Sometimes a game ages like a fine wine, showcasing the elements it introduced to the medium all the brighter in light of the spinoffs it may or may not have created. Sometimes a game ages like a half empty two-liter of coke: the longer it sits there, the more you wonder why you're bothering to keep it. Which of these categories will Hitman 2 fill? Meet me after the jump to learn more!
Gamers looking for a good stealth fix nowadays are hard up to find anything particularly innovative beyond the Splinter Cell and Metal Gear series. But remember back in 2000 when another promising young player by the name of Hitman developed by Eidos entered the scene? Remember how awful that game was? The missions were lengthy, the enemy AI was abominable, there were no checkpoints or save points within mission, and there was one, and ONLY one way to go about completing each hit, with any error at any point in the very precise formula forcing the player to start the entire mission over from the beginning. Even positive reviews of the game said that, while they enjoyed it, it felt incomplete and hollow, with an idea much better in theory than in practice.
Even Agent 47 looks bewildered as to why he is here
in this sham of a game.
But 2 years later, lo and behold we had a second installment, and the critics went wild. The game was hailed as what the first installment was supposed to be, with critics hailing the level of freedom allotted to the player, the ability to set up to 6 in-mission checkpoints in order to hone one's style in case of accidents, and the fact that you were allowed to choose between a stealthy, tactical approach or could opt to go in all guns blazing and hope for the best. This makes it sound like most of the grievances have been taken care of, yes? But with 8 years behind it, do these remedies from the first title continue to be effective and create a rewarding experience?
Short answer: no. Longer answer: ennnnnhhhh... kind of. While it is true that now the missions allow you to set up your own checkpoints, they must be used with the utmost discretion. Save yourself into a bad corner (like I did when I unknowingly used a save halfway through a mission with a guard about to round the corner and shoot me in the face) and you may have to just go back to the damn beginning anyway. There are more manners in which you can carry out the hits, but each option still has that very specific formula to pull it off "correctly", and the dated, at times omniscient, at times tunnel-visioned enemy AI does not make this a fun task. Such tasks as "jogging" will raise the alert level of anyone nearby, and as soon as that happens, you either decide to say "screw it" and murder everyone in the place just to get out, or reload your save and try again. And again. And you will try again and again because guard patterns do not seem to remain constant when you reload your saves, and sometimes you will load up and appear right next to them, only to load again and have them be in a completely different spot on the map. And while running and gunning may seem like the faster way out (especially for a person as impatient with repetition as I am), I considered it about as satisfying as a bag of airplane pretzels. It's OK for what it is, but don't expect to feel any sense of fulfillment after gunning down wave after wave of identical bodyguard drones who take 5 seconds to line up their shots and die in about 2 of yours. Their awful aim and your seemingly bottomless health certainly don't hurt in making it the easy way out, but if all you're looking for is a game to run through corridors and shoot things, I can give you about 20 better recommendations of the top of my head.
This game does have one redeeming factor which allows me to come away with, while not the greatest of tastes in my mouth, at least a neutral one. Should you manage to meet the meticulously merciless requirements to effectively pull off a hit, you feel so.damn. cool. Fiberwire strangling a deliveryman, stealing his uniform, finding an unsuspecting security guard, dispatching and stealing his uniform, sneaking via a maintenance ladder to the roof of a mafia don's villa, strangling him on the sly and booking it before anyone has a chance to find the body makes you feel like a virtual ninja. Assuming you have the patience to invest what can be up to 4 hours completing a 20 minute hit, anyway. But sweet Jesus, I cannot stress how satisfying it is to pull it off right.
So the verdict then: This game was revolutionary for its time, but provided a better guide of what NOT to do in a stealth game, and it did lay the groundwork for the far more robust Hitman: Blood Money (easily the series', best installment). As for how well it has aged, well, let's just say that no matter how fine a cheese may be, sometimes the stuff just stinks when it's older. The silly plot, dated enemy AI, and incredibly unforgiving mission parameters just make this game feel exactly like the clunker it looks like. If you are ever trying to pass down the gems of your generation's genres to your future offspring, don't get them Hitman 2. They will wonder what kind of anal retentive masochist you were that you ever put up with it, shortly before looking up what it takes to be emancipated.
This is a little better, but your new nickname will be "King of the Liars"
after they find out they play as Snake for about 2 hours.
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