Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

The main way I used to play games was via demos on magazine coverdiscs, and the demo I remember most fondly was for Hitman: Codename 47.

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Any time a new Hitman [official site] game rolls around, I need to know the answer to one question: can I royally screw basically everything up and get away with it? Not for me the Silent Assassin, but more a series of pratfalls, murders performed inadvertently in plain sight, panicked costume changes and awkward scuffles, inevitably culminating in a desperate sprint to the exit with a chain of armed and extremely angry guards pursuing me. So I am delighted to discover that the new Hitman game supports this kind of rolling disaster.

I even managed to complete a mission which began with me choking a man unconscious in front of roughly 200 people who I somehow hadn’t realised were watching me.

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Below you will find the 25 best stealth games ever released on PC. There are sneaking missions, grand thefts, assassinations, escapes and infiltrations. Stay low, keep quiet and we’ll make it to the end.

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Alice is on holiday, leaving it to me to ask us and you that timeless question: whatcha playin’ there buddy?

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Absolution might be a fitting tag for what looks like a return to form and a casting off of the sins of the past, but since that subtitle’s already taken, I’m hoping I’ll be able to justify referring to this one as Hitman: Redemption [official site]. So far, the signs are good. I spent some time in the company of IO Interactive’s studio head, Hannes Seifert, as he played through a mission set at a Paris fashion show. As he manipulated NPCs behaviour and demonstrated some emergent possibilities, Seifert said all the right things about recovering the best of the series’ past. The game – this portion of it at least – backs him up convincingly. It’s looking good.>

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We have Opinions about Absolution, the most recent Hitman game, ’round these parts. Opinions which not everybody shares, but everybody should because famously we’re always 100% Objectively Correct in all things. Despite some grasping at greatness, it seemed a disservice to Hitman as we knew it. Meanwhile, in Mobileland, whispers spread that there was, in fact, a pretty great latter-day Hitman. Its name was Hitman GO, it looked lovely>, and it was a sort of stealth-themed sliding block puzzle which looked like a miniatures wargame. Though mechanically very different to any Hitman game, as I understand it Go nonethless conjures up a lot of their spirit – perhaps more so than 2012’s Absolution was. It was also acclaimed as something of an original. Sadly, it was banished to portables. Until now: suddenly, it’s on PC. There is, alas, a catch. … [visit site to read more]

Although winners have yet to be announced in the recent Make Arma Not War competition, the judges have published the shortlisted finalists. As a result a series of levels inspired by Hitman: Blood Money – far and away the best game in the Hitman series – have been brought to our attention. You can download ‘em over here.

There are eight Arma III [official site] levels in all, each inspired by one of Blood Money’s intricate scenarios. … [visit site to read more]

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

This one’s regularly cited as a cult classic that didn’t quite get the acclaim it deserved at the time, but it bears repeating: Blood Money is io’s stealth game at the peak of its powers.

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And then suddenly Hitman: Blood Money was free to play in a web browser.

Core Online, Square Enix’s foray into the world of online gaming, is a system that lets you play ad-supported HD games in your browser, where you earn gaming time by watching ads. And they’re launching it with one of the more loved Hitman games, Blood Money, along with Mini Ninjas. I have taken a look, and it’s safe to say the system is in something of a mess at the moment. But it remains an interesting idea.

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Agent Griliopoulos was dispatched to see the game formerly known as Hitman: Subtitle for us. He returned bathed in blood, dressed as a sailor, and bearing these words. Update: now with brand new screenshots!>

Oh, we are skeptical souls at RPS. Though we loved Hitman: Blood Money, we have been somewhat wary of Hitman: Absolution. Partially, because there are mild changes to something we loved (like when the X-Files replaced Mulder with T-1000) and partially because Kane & Lynch left us colder than Captain Oates. The new level we saw yesterday had the chance to allay our fears though, set as it was in a lovely orphanage. What can go wrong in a lovely orphanage?

Jumping back from the lovely orphanage for a second, we were given a quick rundown of the game’s backstory before Agent 47 got to meet all those lovely nuns. (more…)