Its 2013. My brother's Xbox 360 churns quietly. The disc spins at a comfortable pace. I know the door blocks out the noise, but I still put pillow along the bottom of the door. Blocking out any sound and light from escaping into the hall. Mom will leave her room at 10 pm or so to fall asleep watching tv, and the risk of her recognizing that I'm up past my bedtime is too high.
I smuggled a used copy of the Hitman collection from the local gaming store into our house, hiding it beneath my shirt as I walk in from a "bike ride." Mom hates gun games, but I've become fixated. I don't care for the bald man much, but I keep thinking about the puzzles I've seen on youtube. All the creative ways to eliminate your opponent.
I don't make it far into Hitman 2. I get impatient with the slow walking speed and get caught hundreds of times by indulging in the run button. The limited saves become agonizing, but I'm determined to earn the silent assassination rating. I complete all the St. Petersburg maps and two of the Japan maps. Its a nerve-wracking exercise and once I start marching towards a Japan castle with some not great racial depictions, I bail. I move onto Hitman Contracts.
But that's for a different review. Repeating all those patterns, tracking all those guard movements, late into the night? It sticks with you. I was stunned by how many rooms I instantly recognized. The snowy streets of Petersburg, the back of a transport truck, the estate. The feeling of little clockwork pieces moving on their routes around you.
For revisiting this, I wasn't interested in a challenge. I wanted to explore those memories. As such, almost the entire game was played with invisibility cheats onward.
What a strange experience it is, to wander through those little sandboxes without instantly getting shot by aggressive guards. If I'm in a hurry, I can rush past puzzles and aim directly for the map's targets. But its cozier to drift along the map at my own pace. Observe these little clockwork pieces arriving at their destination. Read signs at the Russia bus station. Wondering who had to design the computer screens and the graffiti art and all the tiles and models and everything outside and in-between.
The sense of humor that will carry the franchise forward builds on itself quickly. Assassinate a playboy in his jacuzzi and the five different bikini girls he's surrounded by pull out machine guns. Arrive in the location of your final target and he's left a plastic standee waiting for you. Most of the jokes lean into "foreigners, am I right?" but its a 00s-ism you kind of have to force yourself to swallow. There's something here. Something to build from. Something special
And there's just a beautiful feeling about perusing through these digital worlds and enjoying the craft of it without the stress of dodging bullets. Its clunky and fairly racist, but you can feel the experimental heart starting to form beneath the surface. Hitman is starting to become Hitman. And its a beautiful process to see.
I smuggled a used copy of the Hitman collection from the local gaming store into our house, hiding it beneath my shirt as I walk in from a "bike ride." Mom hates gun games, but I've become fixated. I don't care for the bald man much, but I keep thinking about the puzzles I've seen on youtube. All the creative ways to eliminate your opponent.
I don't make it far into Hitman 2. I get impatient with the slow walking speed and get caught hundreds of times by indulging in the run button. The limited saves become agonizing, but I'm determined to earn the silent assassination rating. I complete all the St. Petersburg maps and two of the Japan maps. Its a nerve-wracking exercise and once I start marching towards a Japan castle with some not great racial depictions, I bail. I move onto Hitman Contracts.
But that's for a different review. Repeating all those patterns, tracking all those guard movements, late into the night? It sticks with you. I was stunned by how many rooms I instantly recognized. The snowy streets of Petersburg, the back of a transport truck, the estate. The feeling of little clockwork pieces moving on their routes around you.
For revisiting this, I wasn't interested in a challenge. I wanted to explore those memories. As such, almost the entire game was played with invisibility cheats onward.
What a strange experience it is, to wander through those little sandboxes without instantly getting shot by aggressive guards. If I'm in a hurry, I can rush past puzzles and aim directly for the map's targets. But its cozier to drift along the map at my own pace. Observe these little clockwork pieces arriving at their destination. Read signs at the Russia bus station. Wondering who had to design the computer screens and the graffiti art and all the tiles and models and everything outside and in-between.
The sense of humor that will carry the franchise forward builds on itself quickly. Assassinate a playboy in his jacuzzi and the five different bikini girls he's surrounded by pull out machine guns. Arrive in the location of your final target and he's left a plastic standee waiting for you. Most of the jokes lean into "foreigners, am I right?" but its a 00s-ism you kind of have to force yourself to swallow. There's something here. Something to build from. Something special
And there's just a beautiful feeling about perusing through these digital worlds and enjoying the craft of it without the stress of dodging bullets. Its clunky and fairly racist, but you can feel the experimental heart starting to form beneath the surface. Hitman is starting to become Hitman. And its a beautiful process to see.
My first ever Hitman game and it's funny becoz the person who got me into this was my Grandad 😂. I'd play Sonic on his PC and I'd watch him play Silent Assassin. When I played I struggled alot and my grandad was a master. He was too good. We always laughed everytime Agent 47 would use the ballers to send people flying. Now that I'm older I have this game 100% on the PS3 and everytime I see I remind him I done everything on that game. Wonder who's the master now 😂😂
This review contains spoilers
i have a kind of funny history with the hitman series. hitman has always been the video game series that i've wanted to be "into". it strikes me as exactly my type of game because it focuses on what i value in games: focused and replayable gameplay that lends itself to a high skill ceiling with level design that accommodates multiple strategies/perspectives. so, you can imagine my surprise when in 2017, i finally acted on this intrigue that had been accumulated from years of casual exposure + a good friend raving about blood money and decided to play this game. and you want to know how far i got?
i was only able to complete the first level. i called it quits by st. petersburg stakeout. something about this game had bested me.
if you have eyes and ears, you've likely seen or heard someone mention that the hitman series has legendarily unforgiving and cruel AI. this is especially true on the highest difficulty, but it can also be observed even at the lowest. take the opening level to this game, for instance. anathema is a wonderful microcosm of everything great about hitman 2 while also being exactly the cautionary tale new players need to acclimate to this game's gameplay style. there's several different ways you can get into the villa borghese, but not all of them are obvious. the game immediately hints at the flower delivery guy, but if you take his disguise, you'll only be allowed in the front door and basically nowhere else + you'll have to pass a pat-down for weapons, meaning you're essentially going in naked. there's a delivery boy bringing in groceries who you can either incapacitate and disguise yourself as, or plant your weapons in his groceries basket with no one being the wiser. but then THAT presents a problem in that you still need to be able to get to the kitchen, which is somewhere you're not going to be able to get to without either dutifully sneaking by a guard or two or rerouting your infiltration entirely. and there's also the extraction of father vittorio that you have to worry about, meaning that your exit plans have to include an escape route that leaves you time to get him. oh, and if that wasn't enough, the guards here are armed to the teeth and should you even so much as run out of place, you're going to find yourself throttled by bullets.
this is level 1 of hitman 2: silent assassin. it is beautiful, both aesthetically and from a design standpoint. it pulls no punches, and, if anything, probably sets the high-water mark for difficulty in this game for a good string of missions. this was what scared me off of the game. i thought to myself "well, maybe i jumped in at the wrong part. i know people say not to play codename 47, but maybe experience with that game will help me come to grips with silent assassin better!" so i bought codename 47 on steam. it did not help. codename 47 might as well have been the bible to silent assassin's the god delusion for how like-minded they were. i hit a wall. i gave up. "maybe another time.". on the shelf hitman 2: silent assassin went.
let's get back to recent times now. it's 2022 and i'm deciding that i have a gigantic backlog of games i'd been meaning to play for a very long time now, and it was now or never to start actually clearing them out. and looking upon my shelf, my eyes landed on hitman 2, once again. here was a game i had explored a relatively small fraction of the content in. where better to start? so i put hitman 2 back into my console, and i started a new game. i started two, in fact. one on the lowest difficulty, to serve as my prep runs/scouting for what the level and enemies would be like. the other one would be on the highest difficulty, where i aim for silent assassin rankings.
and you know what? my playthrough of this game?
It FUCKED.
once i had gotten over my initial learning curve with the game, i quickly became enthralled by the hit of dopamine i'd get any time i solved a level and got the ranking of silent assassin. part of this experience plays like a jigsaw puzzle in that you're often given several pieces and clues as to what you can and should do, but it's up to the player to put them together and demonstrate competency with both the systems and game-world knowledge to execute the hit(s) successfully. i think so much enjoyment from this game came specifically from doing this at the hardest difficulty and trying to execute the best possible rank for each level. don't get me wrong, the game is still very good outside of that context, but pushing yourself to that limit and executing at that top level is a catharsis few games have been able to give me so consistently.
i briefly touched upon the game's aesthetic earlier, but i want to go into greater detail on this. the vibes are immaculate here, as the game is firing on all cylinders to create an experience that feels eclectic and hyper-specific at the same time. jesper kyd's soundtrack gets praised constantly for this, and i'm going to echo those lavish compliments. songs like "47 makes a decision" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZzK_mI3WvA ) and "desert sun" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6acABgmkcI ) have these booming bombastic horns accompanied by orchestral arrangement that give the game this larger than life feeling, even when you're doing something as mundane as walking through a crowded village. meanwhile, other songs like "H2 exploration" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WDBh8swgEM ) and "japanese mansion" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzvMtumL6A0 ) have these incredible moody scores that create a dense atmosphere in a way that only music can. with "H2 exploration", it feels like a ticking time bomb until you find your target and end their life, with "japanese mansion", it feels like the conclusion to a grand and near-insurmountable obstacle, which, to many players, is point-for-point what the japan levels evoke.
and, once we're past the presentation of the game, the narrative itself hits this perfect match of hands-off but permeated with motif and theming. even in the introduction, you see 47 going back to a peaceful religious life where he spends his time as a gardener, moving from his troubled past of taking life to nurturing it. even so, trouble finds him and beckons him to return to his ways to save someone he cares for deeply. in a funny way, this game is about love and the lengths one goes through for it. it makes it all the more bittersweet when, having finally rescued vittorio, 47 walks away from his illusory idyllic life, musing that his is a path that will be spent on administering his own brand of justice. it's completely earned with the barest of effort. it's a masterclass in minimalism.
i want to state upfront that while this game is impeccable in many ways, it also suffers in many ways from its attempt at perfection. on the one hand, it is extremely challenging to have AI this diversely structured in awareness as well as it being extremely vigilant and persistent. on the other, you're going to run into situations where the AI is not only omniscient, but possess a second set of ears and eyes in the back of their head. regardless of my difficulty, i should not be getting caught lockpicking a door by a guard one hallway over who is facing the opposite direction as me. and even when it's not being punitive, sometimes the AI can bug out in very odd and peculiar ways. think early 2000s jank. sometimes it can be charming and amusing, but it can just as often cost you that perfect run and several minutes of progress that you had meticulously worked to get.
a larger and broader complaint i have with this game is that some levels truly only have one viable solution. sure, you can go to a speedrun of this game and find someone completely cheese the shit out of an otherwise awful level like the motorcade interception, but for the lion's share of players, the only solution they're going to see is the one that involves using the very loud and unwieldy sniper rifle. god help you if you are doing that level on professional, as having no bonus saves and a limited time window makes that one of the most diabolical tasks the game will demand of you. let's also look at levels like the jacuzzi job, tubeway torpedo, death of hannelore, tunnel rat, and tracking hayamoto. i like all of these levels to varying degrees, but they all involve a target that either doesn't move or rarely does and has predominantly one method to kill. there are replayable aspects to these levels like the route you take to your target, but you'd be extremely hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't kill hayamoto jr. with the poisoned fish. and while we're discussing levels, i would be remiss if i didn't mention hidden valley. i'm in the extremely lucky minority of people who not only didn't have any issues with hidden valley, but got silent assassin on my first try on professional. to avoid that looking like a humble brag, let me tell you about how the following level, at the gates, took me roughly 4 hours, or how motorcade interception took me around 6, or how the final level is. . . well, let me put it this way. i originally was going to put in a separate paragraph dedicated to outlining my grievances with the level from a design perspective, but i felt that it overly sidetracked an otherwise glowing recommendation of a review. all i'll say is that it is a meat grinder to go through on professional.
this game is worth playing if you have the patience for it. i both mean that in that it is objectively well-designed, rewarding, and an overall landmark achievement of the time, but just as much i mean that you will need patience to play this game. this game is just as punishing as it is rewarding to play, and i recommend it with this in mind. i treasure my time with this game and consider it nothing short of a minor failure on my part that it took me this long to play it. but, this is not the type of experience i think everyone will have the diligence to fully explore, and i can't necessarily blame anyone for that. it's an acquired taste, one that might take time and experience to appreciate, but, for those who do, it's one to be cherished.
i was only able to complete the first level. i called it quits by st. petersburg stakeout. something about this game had bested me.
if you have eyes and ears, you've likely seen or heard someone mention that the hitman series has legendarily unforgiving and cruel AI. this is especially true on the highest difficulty, but it can also be observed even at the lowest. take the opening level to this game, for instance. anathema is a wonderful microcosm of everything great about hitman 2 while also being exactly the cautionary tale new players need to acclimate to this game's gameplay style. there's several different ways you can get into the villa borghese, but not all of them are obvious. the game immediately hints at the flower delivery guy, but if you take his disguise, you'll only be allowed in the front door and basically nowhere else + you'll have to pass a pat-down for weapons, meaning you're essentially going in naked. there's a delivery boy bringing in groceries who you can either incapacitate and disguise yourself as, or plant your weapons in his groceries basket with no one being the wiser. but then THAT presents a problem in that you still need to be able to get to the kitchen, which is somewhere you're not going to be able to get to without either dutifully sneaking by a guard or two or rerouting your infiltration entirely. and there's also the extraction of father vittorio that you have to worry about, meaning that your exit plans have to include an escape route that leaves you time to get him. oh, and if that wasn't enough, the guards here are armed to the teeth and should you even so much as run out of place, you're going to find yourself throttled by bullets.
this is level 1 of hitman 2: silent assassin. it is beautiful, both aesthetically and from a design standpoint. it pulls no punches, and, if anything, probably sets the high-water mark for difficulty in this game for a good string of missions. this was what scared me off of the game. i thought to myself "well, maybe i jumped in at the wrong part. i know people say not to play codename 47, but maybe experience with that game will help me come to grips with silent assassin better!" so i bought codename 47 on steam. it did not help. codename 47 might as well have been the bible to silent assassin's the god delusion for how like-minded they were. i hit a wall. i gave up. "maybe another time.". on the shelf hitman 2: silent assassin went.
let's get back to recent times now. it's 2022 and i'm deciding that i have a gigantic backlog of games i'd been meaning to play for a very long time now, and it was now or never to start actually clearing them out. and looking upon my shelf, my eyes landed on hitman 2, once again. here was a game i had explored a relatively small fraction of the content in. where better to start? so i put hitman 2 back into my console, and i started a new game. i started two, in fact. one on the lowest difficulty, to serve as my prep runs/scouting for what the level and enemies would be like. the other one would be on the highest difficulty, where i aim for silent assassin rankings.
and you know what? my playthrough of this game?
It FUCKED.
once i had gotten over my initial learning curve with the game, i quickly became enthralled by the hit of dopamine i'd get any time i solved a level and got the ranking of silent assassin. part of this experience plays like a jigsaw puzzle in that you're often given several pieces and clues as to what you can and should do, but it's up to the player to put them together and demonstrate competency with both the systems and game-world knowledge to execute the hit(s) successfully. i think so much enjoyment from this game came specifically from doing this at the hardest difficulty and trying to execute the best possible rank for each level. don't get me wrong, the game is still very good outside of that context, but pushing yourself to that limit and executing at that top level is a catharsis few games have been able to give me so consistently.
i briefly touched upon the game's aesthetic earlier, but i want to go into greater detail on this. the vibes are immaculate here, as the game is firing on all cylinders to create an experience that feels eclectic and hyper-specific at the same time. jesper kyd's soundtrack gets praised constantly for this, and i'm going to echo those lavish compliments. songs like "47 makes a decision" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZzK_mI3WvA ) and "desert sun" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6acABgmkcI ) have these booming bombastic horns accompanied by orchestral arrangement that give the game this larger than life feeling, even when you're doing something as mundane as walking through a crowded village. meanwhile, other songs like "H2 exploration" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WDBh8swgEM ) and "japanese mansion" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzvMtumL6A0 ) have these incredible moody scores that create a dense atmosphere in a way that only music can. with "H2 exploration", it feels like a ticking time bomb until you find your target and end their life, with "japanese mansion", it feels like the conclusion to a grand and near-insurmountable obstacle, which, to many players, is point-for-point what the japan levels evoke.
and, once we're past the presentation of the game, the narrative itself hits this perfect match of hands-off but permeated with motif and theming. even in the introduction, you see 47 going back to a peaceful religious life where he spends his time as a gardener, moving from his troubled past of taking life to nurturing it. even so, trouble finds him and beckons him to return to his ways to save someone he cares for deeply. in a funny way, this game is about love and the lengths one goes through for it. it makes it all the more bittersweet when, having finally rescued vittorio, 47 walks away from his illusory idyllic life, musing that his is a path that will be spent on administering his own brand of justice. it's completely earned with the barest of effort. it's a masterclass in minimalism.
i want to state upfront that while this game is impeccable in many ways, it also suffers in many ways from its attempt at perfection. on the one hand, it is extremely challenging to have AI this diversely structured in awareness as well as it being extremely vigilant and persistent. on the other, you're going to run into situations where the AI is not only omniscient, but possess a second set of ears and eyes in the back of their head. regardless of my difficulty, i should not be getting caught lockpicking a door by a guard one hallway over who is facing the opposite direction as me. and even when it's not being punitive, sometimes the AI can bug out in very odd and peculiar ways. think early 2000s jank. sometimes it can be charming and amusing, but it can just as often cost you that perfect run and several minutes of progress that you had meticulously worked to get.
a larger and broader complaint i have with this game is that some levels truly only have one viable solution. sure, you can go to a speedrun of this game and find someone completely cheese the shit out of an otherwise awful level like the motorcade interception, but for the lion's share of players, the only solution they're going to see is the one that involves using the very loud and unwieldy sniper rifle. god help you if you are doing that level on professional, as having no bonus saves and a limited time window makes that one of the most diabolical tasks the game will demand of you. let's also look at levels like the jacuzzi job, tubeway torpedo, death of hannelore, tunnel rat, and tracking hayamoto. i like all of these levels to varying degrees, but they all involve a target that either doesn't move or rarely does and has predominantly one method to kill. there are replayable aspects to these levels like the route you take to your target, but you'd be extremely hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't kill hayamoto jr. with the poisoned fish. and while we're discussing levels, i would be remiss if i didn't mention hidden valley. i'm in the extremely lucky minority of people who not only didn't have any issues with hidden valley, but got silent assassin on my first try on professional. to avoid that looking like a humble brag, let me tell you about how the following level, at the gates, took me roughly 4 hours, or how motorcade interception took me around 6, or how the final level is. . . well, let me put it this way. i originally was going to put in a separate paragraph dedicated to outlining my grievances with the level from a design perspective, but i felt that it overly sidetracked an otherwise glowing recommendation of a review. all i'll say is that it is a meat grinder to go through on professional.
this game is worth playing if you have the patience for it. i both mean that in that it is objectively well-designed, rewarding, and an overall landmark achievement of the time, but just as much i mean that you will need patience to play this game. this game is just as punishing as it is rewarding to play, and i recommend it with this in mind. i treasure my time with this game and consider it nothing short of a minor failure on my part that it took me this long to play it. but, this is not the type of experience i think everyone will have the diligence to fully explore, and i can't necessarily blame anyone for that. it's an acquired taste, one that might take time and experience to appreciate, but, for those who do, it's one to be cherished.
the most gruesome mario game of all time
I miss when developers genuinely learned what was good about their games and leaned into it instead of appealing to the horrors of the mass market.
Coming from Codename 47, Silent Assassin delivers more of what made the best levels from that game great. Offering the player a variety of interesting environments to explore and more ways to approach targets than the last game. Guns blazing, poisoning, a sniper from a distance, the choice is yours, and the game will even award you with a title and stats based on your performance.
Instead of a semi-determined screen of weapons to choose from with cash limits, Silent Assassin allows players to equip any weapons they have taken from previous levels (or unlocked from completing missions in the stealthiest way possible, only eliminating the target) to really give a player not just a more personalized way of taking down marks, but also offering a fun side challenge of collecting weapons to have a full arsenal.
From the cold streets of St Petersburg to the arid markets of Afghanistan. Hitman 2 offers an even more diverse range of levels that offer unique challenges to the player every step of the way.
While the story is quite barebones, same as the last entry, it is at least interesting enough to keep the player engaged. Being said, its also completely possible to ignore it if you wanted to.
The game also manages to surprise you, especially near the end with some twists that took me by surprise so much that I thought I was experiencing bugs. The return to St Petersburg will be burned into my mind forever as a time I was genuinely trolled by a video game in such a way that you really don't expect to get messed with.
That being said, Silent Assassin still has many flaws that will need tweaking going forward. I ended up not playing on the highest difficulty as I found guards were WAY too jumpy over my actions, even if I was mirroring the pattern and behaviors of the man I replaced. I understand a game demanding perfection. But I really don't find it fun when a game turns from reasonable challenge with fair rules to a game where I couldn't tell you how or where I fucked up if I wanted to. I am a masochist sure, but I prefer the kind of struggle I can work with and understand rather than the pain of being black bagged and gang beat in an alley at seemingly random. This could just be a skill issue on my part, but this is a sentiment I have seen around.
This concludes the first 2 Hitman games that I was told to skip before starting the series. I can understand why people are told to skip the first two games. They are clunky, awkward, and sometimes don't work quite the way you expect them to, but they are 100% worth a try if you are willing to put up with their unique quirks.
Coming from Codename 47, Silent Assassin delivers more of what made the best levels from that game great. Offering the player a variety of interesting environments to explore and more ways to approach targets than the last game. Guns blazing, poisoning, a sniper from a distance, the choice is yours, and the game will even award you with a title and stats based on your performance.
Instead of a semi-determined screen of weapons to choose from with cash limits, Silent Assassin allows players to equip any weapons they have taken from previous levels (or unlocked from completing missions in the stealthiest way possible, only eliminating the target) to really give a player not just a more personalized way of taking down marks, but also offering a fun side challenge of collecting weapons to have a full arsenal.
From the cold streets of St Petersburg to the arid markets of Afghanistan. Hitman 2 offers an even more diverse range of levels that offer unique challenges to the player every step of the way.
While the story is quite barebones, same as the last entry, it is at least interesting enough to keep the player engaged. Being said, its also completely possible to ignore it if you wanted to.
The game also manages to surprise you, especially near the end with some twists that took me by surprise so much that I thought I was experiencing bugs. The return to St Petersburg will be burned into my mind forever as a time I was genuinely trolled by a video game in such a way that you really don't expect to get messed with.
That being said, Silent Assassin still has many flaws that will need tweaking going forward. I ended up not playing on the highest difficulty as I found guards were WAY too jumpy over my actions, even if I was mirroring the pattern and behaviors of the man I replaced. I understand a game demanding perfection. But I really don't find it fun when a game turns from reasonable challenge with fair rules to a game where I couldn't tell you how or where I fucked up if I wanted to. I am a masochist sure, but I prefer the kind of struggle I can work with and understand rather than the pain of being black bagged and gang beat in an alley at seemingly random. This could just be a skill issue on my part, but this is a sentiment I have seen around.
This concludes the first 2 Hitman games that I was told to skip before starting the series. I can understand why people are told to skip the first two games. They are clunky, awkward, and sometimes don't work quite the way you expect them to, but they are 100% worth a try if you are willing to put up with their unique quirks.
I've started this game so many times but never finished it and I don't know why :D The game has its qualities, great atmosphere and very motivating gameplay. I must have played the first 2-3 missions 15 times but then stopped again. As a kid I was probably just too stupid for it, but as a young adult I didn't get it either.... one of these days, I'll definitely play it through... for sure^^
As missões são interessantes e os mapas bem variados, mas algumas mecânicas não funcionam muito bem, principalmente os disfarces (em alguns lugares beira o impossível passar perto de alguém sem ser detectado na hora). Só recomendaria pra quem já jogou algum outro jogo da franquia e ficou interessado nos mais antigos.
Una gran mejora con respecto a su antecesor, toma todos los elemento de otrora y los hace mas dinámicos e entretenidos de manejar, teniendo ahora mapas mas amplios y con un mapa que funciona en tiempo real.
La historia ahora es mas personal y le da al agente 47 algo mas de matiz como personaje, teniendo que realizar los encargos por un fin mas noble. Mecánicas mas pulidas y que dan pie a la curiosidad de como funciona cada una de ellas. El nivel final es algo desbalanceado con respecto al gameplay, tirando a algo mas de acción, pero se nota que las mecánicas en si no dan para matar a múltiples enemigos al mismo tiempo, pero cierra con una nota correcta para 47 y que daría pie a la siguiente entrega. Recomendado.
La historia ahora es mas personal y le da al agente 47 algo mas de matiz como personaje, teniendo que realizar los encargos por un fin mas noble. Mecánicas mas pulidas y que dan pie a la curiosidad de como funciona cada una de ellas. El nivel final es algo desbalanceado con respecto al gameplay, tirando a algo mas de acción, pero se nota que las mecánicas en si no dan para matar a múltiples enemigos al mismo tiempo, pero cierra con una nota correcta para 47 y que daría pie a la siguiente entrega. Recomendado.
lowkey a mess but i don’t even care this game is a classic
I really let some time pass since I last beat codename 47 and I really wasn't that excited for it but oh boy. The sequel holds on to its roots from the first one but makes everything, I mean like EVERYTHING better.
i am not built for this type of game
O jogo é extremamente desafiador, faz você perder um bom tempo em determinadas missões (Tubeway Torpedo eu te odeio). O fato de existirem diversas formas de concluir as missões é incrível. História convincente
6/10
RUNNING IS PUNISHABLE BY DEATH
This was one of my favorite childhood games, I remember playing it for hours and hours, But i never really played it like an actual hitman game,
I just used to go in, kill a guy with a cool costume, take the cool costume and kill everyone i encounter,
I wanted to have the "Real Hitman Experience" so i decided to replay the game in 2024,
Now for my honest Review :
Let me start with the story,
It's Non-sense, It starts as if it's trying to show Agent 47's struggle with "Humanity" and "Existence", but that literally existed for the First Mission and was never referred to again,
But to be fair, No one actually plays Hitman for the story, It Simply exists so it can act as a Motive or some form of Excuse to send you to Missions all over the world, From the crowded streets of India to Hidden castle in a snowy valley of japan, etc...,
Now the "Missions and Level Design",
It's very Much hit or miss, Sometimes you are playing an extremely well crafted Mission that is fully detailed with so many ways you can beat the level, Many of them even became Iconic in the series, Missions like "Terminal Hospitality" or "Basement Killing" are some of the best !
On the other hand, some missions feel so linear, They Act as a Filler, It's clear that the focus was on quantity rather than the quality, There is so many Missions that feel as if they should have been merged together to form 1 big quality level, But the focus was clearly on the quantity
I will be classifying the Missions in this game into 3 categories
Useless Filler/Should have never existed :
-Hidden Valley
-At the Gates
-Graveyard Shift
-Tunnel Rat
-Temple City Ambush
-St. Petersburg Revisited
-Redemption At Gontranno
(I recommend you just Max Payne your way through these levels, they aren't really worth the trouble, Especially with the terrible Ai in this game)
Kinda Linear/Feels like a Cut content :
-Kirov Park Meeting
-Tubeway Torpedo
-Tracking Hayamoto
-Motorcade Interception
The Real deal/Iconic :
-Anathema
-St. Petersburg Stakeout
-Invitation To A Party
-Shogun Showdown
-Basement Killing
-The Jacuzzi Job
-Murder At The Bazaar
-Death Of Hannelore
-Terminal Hospitality
Now for the Gameplay,
It Heavily Encourages the Use of stealth (Except for the last Mission and the snowy japan missions), Agent 47 have so many fun gadgets to use, And you keep on unlocking more as you progress through the game,
They Ranking system is a very nice addition, It gives you a reason to Re-play the Level and try to actually Improve and Play as professional as possible,
Saving your game is an essential part of Hitman, You will need to save your game to try out different Plans and ideas, And don't worry this is not save scumming, the game gives you a limited amount of saves per Mission so use them wisely
Now we go to a very very Major problem, Technical Issues (For Pc),
Trying to Launch this game on a Modern Hardware is the definition of "Suffer",
You have to Manually change the Resolution in Hitman2.ini by pasting this
Resolution 1920x1080
DisableHWTnL 0
Window 1
EnableP5 0
StartUpperPos 0,0
And if that worked and the game started then don't get comfortable yet because we are only getting started,
It might happen that you encounter a glitch (Happened to me) where all characters in the game become black,
The solution for this to go to hitman2.ini again and change "DrawDll RenderD3D.dll" to "RenderOpenGL.dll" (Or vise versa),
And if that worked then wait we are not done yet, you might encounter a problem which makes you character move in slow motion, turns out this is because of the Unlimited FPS so you need to use a third party app so you can limit the FPS to 60,
These are the the technical issues i presonally faced
Now for the Enemy Ai,
It is extremely broken, Enemies will kill you if you even dare to move fast, And they will be able to recognize you even if you were wearing the perfect cover and did Absolutely nothing wrong, Sometimes they can even see you through walls And kill you instantly !!
Overall, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin is a good game that was limited by the technical issues, and focus on quantity of content rather than the quality, but that doesn't mean the game doesn't have any quality Missions that are worth playing, It does Include some of the best in the series, but also Include some of the worst,
I give this game 3/5
I just used to go in, kill a guy with a cool costume, take the cool costume and kill everyone i encounter,
I wanted to have the "Real Hitman Experience" so i decided to replay the game in 2024,
Now for my honest Review :
Let me start with the story,
It's Non-sense, It starts as if it's trying to show Agent 47's struggle with "Humanity" and "Existence", but that literally existed for the First Mission and was never referred to again,
But to be fair, No one actually plays Hitman for the story, It Simply exists so it can act as a Motive or some form of Excuse to send you to Missions all over the world, From the crowded streets of India to Hidden castle in a snowy valley of japan, etc...,
Now the "Missions and Level Design",
It's very Much hit or miss, Sometimes you are playing an extremely well crafted Mission that is fully detailed with so many ways you can beat the level, Many of them even became Iconic in the series, Missions like "Terminal Hospitality" or "Basement Killing" are some of the best !
On the other hand, some missions feel so linear, They Act as a Filler, It's clear that the focus was on quantity rather than the quality, There is so many Missions that feel as if they should have been merged together to form 1 big quality level, But the focus was clearly on the quantity
I will be classifying the Missions in this game into 3 categories
Useless Filler/Should have never existed :
-Hidden Valley
-At the Gates
-Graveyard Shift
-Tunnel Rat
-Temple City Ambush
-St. Petersburg Revisited
-Redemption At Gontranno
(I recommend you just Max Payne your way through these levels, they aren't really worth the trouble, Especially with the terrible Ai in this game)
Kinda Linear/Feels like a Cut content :
-Kirov Park Meeting
-Tubeway Torpedo
-Tracking Hayamoto
-Motorcade Interception
The Real deal/Iconic :
-Anathema
-St. Petersburg Stakeout
-Invitation To A Party
-Shogun Showdown
-Basement Killing
-The Jacuzzi Job
-Murder At The Bazaar
-Death Of Hannelore
-Terminal Hospitality
Now for the Gameplay,
It Heavily Encourages the Use of stealth (Except for the last Mission and the snowy japan missions), Agent 47 have so many fun gadgets to use, And you keep on unlocking more as you progress through the game,
They Ranking system is a very nice addition, It gives you a reason to Re-play the Level and try to actually Improve and Play as professional as possible,
Saving your game is an essential part of Hitman, You will need to save your game to try out different Plans and ideas, And don't worry this is not save scumming, the game gives you a limited amount of saves per Mission so use them wisely
Now we go to a very very Major problem, Technical Issues (For Pc),
Trying to Launch this game on a Modern Hardware is the definition of "Suffer",
You have to Manually change the Resolution in Hitman2.ini by pasting this
Resolution 1920x1080
DisableHWTnL 0
Window 1
EnableP5 0
StartUpperPos 0,0
And if that worked and the game started then don't get comfortable yet because we are only getting started,
It might happen that you encounter a glitch (Happened to me) where all characters in the game become black,
The solution for this to go to hitman2.ini again and change "DrawDll RenderD3D.dll" to "RenderOpenGL.dll" (Or vise versa),
And if that worked then wait we are not done yet, you might encounter a problem which makes you character move in slow motion, turns out this is because of the Unlimited FPS so you need to use a third party app so you can limit the FPS to 60,
These are the the technical issues i presonally faced
Now for the Enemy Ai,
It is extremely broken, Enemies will kill you if you even dare to move fast, And they will be able to recognize you even if you were wearing the perfect cover and did Absolutely nothing wrong, Sometimes they can even see you through walls And kill you instantly !!
Overall, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin is a good game that was limited by the technical issues, and focus on quantity of content rather than the quality, but that doesn't mean the game doesn't have any quality Missions that are worth playing, It does Include some of the best in the series, but also Include some of the worst,
I give this game 3/5
I can see the effort here to make something great but its a few decent missions buried under a pile of trash with broken AI. The string of Japan mission are some of the worst levels in any game. I love the soundtrack and atmosphere so Ill undoubly install it again in a desperate attempt to finish it but this truly is a diamant in the rough.
I feel a little bad giving this game a "bad" score, but I legit felt fairly miserable playing it. That satisfying Hitman gameplay loop of killing your targets in creative ways is kind of here - one of the earlier levels, I blew up the target's car with a bomb planted underneath it, in the sewers, which was incredible.
But none of it matters when the game is so damn brutal. Disguises are simply not that good in this game: if enemies look for too long at you, they see through your disguise, somehow. But even worse, if you dare to sprint, they will almost immediately trigger an alarm - no no, you're supposed to walk everywhere, and Agent 47 has possibly the slowest walking speed of any video game character I've ever seen. It all severely discourages experimenting and exploring the levels, which is the whole point of this series.
If you have far more patience than I do, I suppose you could get some enjoyment out of it. It is a highly regarded game, somehow. To me, it just feels like a prototype.
But none of it matters when the game is so damn brutal. Disguises are simply not that good in this game: if enemies look for too long at you, they see through your disguise, somehow. But even worse, if you dare to sprint, they will almost immediately trigger an alarm - no no, you're supposed to walk everywhere, and Agent 47 has possibly the slowest walking speed of any video game character I've ever seen. It all severely discourages experimenting and exploring the levels, which is the whole point of this series.
If you have far more patience than I do, I suppose you could get some enjoyment out of it. It is a highly regarded game, somehow. To me, it just feels like a prototype.
Hitman 2: Silent Assassin is a game I decided to replay because I had somewhat fond memories of it. But after replaying, I can say for certain that this is an absolute mess. IO Interactive clearly didn't have a solid grasp of the concept they were working with for this one. Sure, it's significantly better than Codename 47, but it's still among the weakest entries.
The AI is absolutely broken in this game, and the reasoning is a mixture of what I'd say is mistakes in the coding as well as just dumb decisions. Enemies going insane on you over something as simple as running is one of the dumbest things I've experienced in a stealth game ever. I understand Hitman is a strategy-based series and so it's much less about sneaking like most stealth games, but that isn't really an excuse. Especially when later games fixed the AI making it more fun to play around with.
Basically most of my negativity from this game comes from technical issues and the AI. As said, you can really tell IOI didn't have a solid grasp of the concept yet.
The AI is absolutely broken in this game, and the reasoning is a mixture of what I'd say is mistakes in the coding as well as just dumb decisions. Enemies going insane on you over something as simple as running is one of the dumbest things I've experienced in a stealth game ever. I understand Hitman is a strategy-based series and so it's much less about sneaking like most stealth games, but that isn't really an excuse. Especially when later games fixed the AI making it more fun to play around with.
Basically most of my negativity from this game comes from technical issues and the AI. As said, you can really tell IOI didn't have a solid grasp of the concept yet.
Огромная работа над ошибкам после Hitman: Codename 47, по крайней мере в этот раз игра хотя бы проходима, правда лишь в том случае, если вы забудете, что находитесь в представителе жанра стелс и решите устроить массовую резню в стиле Макса Пэйна. Серьёзно, даже не пытайтесь проходить это без убийств и поднятия тревоги на оценку Silent Assassin, как бы соблазнительно это ни звучало, учитывая что таков и подзаголовок самой игры. В лучшем случае вы сделаете это умножив время прохождения в 4-5 раз. Оно того не стоит, поверьте.
What a jank fest, for me the disguise system was so bloody annoying in this one, walking ain't the problem, I just get detected by enemies somehow so I just need to spam the load game button each time. Sometimes I feel like the AI gets bugged out and the alerted guards from before loading the game still stay there or something cus they see through my disguise instantly. If they see me from afar 40% of the time they run towards me and that's so annoying, cus if they come close they'll spot me like BRUH. Was really good for half the missions or something, I liked the saints petersburg missions and hated the afghanistan ones. The india one was good but god damn that twist at the end was annoying in terms of gameplay as it got me caught the first time and ruined 5 mins of utter perfection I had maintained till in my last save (I played in expert so only 2 saves). Anyways, I hated the last two missions, so janky and so annoying. The last mission would've been okay if it were possible to stealth it better but nope. And the second last one, YIKES it sucks so much. Still loved the game overall just that it left a bad taste in my mouth. The sound, music and story are great imo just that the gameplay has glimpses of perfection with shitty jank thrown around.
Finishing this game all Silent Assassin is probably one of my top 3 gaming achievements
Let's be honest this was probably one of your first games in the stealth genre.
This game is rightfully considered a classic,but I feel like you can still see IO working out what these games should be, even though they're almost there. Also for the handful of all time great Hitman levels, there are a couple of truly terrible ones in the middle.
This game humiliated the first one.
An insanely impressive step up from Codename 47, I felt child-like wonder at the amount of improvements made to this game. Every clunky, unreasonable design choice from the first game was uprooted and replaced by a cohesive game that just clicks many, many times.
The greatest improvement is the save system that replaces the odd continue/restart system of the first game. With 7 saves allowed in normal mode, what's immediately communicated to you is "it's okay to experiment and mess up". I can't understate how great of an improvement this is from the first game.
The levels themselves feel less like puzzleboxes with a series of steps that need to be followed and more like the open playground of the modern entries. Guard alert states feel more natural, it no longer feels like they just laser towards you the moment you've blown your cover. You're given a better idea of what disguises work and don't with the addition of the detection meter, and you're no longer punished for getting a terrible rating on a mission.
It felt like Codename 47 was still trying to find its footing on whether it wanted to be a "thinking shooter" or a "play-your-way" social stealth game, and I'm glad they figured out that the latter would shine. This is an excellent game to play around with and feels like the proper start to the Hitman series.
The greatest improvement is the save system that replaces the odd continue/restart system of the first game. With 7 saves allowed in normal mode, what's immediately communicated to you is "it's okay to experiment and mess up". I can't understate how great of an improvement this is from the first game.
The levels themselves feel less like puzzleboxes with a series of steps that need to be followed and more like the open playground of the modern entries. Guard alert states feel more natural, it no longer feels like they just laser towards you the moment you've blown your cover. You're given a better idea of what disguises work and don't with the addition of the detection meter, and you're no longer punished for getting a terrible rating on a mission.
It felt like Codename 47 was still trying to find its footing on whether it wanted to be a "thinking shooter" or a "play-your-way" social stealth game, and I'm glad they figured out that the latter would shine. This is an excellent game to play around with and feels like the proper start to the Hitman series.
mroszny, mosny, ukuratny i sprafiedlif jedyna wada brak palki
Um jogo que evolui drasticamente tudo do seu antecessor, mas que seu maior inimigo foi o tempo. Hitman 2 tem uma história de pano de fundo para nos mandar de um lado pro outro em busca do Padre que foi capturado.
O seu Gameplay é muito travado e lento para movimentação e pra tiro é tenebroso mirar com qualquer arma, até mesmo a sniper devido a não ter como trancar a respiração, com uma inteligência artificial com constantes bugs e injusta em muitos momentos, a dificuldade desse jogo prejudica o replay pois nos da apenas dois ou três caminhos para terminar a missão, tendo algumas tão lineares que só há um caminho.
Não é um jogo tão divertido como seu sucessor Blood Money, as missões tem um novo esquema que é uma grande missão dividia em 3 capítulos, temos a do oriente médio buscando uma carga, a do Japão em busca de matar o Shogum e o Hotel buscando por um Hacker.
Esse estilo de missão nos trás dois tipos de mapas, aqueles que houve um empenho dos dev e algumas que são pra se fazer em 2 minutos só pra encher o jogo com as 20 missões, um número exagerado.
Hitman 2 é um jogo ótimo pro seu tempo mas que se tornou datado pelo seu Gameplay travado e a sua dificuldade que em alguns momento chega a ser injusta, junto a um enredo mediano e um numero de fases exagerado.
Nota Final 6/10
O seu Gameplay é muito travado e lento para movimentação e pra tiro é tenebroso mirar com qualquer arma, até mesmo a sniper devido a não ter como trancar a respiração, com uma inteligência artificial com constantes bugs e injusta em muitos momentos, a dificuldade desse jogo prejudica o replay pois nos da apenas dois ou três caminhos para terminar a missão, tendo algumas tão lineares que só há um caminho.
Não é um jogo tão divertido como seu sucessor Blood Money, as missões tem um novo esquema que é uma grande missão dividia em 3 capítulos, temos a do oriente médio buscando uma carga, a do Japão em busca de matar o Shogum e o Hotel buscando por um Hacker.
Esse estilo de missão nos trás dois tipos de mapas, aqueles que houve um empenho dos dev e algumas que são pra se fazer em 2 minutos só pra encher o jogo com as 20 missões, um número exagerado.
Hitman 2 é um jogo ótimo pro seu tempo mas que se tornou datado pelo seu Gameplay travado e a sua dificuldade que em alguns momento chega a ser injusta, junto a um enredo mediano e um numero de fases exagerado.
Nota Final 6/10
played on childhood abit, but replayed later and it was still as fun as i remembered, i just love this game, the maps, the mechanics, its was all very fun
Even if its aged this game slaps HARD, and its main theme is a banger.
One of the best ps2 games out there