Hit Me, Number 47

I've watched very few videogame franchises develop and mature quite so well as the Hitman series has done over the past six years. In 2000 we got Hitman: Codename 47, a promising title which pitted you in the role of Mr. 47, a mysteriously bar-coded assassin.

The premise was certainly very interesting, putting the game somewhere between a stealth game, like Thief, and a good old fashioned shoot 'em up. The delivery in Codename 47 let us down somewhat, however; we could all see the potential, but the developers at IO Interactive had been off their mark somewhat and several of the game elements just weren't right.

Where others would have cocked it up a second time, IO went away and designed Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, and this time they were much closer to the game we had all wanted the original to be. From the cleaning up of the controls system to the introduction of the "Suspicion meter", which gives you a visual indication of how alerted guards are to your presence, the game threw off a lot of the inevitable action-sequences involved in the original and became a true assassination game. It also, paradoxically, made it easier for you to choose the violent and loud route, should you so desire. In the original, you had to either be stealthy or be brutal.

However, some improvement was needed, and so came Hitman: Contracts, the third in the series. In Contracts, we had the refinement of the suspicion meter and more and more ways in which to take out our mark. Contracts was something of a rehash of old things, as opposed to a totally new experience, but it was still a tweak and a refinement of what had gone before.

Finally, released on 26 May in the UK and the on the 30th in the US, we got Hitman: Blood Money. By far the best game in the series, Blood Money updated everything from the visuals to the methods of execution, and it has brought us full circle from the original in 2000, which had a grand ambition which was poorly executed, to 2006, where the Hitman series has, in gameplay terms, reached above and beyond what we wanted Codename 47 to be.

The series has not just developed along gameplay lines either. The developers have changed the storyline, and even the music, to match different themes throughout the games. Where the first two games could be considered to revolve around the motif of "International Conspiracy", involving genetic scientists gone mad and nuclear weapons, the third game, Contracts, is a horror film noir.

The game centres around Codename 47 having flashbacks to his earlier days, with about half of the levels from the original game rejigged and played through in dark flashbacks, alongside a bunch of brand new missions, also played in flashback format. Everything, from the lighting to the weather to the scenarios you encounter (including an S&M party in an abattoir), is dark and, for want of a better term, sick. It plays around the fact that Mr. 47 is at deaths door, and so levels from the original that were relatively bright become dark and nightmarish.

Blood Money meanwhile returns to the more real world, though you'll enjoy the flashback twists. The levels show a slapstick sense of humour, with Mr. 47 taking the guise of everything from a party clown to Santa Clause in order to deliver a dose of death to his mark. It combines all the best elements of the previous games and expands upon them, and the level of replayability in the game is amazing - one level alone at the Paris Opera House I've played through a half a dozen times by now and it still isn't getting old.

There are many lessons in the development of the Hitman series for aspiring and established developers alike to take heed of. In most game franchises these days you are very lucky if the games remain fresh by about the third instalment. The developers do something good in the first game, refine it in the second and then go to bed for the third. The Hitman series has been developing and maturing from both a gameplay and a stylistic point of view with each new iteration.

Here we are, four games and six years in, and I'm looking forward to what comes next, whilst knowing that Blood Money, and what has come before it, will be worth picking up and trying again and again between now and the next title in the series. Who knows, maybe IO will go downhill from a creative point of view and perhaps it is inevitable, but they've worked up a good pace at this point.

Saying that, we are expecting a barrel of quality with a Hitman movie in 2007. It will star the ever eloquent and Mr. 47-like Vin Diesel in the lead role, though I'm told (and I hope that...) David Bateson, the actor who voices 47 in the game, will be doing the voiceover for the movie. We may also see a game rushed out to go alongside the movie, though I do hope not - the two year cycle seems to have worked too well up until this point to break it for the sake of a tie-in which may ruin the future credibility of the series.

Do I sound bitter? Well, that's for another Saturday Gamer... next week my illustrious colleague Mr. Robert Wright will be stepping in for an All-American edition of this column while I run around Taiwan searching for the meaning of life in a motherboard. Until then adios, and remember: If you turn around to see a chap sneaking up behind you, who then proceeds to amble off whistling to himself, it's probably a good idea to find a window to jump out of, or an army to call upon.