- [Ryan] To keep your typical sequel expectations
in check, it's probably best to think of Hitman 2
as season two 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, Hitman works best when you're
taking down targets in the most relatable
every day environments possible.
Everyone remembers Hitman blood money's classic clown
at the birthday party mission.
Similarly, Hitman 2's mundane suburban Vermont
and dense Mumbai slum's missions are the standouts.
The former has you doing a bit of home invasion
in between wandering the quiet neighborhood
while the ladder'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 places on a ludacris
bond meets eyes wide shut island of cultists,
which borders on the comical.
Hitman 2 sandboxes are as full of gadgets
and disguises as ever.
And I mean exactly as full.
They're only a handful of new weapons and none of them
are game changers.
But it is genuinely impossible to see and do everything
a mission offers in one play through.
Side stories tell little tales within the framework
or the larger story
if you overhear their details.
- You know the exterminator guy who's working on
Batty's house?
- Same guy who just did Cassie, is that right?
- Yeah.
- [Narrator] I really enjoyed these playable novellas
and some of them are even time limited.
If you don't trigger them quickly enough,
the moment of opportunity passes and they expire.
A highlight was when I impersonated the corpse
in the cult's funeral ritual and then sat up
and stabbed my target in the neck as she paid
her last respect.
You also unlock new item drops, starting points,
and other sandbox altering perks when you play the missions
in a certain way so that the next time you go back in,
the replayability is both built in and actively encouraged.
Even the difficulty levels change the game play parameters.
Hitman 2 doesn't just ask for your patience,
it demands it.
The slightest failure can completely ruin
your entire mission, but smartly deployed auto saves
as well as manual saves
mean you never lose too much progress unless you're on
the highest difficulty.
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.
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 dim witted 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.
Then again, the opposite happens when a murder
you've been working up to for hours finally pays off.
It feels fantastic.
The final escape took me three hours
and it was totally worth it.
And I loved the last bit of tension added by the fact that
you have to make it to one of several escape points
after the final kill
and some will be locked if you don't have the right key
or disguise.
Annoyingly, the storyline that ties Diana and agent 47
into these missions is not only absurdly dumb,
it's also poorly presented.
Cut scenes are just narrated story boards.
This low budget attempt to explore 47's backstory is as bad
as the 2007 Hitman movies starring Timothy Olyphant
and all I wanted was to get back to garroting some goons.
Meanwhile, the sniper assassin mode returns with
tons of customizable scenarios to further increase
replayability and ghost multiplayer is brand new.
It's one v one in parallel realities.
So you mostly can't interact with your rival.
And while it is novel, its fast pace feels out of sync
with the rest of Hitman 2's deliberate hunts.
Developer IO says we'll also see more of Hitman's
excellent illusive target missions,
including one where we'll get to join countless TV
and film characters by killing Sean Bean.
Hitman 2 doesn't add much of note and feels more like
Hitman 1.5.
But by offering more of the deepest, fullest
stealth sandbox and gaming in one single package
rather than six episodic ones,
it earns its key.
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.
For more on Hitman, check out our review of the 2016 version
of the game and for much more on all things video games,
keep in tune right here to IGN.