And after I was very rude about the number of mods there are featuring psychotic assassins set loose in a world gone mad only two posts ago, here’s Perfection, which features a… mentally disturbed hitman roaming free in London town (which is fairly mad at the best of times). God, I’m a hypocrite. Before I leap off the nearest tall building in shame, let me take the time to explain this is a mod from developers N104, a group of students at Staffordshire university, who’ve decided to expand what was originally a piece of coursework into a full-blown project. Scouting locations, spying on your targets from afar, figuring out the best way to make the kill, trying to ignore the voices in your head; it’s all here. Well, perhaps not that last bit.

It looks remarkably polished, with the Source engine coaxed into producing a startlingly detailed recreation of the Big Smoke, at least as far as general details go. No question this team have a fair amount of talent, though I do still have some misgivings. It has to be said this is looking uncomfortably like Hitman meets The Getaway with a sprinkling of psychosis thrown in for no real reason, which is all very well, but still a tad… derivative? On top of that, while some of the details are fantastic, there aren’t that many of them. Obviously these are works in progress, but it’s not making for a particularly convincing living city. Source can do an awful lot, but it’s got some definite limitations.

Still, urban grime rather than Hitman’s flashy international jet-setting does have its attractions, and again, this is a very professional looking piece of work, even relatively early on. I hope they flesh out the concept so it’s a little more than ‘He’s an assassin! And he’s a nutter!‘ but it’s definitely one to watch either way.

You can find Perfection’s page on ModDB here.