In today’s ruthless industry, few franchises get to enjoy the longevity that Hitman has. First releasing eighteen years ago, the series has gradually struggled to balance everything just right. The first two games are incredibly unforgiving. Blood Money was great, but too easy. Absolution took the series in a different (controversial) direction entirely that I’d argue most didn’t enjoy. With the pseudo-reboot HITMAN, IO Interactive tried episodic delivery with a renewed focus on tight level design and were largely successful. Now, no longer episodic, HITMAN 2 refines everything from it’s predecessor almost perfectly to offer one of the best experiences in gaming this year.
HITMAN 2 follows on from the story of HITMAN, where Agent 47 and Diana discover all their targets thus far have been assigned to them by the same person, a mysterious “shadow client”. The Shadow Client has one major goal to bring the fight to another shadowy organisation known only as Providence, an Illuminati-esque cabal that controls the worlds in secrecy. While not totally aligned with his motivations, Agent 47 and Diana continue to take contracts from these groups to get closer to them and discover who they really are.
But story isn’t the reason you’d play a game like HITMAN 2. You play a game like HITMAN 2 for its quality level design and absurdist sense of humour. The game delivers this in droves. The move away from an episodic model obviously means you can easily rush through the story and call it a day, but to do so would be a betrayal to the strong design that’s on show here.
Going back to HITMAN 2 – New Zealand, for example, is a smaller mission that subverts your expectations in the way it plays out but acts as a perfect introduction to how Hitman games work. Vermont and Scotland both have clever gimmicks that change up how you approach your targets, despite the former being smaller than most Hitman maps. Whereas Miami, Colombia and Mumbai all offer a massive area with countless opportunities and great use of crowds and social stealth.
But despite offering less locales to visit, HITMAN 2 does feel like its locations offer a lot to discover. While I’m nowhere near finishing absolutely everything the game has to offer, the first two levels alone (one of which is much smaller than your typical Hitman level) had taken me twenty or so hours to master before I moved on to finish the story – but I could’ve kept playing those levels to discover even more ways to murder someone. There’s just so many ways to kill a person in each area and the design of these crowds and locales are so alluring, so inviting that you’ll want to jump straight back in after your first, fourth or twentieth runs.
For those who find it all a bit overwhelming, Opportunities return as Mission Stories. These are paths in each mission that give players waypoints to their targets to take them out using unique methods. Mission Stories are great because they give newer players a way to finish the game without being overwhelmed. Whereas Opportunities were a bit linear, and almost always lead to a straight kill in HITMAN, in HITMAN 2 they feel a bit less restricted in the way they play out. You can, of course, turn them off entirely if you want too.
There are a few other modes that round out the whole package. Every mission can now be played in a “casual” mode that makes the more rigid systems of the game more approachable to newcomers. Other modes introduce multiplayer to the franchise – Sniper Assassin is just like it sounds and puts either Agent 47 or two new agents in a situation where they must take out enemies from a single stationary point on a map. Ghost Mode is interesting and lets two players inhabit a map and compete to take down their targets while amassing the most points.
Perhaps the only real niggle I have with HITMAN 2 is how the story is presented. Presumably due to a lower budget, the loss of Square Enix as a partner, or both; the story is presented through static images with voiceovers rather than proper full motion cutscenes. This takes a bit of the impact out of the more critical moments of the story, and quite frankly feels a bit cheap which is strange given how much of a step up the game is from the last one in every other aspect.