Gameplay

So many ways to kill, so little time

The first Hitman suffered from a few problems in relation to gameplay. It presented religiously deliberate gameplay requiring stealth and sneaking, but didn’t offer a save system. The lack of a save system in the first game certainly created quite a bit of tension, but it also presented a heck of a lot of frustration. The player sets up his assassination perfectly with the bomb and the poison and the sniper rifle and th… and then someone sees you and it breaks out to a firefight. Hitman 2 not only offers a number of saves based on the difficulty level you choose, but also touts a more interesting fighting system so in case a firefight does go down, it’s not quite as plain as the first game.



Though IO Interactive is billing Hitman 2 as a game where you can choose action or stealth, the game truly shines when you choose the latter. As a stealth assassin you can turn a hall, whip out your silenced 9 millimeter and pop the head of a goon rounding the corner. Sprint over, and drag the goon’s body into an alcove just as his partner rounds the corner, you don the dead goon’s clothes and walk right past. Be careful, for every second you hang around you run the risk of opponents catching onto you, as shown by the addition of an “awareness” meter in the corner of your screen, showing how at risk you are to being discovered.

The game also offers a number of different creative solutions to situations, yes, they all boil down to you killing your target, but all the levels offer at least two methods, the Rambo charge or stealth, but then also numerous breakdowns between those. For example in one scenario you are trying to kill two targets meeting in a park, you might simply climb a local building and take two difficult shots with a sniper rifle. Perhaps you prefer to take down a couple bodyguards and your targets with double car-bombs to blow them up when they try to leave. You might simply wait for them to each walk past and pop them from a distance with the silenced nine millimeter, and let’s not forget the aforementioned guns blazing method.

The game has a number of different pathways and methodologies to it, and the game rewards you with bonus saves as you try out obscure ideas or explore parts of the map that aren’t necessarily quintessential to the path at hand.

Beautiful

chef 47

Stand still

Hey! You there!

But in application, the game doesn’t always play in the stealth mode. The simple fact is, it’s ludicrously easy just to walk into a room and blow everything up with an AK-47. The other issue is, besides three levels out of 20, there is absolutely no reward for being a faceless ghost leaving only a whiff of cologne and discarded suits behind you. On those three levels, you can get bonus guns, on the others, it’s a pat on the back from your local assassin grading school and a big thumbs up. Why take an hour to assassinate a Mafia don when you could do it in two minutes? The reward is strictly personal, which is one thing you must realize when you sit down to play Hitman 2, if you blaze through the levels just fighting everything, the game is ludicrously easy. You’re very likely to finish it in a sitting or two, if you bother finishing it at all. For the complete experience you have to pursue stealth assassin status, even if it’s just for your own satisfaction.

The AI for fighting is absolutely terrible, enemies don’t flank you, don’t attack in pairs, don’t take cover. They simply rush at you in hordes to be cut down by an SMG or an AK-47. The combat AI in Hitman 2 is a call back to Doom. Aggravated guards can be kept out of rooms by repeatedly closing the door on them. All of this is incentive not to pick a fight, and instead go with the flow and be an assassin.

Some mood music

Action stations!

The wifebeater

Which is where the AI truly shines. The stealth detection AI in Hitman 2 is simply awe inspiring and curse inducing. The AI will catch on to subtle nuances that at first you think are bugs, and later on realize are positive features. For example, in the first level, which is available in the demo, you are infiltrating a mafia don’s house. If you whack one of the bodyguards and take his clothes your chances of being detected are high as the bodyguards work together and know each other. If you whack the delivery man coming in, you are able to freely roam around the estate without your disguise being revealed as no one is on intimate terms with the mailman, but as a result you can’t get into places that a bodyguard would be able to get into. The AI is so advanced that if you are spotted and get away, the guards will then be looking for a bald man or a mailman (makes you wish 47 would invest himself a membership at the Hair Club for Men –ed), and you’ll be forced to change your guise again to throw them off.

This intelligence in the detection AI is true in all the levels, but also offers variance. For example on the Japanese levels your disguises are useless, you’re not Japanese now are you? What if you whack a Russian soldier and take his uniform and walk around with a submachine gun out? Well when the Russian soldiers who have standard issue AK-47s begin to wonder where you got that SMG at you can try and come up with a story, but the jig is definitely up.