Interface, Controls and Sound

Be gone ye controls of doom!

Yes, the controls in the first Hitman were quite possibly one of the most unintuitive beasts in the history of the shooter. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, or a geneticist for that matter, to know a genetically engineered super assassin should be able to do fundamental things like walk backwards and jump. The good news is you can now walk backwards, the bad news is you still can’t jump.

Scoping the field

Hide!

Be vewy vewy quiet!

However, IO Interactive obviously saw a need to address a number of interface and control issues that simply had to be dealt with for the franchise to proceed. You now can lean around corners, you have a toggleable button to run, when you draw your garrote, you hold the button to pull it back and now release to wrap it around some poor sap’s neck, not to mention a whole other briefcase’s worth of updates. Don’t like how your camera is blocking the action? Use your mouse wheel to zoom it in and out a wee bit, or drop into first person if that suits your flare.

The controls in Hitman 2 do not suck, in fact, if you hadn’t played the original you would have no idea how far the controls have come. You still can’t jump, which is a major gripe, but the levels are designed well enough that not only does the player not need to jump, it’s also not really on his mind as he is sneaking through bushes and scurrying along walls.

Staccato gunfire

Many a developer has come to the realization of how important sound is to a single player game. Hitman 2 is not a slouch in the arena of sound. The guns sound as real as they come, the ballers, shotgun and desert eagle shake your speakers with bass as you pump some crazed middle eastern cultist full of lead, and the silenced 9mm leaves a soft “pfft” in its wake.

Sweet ride

Nobody suspects the postman

A happy way to die

The sound excellence isn’t limited to weaponry. 47, in his return to the art of the man hunt trots around the globe again, but this time, IO Interactive populated the levels with a number of authentic speakers of the native tongues. Shoot a Yakuza member in the leg and you can watch him drop to the ground and curse in colorful Japanese, or Russian when you’re in St. Petersburg, Italian while in Sicily, and the list goes on.

Away from the simple sounds of the game, Hitman 2 has easily one of the better soundtracks of this year. Played by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, the soundtrack not only integrates elements of the music native to the area you are in, but also depending on the situation you are in the music changes seamlessly. You are walking along a rooftop crouched over in stealth mode and you have a slow ponderous tune, as you grow closer to the action the tempo picks up, until you are almost seen where it reaches a crescendo, and then cools back down as you fade into the shadows. The soundtrack is not only outstanding, but such excellent use of it makes it even more memorable.