Oops. Missed the 1st. It's only 40mins from New Year's Day tho', so I guess this will do. School starts tomorrow (although today feels like yesterday), and I really don't feel like repeating greetings.
So, Hitman: Blood Money. I got it over the hols, and Holy Shit is it good! The intense feeling you get as your hit gets buried under a pile of fallen twisted metal, or a cool breeze that passes the spot he was in before you pushed him to his death. The cold, satisfying pride that brims out of you as the target slums lifelessly back onto a sofa back, seemingly asleep as you walk past his guard and leave the place a silent assassin.
The music is an exhilarating complement (I have no idea how it lost to Oblivion's score for Best Video Game Soundtrack), and it builds the mood splendidly, like acrylics to a drawing, and it brings out the already terrifically vibrant colors and enhances dark, inky undercurrent that is always there, slinking. Some places are opulently lavished with detailed richness, both in atmosphere, and as a physical entity, where the cold, hard cash hides the shady secret of a hidden battlefield. Other places are seedy, perhaps dilapidated, like a faded name card to a past era of glory long wasted away. The quiet sea breeze, the creaking planks, the grim chime of bell, the loud music - they are all little nits that your hits hears, right before the world blackens out, the faint glimpse of a bald, cold man, impeccably dressed in a neat suit with a regal red tie the last thing they see.
10/10
