In my opinion, there are no bad Hitman games. Each game has its plus and minus but I don't consider any of them to be awful. Even though I don't enjoy the mobile games as much, they aren't as bad as others in the market.
I've not played Hitman 2 yet.
Last Update: December 27th, 2018
My first exposure to Hitman and I still love it to this day. It's probably the most personal entry in the series as it explored religion, friendship, trust and culture. The gameplay has shown its age but overall, Silent Assassin still holds up and it's my favourite Hitman game.
Contracts is a pretty short game but I find the gameplay to be the tightest and most responsive. Plus, it's nice to revisit some old missions from the first game.
When this game first came out in 2016, I was at the point where I'd lost interest in stealth games and moved on to other genre. That's what happens when you grow old; you lose patience easily and started gravitating towards fast-paced/no-thinking man's game.
After a 2 year hiatus, I went to play Hitman 2016 and it felt like a breath of fresh air again. The developers did a great job of retaining the spirit of the series while improving the mechanics a lot more.
Back then, the cinematics look outstanding but now they're nothing short of cringey. The missions in Blood Money aren't as fun as its predecessors imo. However, the song Apocalypse still gives me goosebumps every time I hear it. So eerie, epic and beautifully crafted. It's too bad Blood Money is the last game to feature Jesper Kyd as main composer.
It felt as if IO Interactive tried to copy the Batman Arkham games in Absolution, which was all the rage at the time. The stealthy approach is still there but I feel it emphasizes too much on action, which is not the highlight of Hitman whether you agree or not.
Plot is meh and the intense bloom in cutscenes is incredibly overwhelming and outdated. Furthermore, the extra mechanics they added in here are not that great.
Every aspiring game company has to start somewhere and IO Interactive is no different. You can tell the developers didn't know any better when making Codename 47 because the game was filled with game design flaws: zero checkpoints, no manual saves, insane difficulty, not-so-clever enemy AI and bad voice acting.
You'd think with these defects it makes the game unplayable or broken. I disagree. In fact, it makes the game more fun because it adds challenge. Codename 47 is definitely the hardest game in the series but I have fond memories playing it. With the excellent score by Jesper Kyd and nostalgic graphics, it's hard to not like the game.
A bit of history: Codename 47 was touted as one of the first games to introduce rag doll physics in the industry. That deserves some credit.
