Right first review for all those who didn't manage to pick this up off the floor at the LAN...
T'all starts reasonably cultured, with some random bird warbling the 'ave maria'. good first impressions, cos it'll run decent on my computer (Athlon 64 4000+, 1GB ram, Radeon x800GTO) at 1280x1024, so lets have a go.
Now I have to declare an interest here, because there hasn't been a sneaky stealth type game that hasn't appealed to me, Thief/MGS/Deus Ex 1/Splintercell, so I would probably have liked this anyway.
First level loads in, after video of a bunch of kids getting their comeuppance .... I mean, after some children get brutally cut down in their prime. The first mission involves taking out a fun-fair boss whose negligence killed the above children.
Now I thought you were a bit spoon fed on this mission,. as the game told you where to go, how to kill people, and where to dispose of the bodies. then I realised that Eidos had managed to integrate the tutorial with the main story in a way that didn't stick out like a sore thumb. during the first levels you will pick up most of the skills your gonna need (silent kills, sneaking past guards, fancy dress, bad acting etc), without sounding patronising, the tutorial does a good job.
With the 'swing king' well and truly deaded, we move on, to a mission involving 2 drug lords in a south American country. and in at the deep end, your given 2 targets, a location for extraction, and a whole mansion to play with. Wanna go postal and shoot every one? there's not enough ammo around to do the whole lot in a one-er, but you can have a go. want to knock some poor sod unconscious and steal his knickers? crack on son. want to lay an ingenious trap involving a landmine, a remote detonator and a rubber chicken? off you go. NB, no rubber chickens available as far as I know.
The missions really are up to you. you have an opportunity during missions to buy (more later) intel from the agency you work for, and this intel gives you places of interest to investigate. Also during the missions, you often receive picture in picture about what is happening near your target, which allows you to plan.
About that buy thing I mentioned up there ^. each mission gives you money (depending how well you did during the previous mission) which allows you to upgrade your guns and kit for the next. If you think your gonna gun down every poor sod that gets in your way, then buy extended magazines and a better butt-stock. Not planning on using your guns, but want to be discreet if you have to? Then buy a silencer and some subsonic ammo. During missions, you can buy ammo. For instance, in one level, you have to kill an opera singer. Now you could just snipe him from miles away, but I found out during that during the opera he practises, the lead tenor gets shot during an execution scene. and the agency has left me a replacement for the blank firer normally used for this scene.
This game is extremely open ended, and allows you complete freedom to do what ever you think will aid you in the execution (see what I did there?.....oh please yourselves) of your contracts. Plus it allows you to dress up as a chicken and kill oodles of party goers, or to kill a FBI agent by pouring ether on the young girls knickers that he keeps sniffing.
all in all, I give this game about 912/10. If you don't understand this rating, check at your local software retailing floor and have a look at it yourself. I likes it enough to have tripped over it on the floor, and I'm STILL gonna buy it. Its that good. Plus you can dress as a clown, and gun down millions of people!
What more do you need? (apart from a shorter more concise review? and in the right post.... cheers cashy!)
