Blood Money is probably my favorite game of all time. I have spent absurd amounts of my life playing it and have probably worn out one of my PS2s in the process.

I bought Hitman I when it was on sale a year ago and think it's a worthy successor to Blood Money. Has some good level design that reminds me of some of the levels in Blood Money, and the maps are quite large compared to the ones from the PS2 era. They also put a bit more emphasis on "accidents" than in the PS2 games and have more creative ways of causing them (like in Blood Money replacing the prop gun with the real one to kill the actor, except even more elaborate).

The demo levels for Hitman I are fun in and of themselves, though the maps are smaller (analogous to a PS2 map in size) if you wanted to try the game out.

They didn't get Jesper Kyd to do the soundtrack, so sound is a step down from the PS2 games he did the soundtrack for.

The only reason I didn't buy Hitman II was they didn't have a Linux port. I plan on getting it now that I have a Windows box able to play it since it looks very similar to Hitman I with some different levels. I don't know anything about III.

My main criticisms of the newer games:

• they provide too many hints on how to do stuff. But they let you turn them all off and have a more unguided experience as was in the older games.
• The piano wire is largely obsolete as a weapon since the batons are more versatile since you can throw them, and you can kill people without a weapon. This wouldn't be an issue except that I'm somewhat of a purist.
• They don't let you look through keyholes anymore to see into another room, though they have an "instinct" feature that kinda lets you do this.