in price drastically, maybe you can justify it for the silky smooth frame rate and resolution.