Hitman: Blood Money LA

How does one go about becoming a hitman? Is it a job you can aim for at school by telling the careers officer about your ability to torture insects? And how about getting your foot in the door of the local hitman agency? We've never come across their offices in town and we've yet to find their entry in the Yellow Pages.

Agent 47, the star of Hitman: Blood Money LA, doesn't give anything away or offer any advice on starting out in the business, either. Looks like an apprenticeship is out of the question.

Actually, we don't think there would be a lot more to learn after playing this. Hitman takes you through the basics of using a garrotte, stun gun, and a variety of pistols and larger firearms as you go about your business finding mafia bosses, moles and compromised agents. It's on-the-job training, if you will.

You start by working on your stealth, because if you're sneaking into a private hospital, as you do in the opening four missions of the game, there are guards aplenty to avoid. If you make too much noise or aren't careful enough when moving around the sterile, white corridors, their attention will be piqued.

It's a good job, then, that you enjoy an elevated isometric viewpoint that enables you to see around corners and inside rooms before you actually enter them. Although Hitman: Blood Money LA is strictly a 2D game, it provides you with much more freedom than if it had been a simple sideways-scrolling affair.

The visual perspective also gives you the scope to wait around corners to hobble guards that approach from the other direction, hide from pursuers, and generally be a pain in the side of the criminal network that you've been contracted to infiltrate.

You're aided in your work by the ordinary objects that you find lying about, including the clothes of the guards, doctors and civilians that you incapacitate. Disguises play a big part of getting around, and certain areas can only be accessed if you're masquerading as a physician, for example.

In addition to the costume changes, keycards, bottles of medicine and closed-circuit TV cameras must also be employed if you're to get a glowing reference from the nameless, faceless manager who gives you your orders at the start of each level.

A definite knack for lateral thinking, in other words, should be part of your résumé. How you go about reviving a sedated hospital patient who you need to question is just one of the challenges that, whilst not exactly fiendishly difficult, has to be addressed.

Indeed, it's just one element of an overriding theme: Hitman: Blood Money LA could be described as, if you were fond of over-used clichés, a thinking persons' shooter. You can't simply stroll into the joint and open up with your sub-machine gun – the odds are stacked against you if you want to start an all-comers fire-fight.

There's another, less obvious reason you can't make like a Wild West gunslinger, too, and that's that the controls simply won't let you. While you can easily get to where you want to go within a level, you're tightly confined to walking along particular axis due to the way that the levels are designed.

It's not terribly fluid and doesn't encourage anything short of a regimented march, though you can switch between walking and running – something that's essential in the later levels. But it isn't really something that hurts your chances of qualifying for the position of hitman, either, because it encourages you to take your time, think about your path and not rush into anything foolhardy.

The considered approach is what'll make you or break you as a hired gun in Hitman: Blood Money LA. If you're a quick learner and someone who's prepared to think outside the box, you're hired.