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Hitman 2 Review - PC

Agent 47 is back from retirement. After the first game Agent 47 has retired to Sicily and lives a quiet life reflecting back on his life of killing and trying to make amends. Someone else however also remembers Agent 47's past life of mayhem and wants him back to do their dirty work. After some local mobsters kidnap his best friend and confidant he has no choice but to dig up the past and put his hands back to what he's best at: killing. At least the job has lots of travel!

Hitman 2 will be familiar in game style and controls for anyone who has played the original game. Either use brute force and firepower to meet your mission target or do what you do best and do it silently. In saying that, the 3rd person view gives it away that this game isn't just a straight shooter like Soldier of Fortune 2. You can try and just gun your way through the whole mission, but in later levels the opposition is just too strong and silence is king. Silence but violence if needed, is Agent 47's mission statement!

The game is mission based with the larger missions broken down into sub-missions with briefings in between. The different missions cover a wide variety of locales and objectives for example Sicily, Japan and India. One moment you're trudging the snowy streets of St Petersburg and the next you're crawling through the dust in Nuristan.

Your missions can vary from taking out defecting generals, blowing up cars, tracking down the local Mafia and even poisoning people's sushi !! The missions are all open-ended with a few different ways of taking out the target. This adds to the replay value as there's always the option to go back and do things differently when you've got some time to kill. For instance in one mission you need to kill two generals who are meeting in a park. The park is well guarded so getting close to them is out of the question. Luckily the waiting motorcade and surrounding buildings aren't so well protected. Either plant a bomb on the limos or climb a water tower and put a single bullet through both of them as they wander the park talking.

The game play dynamics are excellent and quite lifelike. You can steal an outfit from almost anyone you kill and wander around disguised. You can play chefs, waiters, local troops and black suit wearing security personnel. Just like in real life however if you get to close to another guard they might just want to chat in which case your in deep trouble as your cover is blown. The level of suspicion is indicated by the threat indicator which rises and falls depending on how well disguised you are, how long your enemies had a look at you, what the lighting conditions are like and even which weapon your carrying at the time. If your run past ... (continued next page)