Sure, you’ve sinned in the past, even murdered in cold blood. But the past is
behind you, you’ve begun a clean slate offering your gardening skills to the
local church in Sicily and repenting for those evil deeds that loom over your
head . . . or at least you tried! The new and peaceful life of the former ‘gun
for hire’ known as ‘47′ is short-lived when the church’s minister
is kidnapped, leaving no choice but to return to your more familiar style .
. . a cold blooded murdering assassin! Seek out injustice, unveil corruption,
and kill whomever you please, as long as the target is eliminated as well. Hitman
2: Silent Assassin takes you around the world in 20 non-linear
missions, filled with varied challenges and intriguing characters, and presented
in exceptional detail. Buff that glossy bald head of yours and lets
get to the target, 47.

Gameplay

The storyline is straight forward. You’re a former assassin
forced to revisit your old ways of killing in order to find your kidnapped friend
and minister through stealth and brute force. By contacting your old employer,
you hope to find details of the priest’s captors, and after proving yourself
in a short training session the real game begins. There are 20 missions taking
you to real world locations including Sicily, St. Petersburg, Malaysia, Japan,
and India, where you will need to ‘eliminate’ certain people, who are
at times (most times) very heavily guarded, making the stealth approach
an often wise move. That’s not to say that going straight in and blasting away
everything that moves won’t work, it will! What makes the blast ‘em up approach
so much fun is the highly effective control scheme, which is 100% better than
the previous (the original) Hitman release, and anyone who has played a shooter
recently will find the controls and context sensitive menus very easy to use
and practical. Slaughtering your enemies is almost second nature through the
use of your extensive collection of weapons, which include sniper rifles, shotguns,
pistols, knives, fiber wire (for close range stealth kills), axes,
and many more.

IO-Interactive has also added the option of playing in first person mode, which
is extremely effective, and may seem more familiar to the first person shooters
among us, but the third person view will allow you to have a greater range of
vision, and allow you to see 47’s life-like animations in a more visual fashion.
There are three difficulty settings in Hitman 2 and they truly do add the need
to vary your approach, as the enemies are increasingly intelligent and your
weaponry less effective unless you assist it through manual aiming. The most
difficult setting also wipes the enemies off your in game map, making it more
of an instinctual hunt. You’ll want to use your stealth qualities much more
liberally when at the higher levels, and you’ll need to practice quite a bit
to get the hang of it. Once you’ve slain an enemy and dragged their blood-ridden
corpse to a concealed location you can steal their clothing, making you less
noticeable, but you’ll need to do more than that since the enemies will still
notice anything suspicious, like a sniper rifle perhaps. In all actuality, much
more subtle elements will tip off your foes, like running rather than walking,
and you’ll need to use a great amount of care and effort to ‘not’ run.

Throughout the game you’ll communicate with the Agency through the use of a
laptop and an earpiece. The laptop will provide you with mission details and
objectives, as well as target information and surveillance footage. You can
also select missions you have completed to play the level again. Another element
crucial to the game is your shed, where you will store all of your weapons and
items. Choosing the right weapon before starting a mission is critical to success,
and seeing your shed fill up with all sorts of weapons throughout the game is
very impressive and gratifying.

Hitman 2 is a non linear game, meaning you can take any route to achieve the
objective. So whether you go straight in and tear the place apart, or you sneak
up on the main target and silently kill him, you have successfully completed
the objective, and will move on to the next mission. Throughout the fairly large
mission environments you will encounter several character types, all of which
can be put out of their misery. There are target enemies, these are the enemies
that you NEED to kill, along with the standard enemies that will try
to hinder your progress, it’s your decision to let them live or die. Police
will attack you if they notice you carrying a weapon or committing a crime,
like murder, but otherwise will allow you to go about your business. Innocents
are just bystanders who may or may not get caught in the crossfire, and then
there are the VIPs, those individuals that you are contracted to protect. While
going through and blasting everyone full of lead will be allot of fun, it will
give you a Mass Murderer ranking at the end of the level, being more selective
during the game will result in a better ranking of Hitman.

Graphics

The environments are highly detailed and true to life, including
not only your enemies, but subtle details like birds and other aesthetical elements.
The character animations are extremely convincing, and killing enemies is an
interesting sight since the game utilizes ‘rag doll‘ physics during
kills, which will display an unscripted sequence as if your bullet hit a rag
doll, pretty true to the name. Your character will move incredibly life-like
throughout the game, and even reloading your weapon can be engaging. The frame
rate throughout the game is steady and posed no problems. There is an option
to turn off the blood in the game, but we’re still trying to figure out why
you would want to do that.

Audio

Along the same lines as the graphics, the audio in the game is also
very realistic. The soundtrack is top notch and fits the mood of the game well,
becoming increasingly persistent in more stressful situations. As you will be
traveling around the world, it would only be right that some of the characters
speak in their native language, you being able to understand them through the
use of subtitles, adding a more polished and fulfilling experience to the game.
From the convincing and powerful sounds of weaponry, to the soft sound of leaves
rustling as you pass through, to the fact that when you peek through the keyhole
of a door you’ll hear 47 breathe harder and louder, the audio was just another
checkmark to the game’s already high marks.

Replay Value

Three different difficulty settings, and an open ended method
of gameplay will get Hitman 2 Silent Assassin back into your Xbox more often
than many other single players games available. Replaying levels just to kill
in a different method is quite common and can be allot fun, and aiming for a
certain rank is just another reason to replay the game.

Overall Score


Overall Score: 9.0/10 [Not an Average] Highly
Recommended

Additional Comments

Hitman 2 Silent Assassin is an extremely realistic
experience, brought to life through cinematic sequences, convincing voice-overs,
and impressive graphics. The in game options and control mechanics make playing
the game enjoyable and challenging. If this sounds like your type of a game,
then we Highly Recommend you pick it up, and if you’re
not quite sure we Recommend you at least rent it.

Related Links

Send us Feedback,
or discuss this review in our Forums.

Filed under: Reviews

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!