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I have never quite
been able to
fathom Hitman 2’s
requirement for a
permanent online
connection in order
to “experience
the full richness” of the game – you
just download updates when they’re
available, and it plays exactly the
same in offline mode, except you can’t
access the items you’ve unlocked.
However, the developers at Io
Interactive felt the need to implement
it, and there’s no denying that the
large amount of stuff they’ve bolted
onto it during the past 12 months has
added greatly to what was already a
game of extraordinary depth.
While Hitman 2’s subject matter
is an opaque blend of secret
agents, assassination and global
conspiracies, the game’s steadfast
refusal to take itself seriously helps
it soar above tinfoil-hat territory. It’s
about a bloodthirsty master of
disguise who can effortlessly pass
himself off as any person in the world,
despite being incredibly distinctive-
looking. It’s inherently ridiculous that
only a select few super suspicious
characters will question why their
colleague came back from his toilet
break with a new face and a barcode
tattooed on his freshly shaved head,
but as soon as you stop to ponder just
how silly it is, you’ll realise Hitman 2 is
way ahead of you.
It’s there in Agent 47’s deadpan
delivery as he all but spells out his
murderous intent to a succession of
oblivious victims. It’s in the seemingly
endless lines of sarcastic comments
from random strangers, and the
groansome dad jokes that pepper the
descriptions of items, weapons and
challenges. If that’s still too subtle
for you, there are Easter eggs that
let you float out of a level holding an
umbrella, Mary Poppins-style, or by
dressing as a bird and flapping your
arms until you take off.
Over the course of the year, a
regular drip-feed of new content has
helped prevent Hitman 2 ever dropping
off the recently played list on my Xbox,and that’s where I expect it to remain
for the foreseeable future. Although all
of the main expansion pass content
has now been released, and I’ve
already put more hours into this than
any other game on the console, I’d say
I’m less than halfway done with the
challenges and I’ve barely touched
things like the multiplayer or the
create-your-own-contracts mode.Go the distance
There have been two new sniper
levels, which are completely unlike
the rest of the game in that you just
sit on a perch and influence things
from afar through the scope of a rifle.
They might not appeal to every Hitman
fan but they’re worth persisting with,particularly if you have a friend to
motivate you on the leaderboards.
The most recent one is particularly
intricate, enabling you to force your
targets to specific areas by starting
riots in various parts of a prison. The
more challenges you unlock, the
higher your score multiplier goes, so
you can’t even think about getting a
really decent score until you’ve played
it through multiple times.
One of the two new main levels is
set in a bank, where you’re tasked with
killing an executive and breaking into
the vault. With customary attention to
detail, there are numerous potential
paths, from becoming the bank’s
newest member of staff (complete
with job interview) to invoking bloodyextra
How Hitman 2 spent a year poking fun at itself and
became the best thing ever MARTIN KITTS
PUBLISHER WARNER BROS / DEVELOPER IO INTERACTIVE / FORMAT XBOX ONE / RELEASE DATE NOVEMBER 2018096 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE