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Publisher: EIDOS
Developer: IO Interactive
Let me begin this review by simply stating that I did not finish this game. If that is a requirement for a 'review' in your eyes, then simply do not read what I am about to say. Each 'rating' will be on a 1 to 10 scale, with 1 being the worst and 10 being the best.
Reviewer's machine: Athlon XP 2100 , 1gb DDR333 ram, geForce TI4600 video card, Santa Cruz Turtle Beach sound card
Graphics: 8
I was impressed with the graphics in this game. The colors are bright, vibrant, and sharp. The textures are very well detailed, providing a crisp feel of 'depth' to the architecture of the levels. The boards in and of themselves have a lot of detail - chandeliers and churches are finely detailed, and particle effects like snow look top notch. The lighting effects are very well done, with dynamic shadowing of the characters adding a nice touch to the graphics overall. The addition of shooting out light bulbs or destroying lamps and having the lights go off is also an interesting touch. Character models aren't near as detailed or attractive looking as they are in No One Lives Forever 2; and while the animations are mostly motion captured and smooth, the 'rag doll' effect seems almost a bit too 'floaty' and doesn't seem to capture real world weight in some instances. Graphically, the game does not disappoint, especially if you have the hardware to turn on FSAA and higher-end texture filters. The biggest gripe is that the first-person models for the weapons look pretty bad, and don't seem to look in scale with the rest of the surroundings. It seems like they really rushed to get the graphics done for the first person viewpoint.
Sound: 7
The sound is also well done in the game - while it didn't seem like there was as much detail in terms of hardware accelerated sound or effects, on a base level the sound is crisp and clean, taking a page from the original Hitman game. Some of the weapon sounds seemed to be a bit hollow, and sounded distant even though the character is as close to the screen as he is. Then, a moment later, a guard will fire a weapon at you and it will sound very loud. That being said, there are some nice details, like your feet crunching in the snow, and distant coughing of the guards or voices behind doors. The sound isn't anything exceptional, but nor does it detract from the game. Overall, the sound works well for its implementation, although they could have made the footsteps of guards louder to better assist in determining guard location through audio alone. The voice-overs were done well, and the spoken dialogue was interesting to listen to. Except for Diana during the mission briefings; having to sit and listen to her READ the whole thing while the text goes by slowly was really annoying.
Music: 6
Here is another area where I am fairly torn…the opening music during the menu screen is fantastic, and composed by the Budapest orchestra. Superb! On the other hand, some of the 'in game' music seemed generic and a bit boring - not to mention the fact that, this being a game where stealth is so important, having music play in the background would seem to just get in the way of the object of the game. It is difficult to hear things like guard footsteps and doors opening when you have music playing - so most of the time I would just turn music off. The music that I heard was fairly well done…as I said though, it's a mixed bag: while I wouldn't have cared had they omitted music altogether, I'm sure most "reviewers" would have given the game negative marks for not including some semblance of music. It's not needed in this title, and therefore, I gave it a 6 simply because of the very melodic, lethally articulate opening music score.
Controls: 7
I loved the first Hitman game, and the controls did not bother me. IO Interactive did, however, listen to the cries of its detractors (see later sections) and as such, really made an effort to improve the controls of the game. Inventory can be accessed through a simple click of the right mouse button and scrolling of the wheel. Tapping the right mouse button holsters your weapons, and tapping it again, will draw the last used weapon. An inventory 'key' pauses the game and allows you to move through your carried inventory at your leisure. Both approaches make selecting your weapons and equipment much easier than in the first game. It is also easier to interact with the environment - a dynamic dialogue box of available actions is listed at the top of the screen. By holding the action button, scrolling through the list with the mouse wheel, and releasing the button, you're able to look through keyholes, drag bodies, open doors, and all the like with ease. Many folks will like the addition of a camera change button that switches the view of the game from third person to first - this aids the player in firefights and allows for more precise aiming and a wider view in front of 47 (the Hitman). In third person mode, you are also able to choose between a close and wider angle view, and both are welcome as they provide robust camera placement depending on the situation and location. The lean key is still there, as well as a double tap of either lean key enabling you to 'jump out' on one foot to surprise enemies and shoot around corners. However, the leaning could have been a bit faster, and the aiming once you've done the 'corner jump' is hard to gauge: the Hitman seems like he would move a bit more quickly being the genetically engineered killing machine that he is. The walking speed, while realistic, is almost lethargic, and sneaking is even slower - running, while faster (and despite the Hitman looking like he's got a load of poop in his pants), oftentimes cannot be utilized due to the near instantaneous alerting of guards. Also, I am left to wonder why the Hitman must always drag dead or unconscious bodies. He's a big boy, right? Maybe you wouldn't have to drag them so SLOWLY if you'd pick them up over your shoulder and dump them in hiding. While a small 'nitpick', it is things like this that just seem like they could have been tweaked to make the game even more fluid. Also annoying is the almost silly amount of bob in the sniper scopes - while you can kneel down and aid your aiming, I myself have used scoped rifles on occasion, and didn't shake the rifle as Hitman with his nervous disorder and chronic shaking. Scoped in fully, even moving the scope a short distance to the side seems to create an almost goofy amount of vertical drift which takes far too long to recenter. And that being said, the 'bob' of the sniper scope seems really unrealistic and overall feels like something added in terms of 'difficulty' without making it seem like a realistic device.
Stability: 10?
Hitman 2 never crashed on me, nor did it display any sort of bugs or irregular (aside from intended) game play.
Game play: 2
The weapons weren't bad, but weren't all that great either. Nothing spectacular, although the silenced hard-ballers were cool, and so was the revolver pistol. See below.
Overall: 3
This has the potential of being a very long section, and I apologize for the ranting within. However, I believe that due explanation of my horrible game play and overall scores need justification, so that is exactly what I will give.
I loved the first Hitman game, despite the control and camera difficulties that some folks seemed to really dislike. The option of not being able to save the game didn't bother me. And while it did prompt me to restart boards several times, I didn't think it was all that bad. It was nice to see that Hitman 2 would have a limited amount of saves depending on the difficulty level. However, it doesn't really matter, since many of the missions have a point at the beginning where, if you make the "wrong choice" you eventually need to start over or have the mission degenerate into a Rambo style blast fest. More on this later.
The missions in the game seemed like they took out all the 'overly action based' missions like the Columbia section of boards in the first game. And they succeeded on that. In turn, they made some of the levels in Hitman 2 trudgingly boring. There's nothing more fun than having a HUGE map to slowly walk around, with guards all over the place, limited visibility due to snow, at night, with an objective of "find the secret passage" and that's it.
They included a 'rating system' that tells you what type of Hitman you were at the end of a board. It was this rating system that I eventually grew to hate, especially since I knew that gaining the "Silent Assassin" rating, the highest mark you can get, often unlocked hidden weapons and made me feel like I did the board "the right way". However, this rating system was also infuriating. Case in point…
There was one mission where you start in front of a small house. You can sneak past the guards, and go inside a garage door, without anyone noticing. Well, like I played the first Hitman game, if there is a guard (an enemy, not a civilian, not a police officer) that I can kill without anyone being the wiser, I would. After all, this is NOT Thief…this is Hitman. The guard out front, I sliced his neck, and dragged him into the garage. No one saw it, no one heard it. Apparently, though, at the end of the mission - when I did everything equally as stealthy, quietly, and with surgical precision, I was awarded an 'Executioner' rating because I killed more (1) person than I really needed to. What the hell? Does the Agency get a bill from "Evil Guy Corp." charging them for one more dead guard over their allotted quota? I don't think I would have noticed this if the rating didn't seem to be an almost mocking way of saying "you could have done it better" and thus not awarding you for a job that was, in all senses, done with stealth, silence, and like a Hitman. From one small step above Silent Assassin, there is no further distinction up and to "Psychopath". There are folks who will say the game is short…and indeed it would be: since the designers obviously listened to the crying folks who thought the first game was too hard, it's possible to many times load yourself up with guns, and just slaughter everyone on the level. One mission in particular, was *FAR* easier to just execute everyone in the whole damn map than try and do it with stealth. If I'm very sneaky, and no one hears or sees me doing any of my 'Hitmanly' deeds, why should that make any difference between Silent Assassin and Executioner? That being said, why would I toil through a map, taking an hour or longer, to plan and design it out, and then perhaps have the game tag on a "close encounter" (maybe one of the guards saw a UFO?) and thus take away the penultimate status (and perhaps have the player miss out on special weapons or the like), when it's faster and at least exciting to just walk through like the Pale Rider and blast everyone to the grave. Police? Civilians? Who cares…there's no difference, really, from being an "executioner" than being a "mass murderer".
In adding that rating system, and having it divided down on so many small levels (the weapon system in the first game was much better, IMO), they have essentially given the player a detachment, when guards become alerted, to solve the situation by just killing everyone in the immediate area. This leads to my next huge complaint…on a board where I'm supposed to snipe a general through a window - why is it harder to do that, when I can really just walk through, up and into the building, killing everyone in sight, and accomplish the same goal. While the first game was harder to finish because some levels would automatically fail when you attracted too much attention, they ruined the whole tension of the levels by making "the guards have become alerted" something you might as well ignore and just blast your way through.
As such, I just did not feel ANY tension when trying to sneak through boards. I didn't care. It got horrendously boring. There's a distinct bubble around all guards, that if you walk outside, you're fine. The stealth just seemed to feel very forced, very flat, and without any sort of payoff. "Silent" to the developers must be an arbitrary term rather than one of auditory explanation, as killing a man in silence, that no one sees, takes away my rating of being a Silent Assassin. Again, the game felt more enjoyable played as a walking bullet factory, and just blasting people down, giggling at the rag doll effects, and at least adding some pace to the game. Isn't that exactly what they tried to AVOID by taking out the blast fest boards that were in the first game?
And that, the pacing, is just my overall biggest complaint. You start a mission. And they present you with what seems like 4 or 5 obvious paths to success. At that point, it's touch and tell to see which one works, trying each one until you discover the one that the developers decided would allow mission completion. How to take out two generals in a park surrounded by guards? Well lets see, there's two towers you could try and snipe from, as well as car bombs. Sniping - forget it. I actually killed both generals with ONE bullet…but the guards came running and it turned into a mass slaughter mission. So what's the way to win? 10 minutes of running through empty sewers. WOW. What tension, what excitement! In the first game, it was sometimes difficult to figure out how to beat a mission, but once you did, you could sometimes come up with other ways of beating it, ones that would usually work just as good as your original plan. In Hitman 2, it seems more like a pick the obvious game of sloshing through the choices they give you until you find the only one that works. Again, these are all opinions, but I just found Hitman 2 to be teeth grindingly annoying. As I mentioned earlier, one map places you at night, in a snow storm, outside, with the objective of 'find the secret passage'. Then, you wander around until you find it. Most likely reloading multiple times because of things like this: a guard walks, in the distance, towards the Hitman, unaware of the danger about to befall him. Scoped in, the Hitman clutches a high powered hunting cross bow, the crosshairs bobbing slightly up and down with the Hitman's anxiety disorder - fftthk - a bolt goes racing through the air and hits the guard right in the face, right in the eye. Immediately the guard knows where Hitman is, and comes running at him, strafing, while spraying bullets in automatic fire with a sub machinegun. If you're going "Huh?", so was I. That was the last straw. In a game that seemed to be so critically realistic, a soldier that takes a crossbow bolt to the head, and to the chest, and continues to run around and fire his weapon, just made me say, literally out loud, "F*** this." I quit, uninstalled the game, and proceeded to the store to trade it in for something else.
Perhaps I'm getting old and don't have the patience for certain games. I think that, and then I play Thief 2 and have a BLAST. More likely, I think that in trying to appease a group of people crying and whining about a game (or to make it 'console friendly', like taking out a fire mode selector from a gun, or removing the ability to double wield any type of pistol not predefined) they somehow lose what made the original game just a great play. Slow. Boring. Annoying. Tensionless. A technical achievement with uninspiring level design of the gameplay variety. You know, "Nice house, nobody home." Yeah, like that.
Again, in closing - I tried to like this game, I really did. But I just could not force myself to finish it. I'm sure there are folks who might be thinking, "You must just suck at (this) video games." Perhaps that's true, but then again, like this review, that's just an opinion, right? Want to talk about it? Send me an email or an IM.
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