What’s The Funniest AI You’ve Run Into In A Game?

Recently, I’ve been replaying Hitman: Blood Money, both to compare it to the next game in the series hitting in November and also because I played the demo six years ago and just never got around to buying the game. And, hey, it’s an old game on Steam, so it was dirt cheap.

There’s a lot to love about the game: Sneaking up on your target and strangling them is a lot of fun, and figuring out the “accidents” in the game is a hoot in of itself.

But I’d forgotten about the game’s notorious AI, and quickly found myself, in my initial runs of each level, playing it in a way IO Interactive probably never intended.

Namely, I tried to figure out how little it would take to get the guards to start shooting me.

The game does have pretty good AI in most respects, but in this one, it’s more sheer comedy than anything else. Sometimes it makes sense, if the response is a bit drastic: Trespass in a criminal’s house and of course his guards are going to try to kill you.

But I found pretty quickly that you can piss off the guards for no obvious reason whatsoever and it’s hilarious. The words “proportionate response” do not exist in the Hitman universe. So far I’ve gotten shot by police officers for walking into a bar without a costume, stepping onto a stage without wearing a costume, being in a kitchen while wearing a costume, getting behind a bar dressed as a waiter, not putting down a cake, standing next to a yappy dog, and flipping a light switch on and off enough to annoy a passer-by, who then gets a police officer to shoot me.

It shouldn’t be this funny, but it is. I kind of hope Hitman: Absolution doesn’t “fix” this because while it’s mildly annoying at first, it rapidly becomes hilarious, especially since you’ll likely be restarting the level a few times to find the best possible solution to a few tough problems.

Either that or make playing with a light switch a killing offense.