HITMAN 2 REVIEW

[| TG |]

- To keep your typical sequel expectations in check, it's probably best to think of Hitman 2 as season 2 of the 2016 revival; it doesn’t have many new features, but it does deliver all six of its clever murder sandboxes at once. The huge variety of options for pulling off stealthy kills makes playing and replaying them a majorly satisfying draw. Beyond that, though, Agent 47 barely gets any new toys to play with and the story around it is just embarrassing on multiple levels.

- Unlike most games, which love to send you to outlandish and exotic places, the Hitman series works best when you’re taking down targets in the most relatable, everyday environments possible. Everyone remembers Hitman: Blood Money’s classic clown-at-the-birthday-party mission, for example. Similarly, Hitman 2’s mundane suburban Vermont and dense Mumbai slums missions are the standouts in this new set. The former has you doing a bit of home invasion in between wandering the quiet neighborhood, while the latter’s three objectives are so spread out that it really feels like you’re wandering a packed city with a wealth of ways to accomplish your mission. By contrast, the finale takes place on a ludicrous Bond-meets-Eyes-Wide-Shut island of cultists, which borders on the comical. It’s still a challenging and complex mission but isn’t quite as memorable.

- Like any good stealth game, Hitman 2 doesn’t just ask for your patience – it demands it. The slightest failure can completely ruin your entire mission (or turn it into a big, loud shootout, which isn’t really the point of this game) but smartly deployed autosaves and the ability to do a manual save anywhere mean you never lose too much progress unless you’re on the highest difficulty, which limits you to one save per mission. It can still get frustrating to fail over and over, but you have to remember that there are so many choices in any given level that you can completely change your approach if something isn’t working. When I wanted to pick off one specific guy in a room first but had no luck luring him over with a tossed coin without someone else noticing the kill, I simply went into an adjacent room, found a radio, and turned it on in order to distract the guy who was noticing my illicit shenanigans. Problem solved! There is always another way in this game.

- That said, Hitman 2, as smart as it usually is, can sometimes be really stupid when the AI goes wonky. In Vermont, I hid in the bathroom of a heavily guarded house, overflowed the sink, and then cleaned out a dozen or so dimwitted goons who just kept coming to investigate the distraction, one at a time. It was funny, but it’s hard to feel good about winning that way. What good is being a master assassin when your targets literally line up to be murdered?

- Hitman 2 doesn’t add much of note to the structure of its predecessor and thus feels more like Hitman 1.5 than a full-blown sequel. But that’s not a bad thing. By offering more of the deepest, fullest stealth sandboxes in gaming in one single package rather than six episodic ones, it earns its keep. The inclusion of Hitman (2016) is a bonus for those that didn’t catch the reboot initially. Here’s hoping they put more effort into the plot next time.

Release Date : Nov. 13, 2018