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Oh early 2000’s. Was there anything you didn’t cartoonify? You didn’t even spare Hitman 2: Silent Assassin.
Okay, I’ve only played an hour of the first Hitman so I can safely say that this isn’t a case of “Hur dur hur, I luv da first game and it is bettaaar” fan-boyism. After playing H2:SA, I can say that it just feels wrong. the entire time I just kept thinking that everything about the first one was just better. But I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s start at the beginning with the plot.
That picture up there of some young tomatoes? I bet you thought that was a mistake didn’t you? Nope. Now, I obviously didn’t finish the first one so I don’t know what exactly the conclusion was for Hitman: Codename 47 was, but whatever it was it lead our protagonist, the legendary Agent 47 to become… a gardener who lives in a shed inside the courtyard of a Catholic church. I’m not even kidding. The entire time I kept expecting the veil to be lifted and 47 to blow the local priest’s head off, revealing him to be 47’s long-stalked target or for 47 to throw off his gardening smock, whip out his guns and reveal that he had been using the folksy church gardener image as a ruse to somehow get closer to a target attending the church. I kept expecting… something… but nope. 47 is exactly what he’s portrayed as. This was not done for humor.
It’s not that I’m against the idea of a cold-blooded trained killer finding Jesus or something and settling down. It’s not that I’m against a story about a person having a change of heart. What I’m against is how out of place this whole thing feels. Nothing about it is believable. What’s even weirder is that the entire catalyst for the plot is that the priest whom 47 had apparently become friends with gets kidnapped by the local Don and so 47 digs up his old laptop (which must be like a million years old by tech standards now), briefcase and weapon stash so that he can contact the old agency he worked for to get the priest back. What ensues is what we in the delicate part of world like to refer to as “having the shaft worked upon you,” as for what little of the game I played was nothing but a series of excuses to go out and murder tons of dudes which supposedly put you one step closer to rescuing the priest.
There are many quality of life improvements in this sequel over the original, but it’s at the cost of mood, immersion and freedom. Controls are much more intuitive and movement is so much smoother comparatively. Graphics are much rounder as well and don’t hit uncanny valley as hard as before. Mechanically speaking, you can now drag bodies around to avoid their discovery, take people out non-lethally with anesthesia, and look through keyholes of a door before entering. While all this is nice, there was far too much sacrificed in its place. First, the story is contrived at best. Next, instead of getting to choose your loadout for the mission, you just take whatever they give you–if you need other equipment or weapons you have to find them on site. I literally found a sniper rifle just sitting in a garage next to a car that I used to assassinate my main target in the first mission. How convenient. Thirdly, you still get to solve the puzzle of the mission the way that you want to but it just feels like choosing a flavor instead of discovering a strategy. Do you want to sneak in as the mailman, the grocer or the guard? The results are all largely the same.
What’s wrong guys? I thought this was where I was where you wanted me to drop the groceries off!
That’s the other thing–it feels like this game wants you to move as slowly as possible all the time. You have to wait for characters to slowly creep around until they’re where you need them to be. You can’t run up to any of the people who’s outfits you want to steal because you’ll alert them. You can’t run while wearing an outfit or you’ll create suspicion. You can’t let the body of the outfit’s original owner to be seen, unless you slowly drag it somewhere out of the way. Look, I understand that in real life all of these things make sense, but they make for a very dull game. In the end, I just solved the first mission by running in and creating a bloodbath. It’s not like I couldn’t take enough bullets. Once, upon being discovered by two guards, I sat still and let them shoot at me to end the mission. Both of them together had to shoot and reload their clip 3 times before finally killed me. I was standing about 5 yards away from them. I was completely motionless.
This game isn’t atrocious, but I feel that it’s a rather large waste of time. It just feels so goofy compared to the first one but not in a good way. The manner in which you steal different flavors of clothing almost makes it feel like a cartoon and sets a very strange mood when compared to the original. Tier 3 is where it belongs, playable only to die hard fans and those with a large amount of time to waste.
Oh, and on an unrelated note, this Scarecrow turned its head to look at me. Nothing can convince me that it’s not alive.
