The genesis of what would be the wide-spanning Hitman franchise, Codename 47 walked so its sequels could run. Being a bit on the older side, the game is a bit irregular in how it plays 23 years later. Most older games are clunky in movement, organization, or precise aiming. Hitman is meritoriously free of these issues. Where it does stumble is in its enemy AI, damage numbers, and its excruciating propensity to get you stuck on random geometry like foliage. The enemies must be trained by John Wick himself with how pinpoint accurate they often are, further helped by a very small player health pool that will have you watch Agent 47 collapse dramatically 4-5 times a mission on the low end. And for some reason, enemy aggro frequently persists even after retries, making restarts a necessity at times. Though sometimes even that’s not required, as some enemies will just shoot you on sight through no provocation. It makes for a tedious time when evading is regularly incentivized over openly disguising yourself or having fun with the missions.

Least counterable of all and most aggravating personally, Agent 47 loves nothing more than to find himself stuck on an errant polygon, doomed to strand me forever as I frantically move my mouse to free my foolish compatriot. The free-camera “camera mode” worked half the time to unstuck me, but a sizable portion of runs were completely ruined by this problem. Predictably, that would be the final nail in the coffin for me. After getting stuck for the umpteenth time I decided to cut my losses and quit the game after the jungle mission. Codename 47 is inextricably a part of gaming history, but there’s really no reason to play it over its subsequent titles.