Agent 47, the perfect assassin, returns in this fourth installment of IO Interactive’s M-rated, stealth-action Hitman series. And in Blood Money, business is good. So good, in fact, that there’s a new agency on the block looking to make a killing at your expense. As 47, it’s up to you to discover the secret behind this mysterious group before you find yourself on the business end of someone else’s sniper scope.

The game begins a few years in the past and introduces you to the controls and methods of the game as you make your way through a dilapidated amusement park en route to your target and gradually brings you back to the present as you progress. The opening mission is a little misleading, because its linearity stands in stark contrast to the open-ended nature of the levels to follow. It’s in player freedom where the real beauty of Hitman stands revealed. You can choose how you deal with your marks. All of them are suitably degenerate, so you don’t feel bad about ending their miserable lives (thanks IO!). If you want to kick down the front door for a bit of the “run-and-gun”, go crazy, though it isn’t advisable for reasons to be discussed later. If you don’t like guns, or are just allergic to gunpowder, you can leave’em at the hideout. If you’re patient enough and willing to wait for opportunities, you can successfully complete your missions with subtlety. It’s all up to you.

This is thanks in no small part to the exquisitely detailed level designs. Locations are imaginative and painstakingly rendered, like one level that takes place on the packed streets of New Orleans during Mardi Gras. This one was particularly fun and exciting, even for a grizzled old Hitman veteran like myself. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of stalking your quarry through a sea of humanity as they revel, oblivious to your passing, knowing full well that one false move on your part will send them all scattering like a flock of pigeons and bring the fuzz running. But I digress. Architecture feels real and is logically designed, while bystanders mill about fluidly. ICS stashes, placements for hiding bodies, and points of interest are seamlessly placed into each level so that everything feels organic, acting and reacting, like a living, breathing entity that you must think about and adapt to in order to overcome. Completing a professionally executed (pun intended) hit in Blood Money makes you feel more artist than assassin. And, professionalism pays off too.

As the title implies, this game is all about the cold, hard cash. After every mission you get paid, and the amount is directly dependent on how well you perform your tasks, not all of which involve assassination. If you dive in headfirst, with guns a-blazin’, you’ll leave a big mess that the agency is going to have to clean up. And who receives the dry cleaning bill? The guy with all the blood on his hands strangely enough. You know what they say about karma....

And it gets worse, because witnesses and videos of your heinous deeds left unattended will lead to a spike in your Notoriety (another new addition to the series). Notoriety is rated on a scale from 1 to 100 and signifies your bad rep in the world at large. The higher it is, the more likely you are to be recognized as the cold-blooded killer that you are by guards and the general public, making it that much more difficult for you to complete your assignments. On a side note, you get a little run-down of how you performed after completion of each mission in the form of a newspaper article all about your little adventures. These can be downright fun to read and hilarious when you see some of the sketches of 47 with middling notoriety. So, don’t pass them up.

But all is not lost, notorious ones. Thanks to a little bribery, all that heat you’ve built up can be cooled off with some of that blood money you’ve been saving. But of course, this cuts into your resources, too. And that means you’ll have less for what it was really intended: customization and intelligence. This time around 47 can purchase new additions and upgrades for his custom weapons and equipment. A variety of additions like silencers, extended clips and specialty ammo, laser sights and precision scopes, and a plethora of other gadgetry can be bought for your firearms. Even 47 himself can be pimped out with better lock picks, binoculars, painkillers and adrenaline for health boosts, Kevlar vests, etc. There are a whole lot of options, so many that you’ll probably have to decide which weapons are your faves so that you can funnel the majority of your cash into those. Another cool little addition is that you can actually view your little friends, complete with all their new attachments, before going into action and drool over just how sweet they look.

Another thing you can purchase, in mission, is intel on your target and the level itself. Basically you can purchase little tips (for a pittance each) that can help you get through the mission more smoothly. None of it is earth-shattering information and you could probably figure most of it out yourself through experimentation, but the tidbits can be helpful from time to time by opening your eyes to new possibilities you may be neglect- ing when rushing to finish the level.

But, why rush when you’ve got such great ambiance. I can’t say enough about the music. Jesper Kyd and IO have managed to create some truly inspiring tunes that not only add to the dark tone of the environments, but adapt to the situations you find yourself in, and change as the pressure waxes and wanes (the opera house still gives me chills). The voice work is some pretty good stuff, particularly in the CG cutscenes between levels. And I’d be remiss if I mentioned the cutscenes without hailing the writing. The dialogue is excellent and well delivered lending all the more to its believability. Seeing and hearing as much as we all do about cloning and stem-cell research in the real-world news just makes the cutscenes seem that much more plausible. You could see this stuff happening in real life.

There are few things to complain about in Blood Money, and those few things are minor annoyances at best. Though there’s finally bare-hand fighting (I found it funny that a genetically-engineered killing machine couldn’t throw a punch), it’s too repetitive. 47 only has two or three moves when he’s not armed. A little more variety there would have been nice. Also, when you actually “do someone in”, they ragdoll in the strangest fashion with limbs flailing at all angles. There are some ways that attached human limbs just don’t move. I’d like to see the bodies react a little more realistically in future iterations of the series. And now that next-gen system capabilities are here, the physics will no doubt improve in the coming years.

Open windows, while providing quick egress into a building, can be ticky when attempting to gain access. Sometimes I’ve had to pass in front of them several times to get 47 to actually go through…Kind of a pain in the backside when you’ve got guards coming and going and you need to be fast. It’s really a crapshoot in a situation where you need a sure thing. Another place where a bit more efficiency is needed is the item handling. I find accessing your stuff can be cumbersome. The problem comes when you’re trying to juggle more than one item at once and you’ve got to cycle through your entire inventory to get it. It sucks to pull out your detonator when you wanted your silenced silverballer and then have to rifle through your inventory only to find yourself out of position by the time you get the item you wanted. The only time you have an onscreen indicator of your active item is when it’s in your hand. Iit would have been much better to have the indicator stay up at all times as a reminder. Again these are all minor points, but it’s enough to cause ruin when the game you play is won by inches.

So what’s the final verdict, you ask? Without a doubt, Blood Money for the PS2 is the best Hitman of the series for the system. It’s easy to tell a lot of work went into the new engine. The major new additions are all, in my opinion, for the better and I hope that they remain for future installments of the Hitman franchise. With a few minor fixes (and future advances in next-gen technology) they can be virtually flawless. If you’ve played Hitman before, and enjoyed it, don’t even hesitate to hunt this one down, because you’ll enjoy Blood Money too. If this is your first walk down the shadowy path of the assassin, welcome aboard. There’s never been a better time to get into this amazing series.