10 Video Games With Genuinely Impressive Level Design

IO Interactive's recent Hitman reboot trilogy has been a major return to form for the series in every conceivable way. But even as great as the levels are in those games, it's hard to see how they could ever top the level design of Hitman: Blood Money, because what made Blood Money's levels special was the technical limitations that don't exist today.

Because of the smaller, arena-like levels, Blood Money didn't present the player with a boundless amount of freedom. Instead, it was more like an interconnected suite of methods and while you have the freedom to connect these methods virtually any way you want, some ways are better than others.

With the ultimate goal of every mission being to make your hit look like an accident, playing through Blood Money's missions felt like solving a series of elaborate puzzles. Almost like finding the fastest way to solve a Rubix Cube, the game rewarded iteration and experimentation as you turned and twisted its many components, looking for the most efficient possible combination.