Change Your Image
Targetius
Reviews
Hellsing Ultimate (2006)
Well worth watching - especially after first two episodes
I'll re-add this as it was supposed to be in the first place.
Hellsing OVA follows pretty much the same plot as the TV series did. Alucard, a powerful vampire who is working for his master Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing and her organization, is killing vampires and their minions known as ghouls. Pretty much all Japanese voice actors are back in their roles. I have to say that I liked the original TV series. The OVA, I believe, follows much better the manga, though I've never read it. This anime is almost ridiculous few times. Now, at times, there isn't much that separates this one from many other flashy trying-to-be-a-lot-at-the-same-time animes.
CGI have been used a lot now and therefore it basically looks better, but the art isn't always looking that great. It's not as simple as it was back in the old Hellsing, and there's some new styles and techniques and such, but at times it could look a bit better. Actually sometimes it even lacks stability and dimensionality on characters. If you don't like computer effects in anime, you might not like this one since there's lots of them. One of those things that make this OVA kind of ridiculous is the huge amount that those computer effects are used. There's also some weird lines, and few things the characters do are somewhat ridiculous.
Alucard seems to talk more, but where in TV series he was cool and you saw that he was powerful, it's now usually stated by others that he is a powerful vampire. I guess that this time the new team tried to make him somewhat deeper, but if they succeeded is pretty much flickering. This time he isn't such a mystery and there's as soon as in the first episode much information revealed about him. Still he is pretty much the same Alucard, which is great.
It's not totally hopeless anime, I have to say. If you are going to watch this, I think you should watch all of the 13 episodes of Hellsing ("Herushingu" 2002) before that, so that you could see what is different and what kind of anime that was.
The soundtrack unfortunately isn't even near the original ones soundtrack. It's not that bad, but the old Hellsing had a great one. This new Hellsing seems to rush some scenes a bit, and in good and bad it's very fast going. However, OVA gets much more interesting when the series goes further and there's new stuff, something you couldn't see in Hellsing TV series. But whether you are a Hellsing fan or not, this is still a piece of work to check out.
Hitman: Contracts (2004)
A bit disappointing - but still "Hitman"
"Hitman: Contracts" must be the weakest one in the "Hitman" series. Second one was a bit disappointing in my opinion too. It didn't improve much from the original one and the missions weren't that good. "Hitman Blood Money" however, was exactly what I hoped from a sequel.
There's not much new in Contracts and the missions are not that special in any way. Those remade missions from the first one could have been nice, even though replayed, but they missed exactly those points that made them so good in the first one. They were too different to be as good as the original ones, and too much like the old ones to be good on their own. New missions were very much mediocre. None of them stood high above others. They had some nice parts too, though.
The game happens almost completely in Agent 47's head, in form of flashbacks, and therefore you don't really get any money nor do you need to select any weapons. It's also missing other interesting parts and actually even a story. The "story" isn't very long or wide or anything like that, but I can tell (without giving any spoilers), that it has a lot to do with "Hitman: Blood Money".
In the end, I'd label this one as the weakest of "Hitmans", but still worth playing through. And by the way, I found it extremely easy at normal to beat this game and also kinda easy to get the silent assassin rank in many missions.
Hitman: Blood Money (2006)
Blood pays well
I have to say that "Hitman" games (and I mean pretty much all of them) are great. The first one maybe a bit better in some ways than the second one, but that's irrelevant and everyone can decide by themselves.
Anyway, I think that "Hitman: Blood Money" is a nice upgrade to the series. It has pretty much everything good that there was before and some new things too. One of the newer things is killing the targets by making a fake accident. That's great, but basically it could make you feel a bit that "it's the only real" or "right way" to go with the mission. That might limit the freedom a little, but of course you can still kill your targets in the old fashioned way. That's still absolutely only your choice, and the accident is only one more way to eliminate your personal VIP.
One interesting thing is also the newspaper that appears to the screen right after the mission. Eventually your face can get to the front page if you're seen by too many people, or if you don't bribe anyone. The newspaper always talks about your last murder. That's one thing I noticed to be a bit annoying, since even if you don't kill anyone and make the murder look like an accident, they still magically know that it was a murder.
However, in the end, "Hitman: Blood Money" is a great game. The story might not be extremely interesting or unpredictable, but it's much more interesting to follow than nothing. And many of the missions are very great. You get a lot of money, but if you try to be as silent as possible, you don't have to use 'em that much. I'd recommend this to everyone who wants to be a virtual hit-man for a while, as well as to everyone who likes previous "Hitman" games.