Controls

Controls

I was hoping I could play this game FPS style, but I guess I will have to live with the third person view (not to mention I would miss out on seeing the floppiest tie on earth). Camera-wise, the game provides a standard third person view, along with another camera view that I haven't the faintest what to do with. This second camera view acts as your crosshairs. The key problem being that you can't change what direction you are going to run with the mouse, throwing the common WASD configuration out the door. And why is this here? No clue at all.

Kung Fu style

Nor did he expect one with a barcode

I think all the control issues arose from the fact that you can only run with one of the keys, as opposed to every key making you run in different directions. I don't know what compelled the developers to stray from what everybody else thought was perfectly fine. The controls are pretty whacked, but they can be adjusted with some practice, just don't expect to be playing every other FPS or TPS with any level of respectability for a while afterwards.

If we follow WASD convention: the W is the forward key, S is backward, with A and D chosen for strafing left and right. In every other game these keys also double as running keys, with another key used to toggle whether you run or walk, such as the shift key. Hitman choose to throw the norm out of the window, making the W key a run key with everything else remaining at walk speeds. To top it off, they made a separate walk key to go forward, this I mapped to Shift. The end result is that running sideways requires two keys, while running backwards is impossible. Is this the end of the control gripes? No.

Hey there buddy

What does it all say!?

In the tutorial level of the game the narrator brilliantly announces that the Hitman can go anywhere - up stairs, up ladders (on flat ground). The only thing he can't do? Jump. The Hitman can snipe a person hundreds of yards away, but he doesn't have the hops of a titmouse. Simple things like one-foot high ledges prove to be troublesome for our hero. One entire level must be completed according to the script because rubble not three feet high proved too much for our man Flint.

Ouch, the pain!

A mundane task like shooting straight down is made exceedingly difficult. I don't know how these control issues were missed, or if they intended the game to be like this. Why have the gods forsaken us? (Is it to ship before Christmas? Oh the curse of showing greater profits during Q4.)

Amazing, they move!

Some more

Hurdles that were surpassed years ago somehow made it into this game. If this was the first time these people had ever seen and developed a game like this it sure was a good effort, but is it really that hard to take a glimpse at Tomb Raider or Quake?

Control issues were the last issue that I thought would take this game down. And even so, I still didn't care; I was enjoying this game far too much to let something this large ruin the experience.

Umm hi!

You prostitutes are really forthcoming

Some of the few things that they did do right involve their menu system. Right clicking bring up a small menu of options that can be performed whether you are dragging a body or opening a door. Scrolling the wheel also brings up a menu of your items. I actually liked both of these systems, they might be useless in a multi-player game but they work perfectly here. Of course being able to bind a certain weapon to a key would have been a nice option but you can live without it in Hitman.