Another awesome stealth action game sporting the Hitman name, but what is wrong with it?
Another great game that I have had the privileged of playing on the live stream for you all to see just for yourself what the game is like. Just like the 2016 game this one get mostly top marks for visuals, narrative and gameplay, but there is just something that is a huge put off to fans of the franchise...
Narrative.
The 2016 game was a soft reboot of the entire franchise giving us all a new perspective on the background and current events in 47's life. The 2018 game expands on that and continues the story even more, almost taking cues from TV shows that are just one big story split up. (Game of thrones comes to mind).
The gist of the background story is that 47 was recruited by the ICA (International Contracts Agency) because of how 'Awesome' Agent 47 is. A shadow client for the ICA sets hits on several members of a group called, Providence in order to disrupt their activities without having to reveal who he is. Both Agent 47 and Diana Frost (47's handler for the ICA) both find out that Providence is a global entity that controls most of the worlds affairs, including financial, legal and illegal activities, and the shadow client is trying to destroy this group.Now in Hitman 2, Providence basically tell the ICA, in particular 47 and Diana to hunt down the shadow client and his militia in order to put a stop to their disruptions. Providence finds out the identity of the Shadow Client as being Lucas Grey. After a mission, 47 follows Grey to Romania and ends up in the asylum where 47 was created and raised by Dr Ort-Meyer. Unaware of this information, Grey tells 47 that they were both raised their and he was subject 6. seeing some flash backs, 47 begins to remember this.
I want to tell you so much more, but it will spoil the story to no end for first time gamers. But trust me when I say, there is so much more to the story and what I mentioned only just scratches the surface.
For the most part the story is told through the cut scenes before and after each mission in campaign mode. The missions themselves are also a part of the story as you are essentially contracted to kill or protect targets associated with said story. This method of story telling has primarily been the focus of how it has been told in every Hitman game to date. While in the 2016 game, this was superb and can not be faulted, the follow up game is, well for the most part, the story is spot on, full of twists, unexpected drama, and new information which makes the story all the more gripping. It is the way in which it is presented which makes me feel as though there were corners cut to meet deadlines and this is where it was hit the hardest. (explained further in Visuals)
Visuals.
Hitman Absolution was a massive improvement over its predecessor, Blood Money, then came the 2016 game which looked much cleaner, more polished with much bigger 'playgrounds' for you to accomplish your mission, all of which looked equally polished. This 2018 title is more of the same but with much bigger sandbox's for you to play in. and they are looking fantastic.
There are a couple of instances where the visuals look a little naff, such as when you exit Hawks bay via the boat. Individually, the water/sea and the boat look amazing, but when you are in the boat and travelling across the water, the boat simply goes in a straight line through the waves instead of over them, there is minimal interaction between the 2 assets. Visual shittyness like this can be seen every now and then that don't impact the story but instead makes me feel that the game was rushed. Another corner cut.
While for the most part, the visuals are spot on during game play, it is in the cut scenes that suffer the most from Warner Brothers corner cutting which shows in their sales of the game. In the 2016 game, we got to see full action cut scenes which made the game a hit among fans. This time round we just get a round of still images with some camera panning. Basically shit and something that could be done in an afternoon on a mid range PC. It is laziness on the devs side, but I doubt they had a choice since Warner Brothers took over publishing from Square Enix. This approach to the cut scenes hurt the franchise badly in that only fans would buy the game while new comers turned away after reading seeing reviews such as this. It is shit and most of us would have preferred that the game be delayed so that a finished and polished product would be released over the visual vomit that we got.
You can tell that many of the assets from the 2016 game have been reused, but for the most part have been reworked to look better. This is not surprising as in the Gold Package I got, you get all the previous missions from the 2016 game included so you can play from start to end as one big game.
Everything in the animations during gameplay is spot on. The interaction with other NPC's and the environment is fantastic and only serves to enhance the overall experience.
Gameplay
This is where the game shines through more than anything. The 2016 game gave us more ways in which to kill your chosen target with semi rehearsed mission stories that give you one particular way to kill your target, to simply shooting a gas bottle next to your target using a sniper rifle, or drop a little rat poison into a drink, follow them to the bathroom and drown them in the toilet. With so many different ways to achieve your goal, it makes this game a true sandbox style game while remaining loyal to the narrative.
Each mission and each target presents you with the option to create your own game. What I mean by that is that the game allows you to approach each scenario however you like. Predominantly the game is stealth based, however you do not necessarily have to be stealthy, you can go in all guns blazing if you so chose. You may not complete the mission and may end up with a low score, but the option is their should you choose too. You also have the option of using most of the environment to your advantage, using a faulty wire in a pool of water to electrocute your target. The options to eliminate your target are near endless and you can approach it any way you so choose.
Aside from the main campaign, there are some side missions for you to accomplish on the same maps. While not part of the main narrative, they give you an expansion on the way in which you can kill the targets. There is also the elusive targets which are released every now and then and you only have one attempt at killing them. This adds an all new element to the game which tests you on just how good you are. There is also community based missions that are created by other players for you to sink your teeth into which makes the game much more social.
For the most part, Hitman has predominantly been a single player, story based franchise. The 2016 game changed that up by letting the community create and play their own missions, but now this title has gone one step further and have created something called, Shadow Mode. This mode lets you go head to head with another player. You are both on the same map and are both after the same target(s), but you can not interact with each other. Who can kill the target first? It adds an all new twist that suits this franchise almost perfectly. It is still currently in Beta testing stage, but when I played a few matches, I found no faults at all. I lost all 3, but was amazing fun all the same.
The UI which for the most part works, but when entering into a mission, I still find it slightly clunky and awkward to navigate. It was the same problem I had with the 2016 game, but regardless, I am only a small handful of people who have this complaint about the UI which I think could be done much better.
To top of the gameplay, we have the scoring system which comprises of all the aspects and different ways in which you can complete your missions, if you found certain pickups on that mission, if you did it without using disguises or used multiple or killed a target using a specific disguise, these all help towards you getting new items in your inventory, new starting locations for that mission and new smuggled locations for you to smuggle weapons into a mission map. This brings the re-playability of the game right up. I found myself playing Hawks bay over and over again when I fist started playing this game thanks to the new scoring system which encourage you to replay the game. Very few games that are similar to this have that ability to make you want to replay and this game has got it down to a fine art.
For the most part, the gameplay and more importantly the story are fantastic and have been fine tuned. IO Interactive is now only one of a small number of triple A developers that actually listen to fans of their games, and it shows in how they have tweaked this game and improved on the first.
Unfortunately while IO Interactive are very gamer orientated, Warner Brothers on the other hand pander to corporate dicks and that shows tremendously well in this game on where the corners were cut because of a shitty deadline. This wouldn't have been that bad had the game followed the episodic release of the 2016 game, which would have allowed the dev team the time they needed to give us a better end product. Even delaying the release date by 6 months would have given the devs the much needed time to give us a product we could fully enjoy. Instead corporate dicks want money quick and it shows which in turn hurt sales as reviewers point out this exact flaw.7.5/10
It is a crying shame that some visuals and cut scenes were of such poor quality when compared to the rest of the game and other triple A titles. While technically the game is complete, but even when compared to the 2016 game, it is far from a finished product.
What did you think of Hitman 2
Let us know in the comments below.
Stu @TechMojo
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