I played the first mission and beat it pretty easily just knocking out the one guy and stealing his keycard. Then, I played it again and disguised myself as a chef and put sleeping pills in his coffee. Then, I played it again and lured the guy away from everybody else by opening the shutters and waiting for him to close them. At that point, I was hooked.
There were a few stages where it was more set piece than anything (actually just smaller chapters of bigger stages) but, for the most part, even when it's "get from point A to point B", there's a lot of room for creativity. I can't stop playing it. I haven't even beaten it. Last night, I totally forgot about the mission and tried to figure out how many ways I could fuck up this one guys bachelor party. There wasn't even an official "hit" to pull off. It's the most accessible Hitman game, ever. Anybody could just blow through the game, killing everybody and making a big mess of things. Me? I prefer to leave my guns in their holster and make everything look like an accident.
Now, I agree with you that the costume thng could use a little work. It's fine for a group of five janitors to know that you're not one of them or a staff of tightly knit doctors. When EVERY cop in New York knows that you're just a guy wearing a costume, it's ridiculous. Of course, the game does give you a moment before they realize that you aren't who you're pretending to be and it's pretty easy to sneak around in the NPC's blind spot but there were times where I know they wouldn't have figure out that it was me. Then again, if you could just don a costume and walk through the whole level, where would the challenge be?
