Hitman 2 Silent Assassin Review (PS2) By GhettoBandit

10 / 10
08 Jul 2006 at 01:06

Review by: GhettoBandit

To be a hitman these days you don’t need the usual skill and willingness to kill, all you need is a PS2 and a copy of Hitman 2: Silent Assassin. The game lets you enter the mind of an assassin who’s past is so f*cked up that no one actually knows much about him, apart from the fact that he has the tendency to kill anyone who gets on the wrong side of him. This assassin’s name is 47 and he’s more willing to blow someone’s head off than work down the local Tescos to earn some cash.

The game starts off with a cut-scene involving Father Vittorio; your friend, being beaten up by some thugs and bundled into the back of a car. Basically because you’re his friend you have to save him, this means doing assassinations in order to pay for the information which should lead you to find him. It has a bit of added cinematic music which when your cover is blown, the music changes to a shady electronic style rhythm which makes your heart beat faster; it’s giving you the same emotive feelings that 47 is most probably feeling. The whole game is based around stealth, without it you’re dead, so instead of blasting your way in through the front door you have to work your way through the back in a workers uniform.

The actual environment Hitman 2 is created in is simply fantastic. Each of the 20 levels has civilians/guards and even the targets themselves running around doing their every day activities without a thought in their minds that they’re about to be killed in cold blood. The graphics are detailed to the max, when it snows you can make out the snow flakes and the lighting in some of the levels helps it to give off an eerie feel which makes the player sh*t themselves when an unexpected visitor pops out from around the corner. The characters look excellent so when you get a photograph of the target it’s easy to know who he is so you can get the perfect shot instead of killing his maid/guard and doing that would change the outcome of the assassination so you’d have to change your technique and find a new cover. I admit that some areas in the levels look absolutely sh*t and it’s as if IO Interactive were trying to finish early so they could skive off to watch the football so they decided to grab a few things and combine them to make what I see in front of me every time I play the game.

The aim of the game is killing. It should be done silently and without a second thought to get the best outcome. This is easier said than done because if you look slightly out of place then the guards will get suspicious, come to inspect you and that’s it, your dead. This makes the game-play very annoying because you get through one assassination no bother and then you come to the next and its ‘Mission Failed’ most times. You have two choices when playing Hitman, you can either kill the enemy quietly and spend your time deciding what you should do next or you can go in guns ablaze and pretty much kill everyone in sight until you get the target, the choice is yours. Some of the stealth is impressive as well, instead of sneaking around buildings you can use disguise to work your way around the level. If you press ‘L1’ this enables you to go into ‘Sneak Mode’, this means that you can sneak up behind your target and *BANG* he’s dead or sleeping with the fishes, the latter being the preferred phrase in the hitman world. An alternative would be just to equip the Uzi and become a psychopath, if something moves you shoot it. The 1st person mode makes you more involved in what’s going on in terms of what’s around you and how your seen by other people.

If you prefer to do your killings from afar and watch the mayhem that unfolds because of it this can be done by using the sniper rifle and kill the target and anyone who takes your fancy from hundreds of yards away. The action button; X, is used ingeniously. You can use it to peek through keyholes or poison someone’s food to make the death seem like a poisoning.

Once you’ve completed each assassination you get to revisit the original part of the game where the priest was kidnapped. Here is the place where you can fine-tune your shooting/stealth techniques by either shooting the pigs in the farmyard or taking shooting practice on the watermelons from a distance.

The sound in the game is effective, when you’re seen, the music changes to a quick, electronic style rhythm and then fades when you begin to evade your enemies. Gun shots sound simple rather than elaborate but that doesn’t matter, just look over that and you’ve got yourself a pretty good soundtrack for the game.

The multiple ways of finishing each level adds to the already long list of things this game has to offer. You can kill your target in tonnes of ways. One time you could be sniping him/her from afar and then getting the hell out of there or you could take the hard route and stash your pistol in his bathroom, wait until he goes to take a dump and shoot him between the eyes which to be fair isn’t a nice way to die…

Well basically Hitman 2: Silent Assassin is a fantastic game worthy of being in anyone’s game selection. If you want to be the next assassin out there then this game is perfect for you, as a taster of what’s to come with your chosen profession. I give this game a 10/10, I would give it an 11 but I’m not allowed to, *gets out Uzi*... something needs to be done about this!

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