Hitman 2 is the sequel to the great and popular classic Hitman: Codename 47. We begin the game in a Sicilian church, you get a chance to get to grips with the controls which are similar to the first so if you’ve played that then you will find it easy to immerse yourself into the seedy dark underworld life of 47. After confession with 47’s religious mentor everything goes down hill, he gets kidnapped and you, as 47, are forced to re-enter the life that you gave up to get him back. Hmmm original enough storyline for a game I suppose.
Many a person to be killed, met or avoided on your travels which take you far and wide. You go from Sicily to St. Petersburg to Malaysia to Japan to Nuristan and to India, so that’s a fair trek across the globe and plenty opportunities for the designers to give us varied levels and visual treats.
I’ll not spoil the story to much for you so onto the important stuff….
Thankfully Eidos have addressed the issues that spoiled the original. The A.I. has been tweaked with and is a far cry from the poor show the A.I. put up in the original. The interface has been vastly improved which was what annoyed me most about the first and although the controls are similar they have tweaked a little which makes it so much easier to play the game. Graphically they have a new engine that makes the first game look pitiful. So all in all they have made not a bad job of things so far.
The graphics really do deserve a little more praise. The visuals are just so fluid, so much work must’ve gone into the animation of the game, everything is so realistic and lifelike. You see people going for a slash against walls and tree’s, guards go for fag breaks and adjust their gangster shades, every time you strangle someone to death they react a different way but my personal favourite is when you empty your load into someone with the ballers you can see their body recoil with every shot until they are actually blown away by the force, its sheer class.
The levels are better than ever, the attention to detail is outrageous and it now has bump mapping support so it just blows the original away in every way. The locales of the levels are superbly chosen but without the aforementioned attention to detail they just wouldn’t be the same, especially with the winter scenes in St. Petersburg and Japan, the weather effects are pretty damn good. Snow is blown and swirled away by the wind, just all the little details make the whole thing work so well together, they are not just good to look at but they help immerse the player in the game.
The sound in this game is also worthy of a mention. Not only are the guns sounds incredibly realistic, not only is the speech a master piece with each guard cursing in their native tongue as they get nailed by gunfire but the soundtrack is pretty amazing. It is played by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra and it fits extremely well with the game and adapts to the surroundings and action of the game, slow paced atmospheric ambience when in the shadows the builds up as the action increases makes it not just good but memorable.
The gameplay is so much better than the original, for example, although the first game required lots of stealth, it did not feature a save option which, although adds plenty stealth and makes the game a lot more challenging for some, for others it just makes it frustrating. So luckily Hitman 2 does feature a save option, exshellenty.
IO Interactive have stated that you can choose to play the stealth way or the action way, the latter is much more fun the stealth is where the beauty of the gameplay really shines. Sneak up behind a lone guard, pop a bullent in the back of his head with a silent weapon of your choice, drag him somewhere hidden, take his clothes and just as his replacement jives round the corner you can stroll past him. They have also added an awareness meter so you know when to be careful because even when dressed as a guard if you are seen running around with a shotgun they get a little suspicious.
The game doesn’t ever limit the way you achieve your ultimate goal, your gonna send someone to an early grave but how you do it is your choice. You can sneak around and sniper your target, you can use car bombs or get the biggest gun you can find and charge in bullets flying and any combination of stealth and action you see fit. You are also rewarded with bonus saves if you find different and original routes to your target, which is nice. However bonus are little in this game no matter what way you play it. You could spend an age setting up the perfect assassination on your target or spend 5 minutes charging through the level, but if you do that then you won’t really challenge yourself or get the point to the game, its called Hitman for a reason. Another benefit to the way of the Hitman is that the A.I. in the game, although vastly improved, still isn’t the hottest around, the guards pretty much just charge at you with no order or method. So it gets pretty boring quickly if you just mow them down with an uzi. So in a nutshell you can do whatever you want to get your target and get as involved in the game as you want.
However the A.I. does have some good points if you choose the way of stealth. For example if you steal a guards clothes in the first level, all the guards are familiar with each other and it doesn’t take long to get rumbled, however take the postman’s clothes and you can walk in. Also if you are spotted then the A.I. will be on the look out for a bald man or a suspicious looking soldier etc. Also for example, in the Japanese levels you can’t disguise yourself because he certainly doesn’t look Asian, and if you are wearing soldiers uniform and you are walking around with an Uzi, they wonder why you haven’t got a standard AK-47.
Although there are many, many fine points about this game, but it is let down in one area in particular, it seems to be a common problem with a lot of people. The games seems to crash quite a lot, even with up to date drivers and everything else working perfectly, it is certainly not the most stable of games on the pc, perhaps all the attention to detail has a price to pay. Apparently tweaking around with some of the game settings, particularly the sound acceleration seems to aid this but I think it’s just something that you’re going to have to deal with if you play this game because even with a variety of different hardware and software configurations it is still commonplace. Ah well, nothings perfect. Also there could be a wider variety of weapons and especially silent weapons for the silent assassins amongst you. For the type of game it is, the length of it could be longer, because I don’t think there’s enough to keep you interested in the game after you have completed it.
However, although there are a few cons to this game, there is nothing to spoil it really and considering the advances they made from the first game, I look forward to the newest title that should be out fairly soon, think I’m going to get it for the xbox because this ol’ P.C. probably wouldn’t be able to handle the newest games out.
So all in all this is a fine game and it’s been out for a bit now and since the new Hitman title won’t be long I dare say you can pick it up pretty cheaply.
That’s All Folks!
More details
Addictiveness
Compulsive
Originality
Excellent - very original
Value for money
Good value
Longevity/Expected Longevity
a few months
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