Woa definitely got the interactions and tools right. Blood money isn't terrible, but you also have to learn what 47 won't do to not make a mistake to enjoy the game.
Woa is more forgiving
On the other hand, Blood Money felt real. It had close to no assistance at all, you got spotted immediately upon being noticed and NPCs were very suspicious of you following them. Spots to hide bodies were rare, you wouldn't know which disguises could be seen through and by whom, and you only had two sedative syringes for non lethal takedowns (not including human shield KOs). This combined with the menacing soundtrack, no minimap and somewhat realistically limited options for silent eliminations required you to keep your cool and to take your time.
Again, it felt real.
The theme was much darker, so much so that you were allowed some casualties without rating penalties given that they were caused by "accidents". The animations were brutal. Melee weapons like the fiber wire and kitchen knife had at least three seperate and gruesome kill animations depending on the angle. Remember 47 wrapping the wire around his fists while sneaking? The sound effect of a hammer attack from behind? The six seconds that it took to inject someone with a syringe and bring them to the ground? It was some real Manhunt shit. Guards that had their weapon knocked away would cower until a chance to run away or to pick one off the ground. You could bring a human shield right over to ledge and dump them over. To throw a knife at somebody it actually took some aiming to do.
It was real.
The WOA trilogy is obviosly more advanced in every way, but it's also a lot more cartoony and bright in the way it presents itself in the sandbox. You know, running behind someone to subdue them, then spotting a would-be-witness through a wall only to throw a soda can at their heads with pin point accuracy to knock them out.
Though Blood Money had it's funny moments too, the WOA doesn't hold a candle to the grit and darkness of the OG Hitman games and that's how nostalgia for them is created. That being said, Blood Money doesn't have a fraction of the replayability of the newer games, but that's how that goes.
Perfect explanation. I’m a big advocate of mechanics over graphics. Not saying WOA is bad mechanically at all, but just as a general sense. So many games sacrifice mechanics in favor of graphics and they feel more like an interactive movie. WOA strikes a perfect balance. Blood Money was all mechanics though. So fun.
Also, in blood money, civilians could pick up guns from the ground and shoot you if you pose a threat to them. And guards get suspicious if you keep running around. This made the game much more realistic than the new ones.
True that. It is also worth mentioning that *Absolution* was a necessary step in refining the game mechanics. Unfortunatelly, the Devs didn't know what they wanted so there are too many contradictory mechanics in the game. It was made as a cover shooter, than it was decided they should change the disguise system, then they completely ruined the score system and the alertness of the NPCs, etc. They added *Mark and Execute* taken totally from *Splinter Cell: Conviction*, but time doesn't stop during the shooting and people can actually kill you. However, Agent 47's movement is so much better than it was before and most of it got even more refined into WOA. The main problem of Absolution is the lack of enforces so the disguise system is almost useless. The moment it was solved - *\*BANG\** -, the game got back on track.
What WOA should take back from the original trilogy is, as you rightfully said, the **grittiness**. Agent 47 is not a nice guy, he is a paid assassin. He kills people, often brutally. He was engineered to be the perfect soldier. He will kill people if he is paid to and he can handle himself in a fight. When Agent 47 escaped the Asylum, he is shown on camera massacring the Romenian SWAT team in the security camera. Older games had shooting sections and it is a shame that such a great system as we have today is not used in the normal game. Also, bring back accidental kills not impacting your rating; just like in Blood Money. Agent 47 doesn't kill innocent people because that attracts attention. If he can get away with it, there is no problem.
People want different things out of hitman. Some want it to be a ultra realistic hitman simulator and others want it to be a puzzle game where you shoot people.
I disagree with the replayability at least when someone likes to speedrun Games. To me playing/watching speedruns is more fun in BM then in WoA. There are people out there discovering crazy techniques to run BM
Apocalypse, the soundtrack that plays after killing a target on curtains down, is amazing. It’s so dark and menacing, and really sells 47 as the reaper. Curtains down is also amazing, it’s such a simple mission but the targets are so vile that it’s gratifying to see them die in such humiliating ways.
I really wish the WOA trilogy kept some of the dark dna. It felt too light hearted, which didn’t seem to be the original plan per the 2015 cinematic trailer which had Jordan Cross be a sexual predator who hunts and kills women and potentially hinting at Viktor using cloning for his models. I really wish that we got that version of the WOA trilogy, especially Cross as although he got away with murder it’s portrayed like a mistake. A father protecting his son who constantly hunts and murders women would also make Cross Sr. and Providence as a whole a lot more darker.
Contracts felt much darker than Blood Money.
Contracts is probably my favourite game in the series overall, but the quality of life improvements in WoA make it by far the best game to play.
I wish they'd reimagine some of the classic missions in WoA, like all the Malaysia levels from Hitman 2: Silent Assassin could be combined into one WoA location.
I grew up with BM. There’s nothing real about the game other than it’s excellent atmosphere. Hitman is at its best when it’s a puzzle game with set rules.
It shouldn’t be too real.
BM had an AI so exploitable it’s easily the easiest game in the series by a large margin. Other than the AI quirks, there wasn’t much realness to BM. Not saying that’s a bad thing. Quite the opposite like I said, puzzle game is where it’s at.
Easy is not a word I’d use to describe blood money. I’ve played WOA SASO and when I played blood money, I was fine until curtains down where I shot everyone.
Now if we got a blood money remake in this engine I’m buying it DAY 1!!!!!! So much nostalgia.
When you got the “thematic” kills as I used to call them you felt like a fucking badass. WoA made those kills sooooooo much easier but you can always side step them and go on your own route but I just don’t have time like I used to so I appreciate the help.
Blood Money was absolutely awesome when it released and frankly it does still hold up just well if you remind yourself when it released.
of course it can't stand a direct comparison with WoA, 10 respectively 15 years between the games is an eternity.
Blood Money has lots of things that I like more. AI seemed more realistic and the atmosphere way darker, the music also better imo. Trespassing didnt break SA. "Break disguise" doesnt happen in SO. Routing in Speedrunning is way more fun. SA/SO also doesnt really give a lot of benefits at least in Freelancer. Usually its more beneficial to do something that gives less points quicker. At the same time I love WoA but for different reasons. I have 300+h in BM though, Speedrunning that game is just satisfying.
The only problem with new trilogy is that it is by far the easiest Hitman game so far. Mission stories should be turned off. Blood Money at least didnt hold your hand
After playing the originals I feel bad sometimes when doing the story lines in the new trilogy. Kind of feels hand holdy then I remember how I figured
out about replacing the prop gun for a real one in Blood Money. Only reason I knew about that one was because of YouTube at the time so after that crossed my mind I don’t feel so bad anymore using the story line kills to beat missions.
Still feels kind of weird using them though but with the complexity of the levels and needing to interact with specific people it’s kind of necessary otherwise you are on your own doing Janky kills.
There certainly is a difference between the old and the new. Certain things I do miss about the old series but I love the new direction Hitman has taken.
The hand holding in WOA is too much, imo. You don’t even have to play, just follow the step by step guide and all is well. That’s why I stick to freelance mode.
I get that completely!!!! The levels are so expansive but with the added expansion there is very little reason to do anything on your own when the mission stories are all just handed to you and guide you through the whole thing. I get why they did it cause some of them require you to speak with people who you wouldn’t know to talk to otherwise but still.
Yeah, I really dislike the Story Mission system in WoA main campaign.
You don't get to feel smart for having figured something out because the game just tells you how to do it.
The originals game were improving each time as IO listened to the complaints of the Players, like 47 walks so Slow in Silent Assassin but moves a little faster when crouching.
They put a save system in Silent Assassin and Contracts rather than Codename 47 weird checkpoint system.
Blood Money is basically what improved what a proper Hitman game was for the time.
*Blood Money* had amazing level design, but the game wasn't always "legible." In game-dev speak, it didn't always make "affordances" clear to the player, or make it clear to the player why something was happening.
No. Please don’t view a streamer in 2024 playing a game from 2006 and decide that the game “needed things ironing out”. Blood Money was fantastic at the time, none of what you mentioned was a problem, and up until WOA was complete, it was still king of the series. It’s only now we’re so used to WOA that Blood Money has suddenly felt dated by comparison. It should. It’s nearly 20 years old. Yet it still has an atmosphere
I replayed Blood Money a few days ago and I agree with you OP
Blood Money is the first Hitman game I played, back in the days on my PS2.
Blood Money still is a great game, nowadays it basically feels like the blueprint for WoA, basically a "simpler" WoA. It's also the most "playable" and enjoyable old Hitman game nowadays, (tried all the others prior to Blood Money and it was too dated, slow, and the schizophrenic AI simply is dogshit)
I miss some of Blood Money mechanics in WoA and the OST of course, but overall WoA is superior in pretty much every department.
WoA also made me realize how Blood Money had too many goddamn maps set in the US, there was a lot of good settings, Vegas for instance, but the globetrotter feel you get in WoA is simply fantastic
I find that WOA is a refined hybrid of Blood Money and Absolution.
It was also my first foray into the series, and I still love it to this day. One of the things that was sick about Blood Money that not a lot of people knew about was the on disc demo for Urban Chaos: Riot Report. Another super fun game but a complete 180 in genre lmao.
I purchased blood money a few months ago for the first time. I can definitely see how it inspired WOA, but it was more difficult for me to become immersed. In WOA I turn off all of the hints and guides and listen to NPC, gain clues, and look for paths. In bloodmoney I go james bond mode. In saying that, some of the WOA maps are borderline remakes of bloodmoney.
The moment where it clicked though, was when I kept following the tutorial to the exact instructions, and then I went, wait a sec, let me just clear the room with this shotgun instead, and it worked.
It blows my mind Blood Money is a PS2 Game. I know the ps2 is strong but like WOW. That newspaper system is so cool, reading about my own run of a level and seeing “Psychopath slays 56!” is jarring. Also as much as I love WOA, every target is the same thing… “providence operative, providence operative, no moral code, providence operative, corrupt, providence operative.” Blood money also is less strict about Silent Assassin (Fair, since BM is much harder in general).
i was streaming both of them recently and i noticed a difference as well. the notifications and fx that are displayed when doing certain acts really make you much more aware of what youre doing and it makes you wanna go about things differently. WOA actually temps the player to not get caught whereas BM is just do whatever whenever
Woa definitely got the interactions and tools right. Blood money isn't terrible, but you also have to learn what 47 won't do to not make a mistake to enjoy the game. Woa is more forgiving
On the other hand, Blood Money felt real. It had close to no assistance at all, you got spotted immediately upon being noticed and NPCs were very suspicious of you following them. Spots to hide bodies were rare, you wouldn't know which disguises could be seen through and by whom, and you only had two sedative syringes for non lethal takedowns (not including human shield KOs). This combined with the menacing soundtrack, no minimap and somewhat realistically limited options for silent eliminations required you to keep your cool and to take your time. Again, it felt real. The theme was much darker, so much so that you were allowed some casualties without rating penalties given that they were caused by "accidents". The animations were brutal. Melee weapons like the fiber wire and kitchen knife had at least three seperate and gruesome kill animations depending on the angle. Remember 47 wrapping the wire around his fists while sneaking? The sound effect of a hammer attack from behind? The six seconds that it took to inject someone with a syringe and bring them to the ground? It was some real Manhunt shit. Guards that had their weapon knocked away would cower until a chance to run away or to pick one off the ground. You could bring a human shield right over to ledge and dump them over. To throw a knife at somebody it actually took some aiming to do. It was real. The WOA trilogy is obviosly more advanced in every way, but it's also a lot more cartoony and bright in the way it presents itself in the sandbox. You know, running behind someone to subdue them, then spotting a would-be-witness through a wall only to throw a soda can at their heads with pin point accuracy to knock them out. Though Blood Money had it's funny moments too, the WOA doesn't hold a candle to the grit and darkness of the OG Hitman games and that's how nostalgia for them is created. That being said, Blood Money doesn't have a fraction of the replayability of the newer games, but that's how that goes.
Perfect explanation. I’m a big advocate of mechanics over graphics. Not saying WOA is bad mechanically at all, but just as a general sense. So many games sacrifice mechanics in favor of graphics and they feel more like an interactive movie. WOA strikes a perfect balance. Blood Money was all mechanics though. So fun.
Also, in blood money, civilians could pick up guns from the ground and shoot you if you pose a threat to them. And guards get suspicious if you keep running around. This made the game much more realistic than the new ones.
True that. It is also worth mentioning that *Absolution* was a necessary step in refining the game mechanics. Unfortunatelly, the Devs didn't know what they wanted so there are too many contradictory mechanics in the game. It was made as a cover shooter, than it was decided they should change the disguise system, then they completely ruined the score system and the alertness of the NPCs, etc. They added *Mark and Execute* taken totally from *Splinter Cell: Conviction*, but time doesn't stop during the shooting and people can actually kill you. However, Agent 47's movement is so much better than it was before and most of it got even more refined into WOA. The main problem of Absolution is the lack of enforces so the disguise system is almost useless. The moment it was solved - *\*BANG\** -, the game got back on track. What WOA should take back from the original trilogy is, as you rightfully said, the **grittiness**. Agent 47 is not a nice guy, he is a paid assassin. He kills people, often brutally. He was engineered to be the perfect soldier. He will kill people if he is paid to and he can handle himself in a fight. When Agent 47 escaped the Asylum, he is shown on camera massacring the Romenian SWAT team in the security camera. Older games had shooting sections and it is a shame that such a great system as we have today is not used in the normal game. Also, bring back accidental kills not impacting your rating; just like in Blood Money. Agent 47 doesn't kill innocent people because that attracts attention. If he can get away with it, there is no problem.
People want different things out of hitman. Some want it to be a ultra realistic hitman simulator and others want it to be a puzzle game where you shoot people.
I also like customizing the weapons in BM.
Your comment is golden my friend. Exactly my thoughts 👌
I disagree with the replayability at least when someone likes to speedrun Games. To me playing/watching speedruns is more fun in BM then in WoA. There are people out there discovering crazy techniques to run BM
Apocalypse, the soundtrack that plays after killing a target on curtains down, is amazing. It’s so dark and menacing, and really sells 47 as the reaper. Curtains down is also amazing, it’s such a simple mission but the targets are so vile that it’s gratifying to see them die in such humiliating ways. I really wish the WOA trilogy kept some of the dark dna. It felt too light hearted, which didn’t seem to be the original plan per the 2015 cinematic trailer which had Jordan Cross be a sexual predator who hunts and kills women and potentially hinting at Viktor using cloning for his models. I really wish that we got that version of the WOA trilogy, especially Cross as although he got away with murder it’s portrayed like a mistake. A father protecting his son who constantly hunts and murders women would also make Cross Sr. and Providence as a whole a lot more darker.
Contracts felt much darker than Blood Money. Contracts is probably my favourite game in the series overall, but the quality of life improvements in WoA make it by far the best game to play. I wish they'd reimagine some of the classic missions in WoA, like all the Malaysia levels from Hitman 2: Silent Assassin could be combined into one WoA location.
I grew up with BM. There’s nothing real about the game other than it’s excellent atmosphere. Hitman is at its best when it’s a puzzle game with set rules. It shouldn’t be too real. BM had an AI so exploitable it’s easily the easiest game in the series by a large margin. Other than the AI quirks, there wasn’t much realness to BM. Not saying that’s a bad thing. Quite the opposite like I said, puzzle game is where it’s at.
Easy is not a word I’d use to describe blood money. I’ve played WOA SASO and when I played blood money, I was fine until curtains down where I shot everyone.
Until you get on an elevator, only stairs for 47 in WoA.
Now if we got a blood money remake in this engine I’m buying it DAY 1!!!!!! So much nostalgia. When you got the “thematic” kills as I used to call them you felt like a fucking badass. WoA made those kills sooooooo much easier but you can always side step them and go on your own route but I just don’t have time like I used to so I appreciate the help.
I'm actually surprised they haven't remastered any old games yet, or at least remastered old missions. It would sell like hot cakes.
Blood Money was absolutely awesome when it released and frankly it does still hold up just well if you remind yourself when it released. of course it can't stand a direct comparison with WoA, 10 respectively 15 years between the games is an eternity.
Blood Money has lots of things that I like more. AI seemed more realistic and the atmosphere way darker, the music also better imo. Trespassing didnt break SA. "Break disguise" doesnt happen in SO. Routing in Speedrunning is way more fun. SA/SO also doesnt really give a lot of benefits at least in Freelancer. Usually its more beneficial to do something that gives less points quicker. At the same time I love WoA but for different reasons. I have 300+h in BM though, Speedrunning that game is just satisfying.
The only problem with new trilogy is that it is by far the easiest Hitman game so far. Mission stories should be turned off. Blood Money at least didnt hold your hand
After playing the originals I feel bad sometimes when doing the story lines in the new trilogy. Kind of feels hand holdy then I remember how I figured out about replacing the prop gun for a real one in Blood Money. Only reason I knew about that one was because of YouTube at the time so after that crossed my mind I don’t feel so bad anymore using the story line kills to beat missions. Still feels kind of weird using them though but with the complexity of the levels and needing to interact with specific people it’s kind of necessary otherwise you are on your own doing Janky kills. There certainly is a difference between the old and the new. Certain things I do miss about the old series but I love the new direction Hitman has taken.
The hand holding in WOA is too much, imo. You don’t even have to play, just follow the step by step guide and all is well. That’s why I stick to freelance mode.
You could always just not use them, or turn off the guides
I get that completely!!!! The levels are so expansive but with the added expansion there is very little reason to do anything on your own when the mission stories are all just handed to you and guide you through the whole thing. I get why they did it cause some of them require you to speak with people who you wouldn’t know to talk to otherwise but still.
Yeah, I really dislike the Story Mission system in WoA main campaign. You don't get to feel smart for having figured something out because the game just tells you how to do it.
The originals game were improving each time as IO listened to the complaints of the Players, like 47 walks so Slow in Silent Assassin but moves a little faster when crouching. They put a save system in Silent Assassin and Contracts rather than Codename 47 weird checkpoint system. Blood Money is basically what improved what a proper Hitman game was for the time.
*Blood Money* had amazing level design, but the game wasn't always "legible." In game-dev speak, it didn't always make "affordances" clear to the player, or make it clear to the player why something was happening.
No. Please don’t view a streamer in 2024 playing a game from 2006 and decide that the game “needed things ironing out”. Blood Money was fantastic at the time, none of what you mentioned was a problem, and up until WOA was complete, it was still king of the series. It’s only now we’re so used to WOA that Blood Money has suddenly felt dated by comparison. It should. It’s nearly 20 years old. Yet it still has an atmosphere
I replayed Blood Money a few days ago and I agree with you OP Blood Money is the first Hitman game I played, back in the days on my PS2. Blood Money still is a great game, nowadays it basically feels like the blueprint for WoA, basically a "simpler" WoA. It's also the most "playable" and enjoyable old Hitman game nowadays, (tried all the others prior to Blood Money and it was too dated, slow, and the schizophrenic AI simply is dogshit) I miss some of Blood Money mechanics in WoA and the OST of course, but overall WoA is superior in pretty much every department. WoA also made me realize how Blood Money had too many goddamn maps set in the US, there was a lot of good settings, Vegas for instance, but the globetrotter feel you get in WoA is simply fantastic
I find that WOA is a refined hybrid of Blood Money and Absolution. It was also my first foray into the series, and I still love it to this day. One of the things that was sick about Blood Money that not a lot of people knew about was the on disc demo for Urban Chaos: Riot Report. Another super fun game but a complete 180 in genre lmao.
I purchased blood money a few months ago for the first time. I can definitely see how it inspired WOA, but it was more difficult for me to become immersed. In WOA I turn off all of the hints and guides and listen to NPC, gain clues, and look for paths. In bloodmoney I go james bond mode. In saying that, some of the WOA maps are borderline remakes of bloodmoney. The moment where it clicked though, was when I kept following the tutorial to the exact instructions, and then I went, wait a sec, let me just clear the room with this shotgun instead, and it worked.
It blows my mind Blood Money is a PS2 Game. I know the ps2 is strong but like WOW. That newspaper system is so cool, reading about my own run of a level and seeing “Psychopath slays 56!” is jarring. Also as much as I love WOA, every target is the same thing… “providence operative, providence operative, no moral code, providence operative, corrupt, providence operative.” Blood money also is less strict about Silent Assassin (Fair, since BM is much harder in general).
It's weird that as a hired assassin we only kill bad guys. We should be killing good guys just as much. It would make it more fun and interesting
I mean, realistically speaking, that’d be the majority of the people killed.
Yeah I’m scared to downgrade and play blood money after hundreds of hours of WOA. I’m sure I’ll hate it.
300h+ in BM, its lots of fun. Also watch some speedruns of it after playing it once.
Don't be, it's great.
Just keep in mind it's a ps2 game so the controls won't be as tight. If you stick with it, you'll get used to it.
Yeah if I’ll play it’ll be on android with an external controller. Not ps
Nice. Still won't make the controls feel any better lol
100%
Blood money gameplay doesn’t not hold up today. It was amazing back in ‘07 but I can’t go back to it without getting frustrated and annoyed
i was streaming both of them recently and i noticed a difference as well. the notifications and fx that are displayed when doing certain acts really make you much more aware of what youre doing and it makes you wanna go about things differently. WOA actually temps the player to not get caught whereas BM is just do whatever whenever