Hitman 2: Silent Assassin Review (Kdosda Hegen)
Hitman 2 is a bad game. I think it is the worst stealth game I have ever beaten. Not only that, but I dare to say that it is plain unfinished game that does feel like as if it was released in its Alpha state. I thought that after the success of the first game and the bigger budget the sequel would improve a lot, but obviously, I was wishing for too much.
Where do I even begin... Every single aspect is a major downgrade from the first game.
The first game had rough controls, but they somehow managed to make them even more complicated and much more annoying in the sequel... It is painful that half the time instead of switching to a different weapon, I switch to binoculars instead because I walked left...
The game is absolutely broken. Most of the mechanics and missions are broken or are severely flawed.
Stealth – in the first game I could run with bodies. Maybe it was not intentional, but it was fun and fast. Here I am forced to drag them very slowly, it requires a ton of time and is annoying. In the first game I could walk to the guys from the back for a stealthy execution, here I must sneak as otherwise they will turn around before I can get to them, but the problem is that sneaking is extremely slow. It is unbelievably slow. Not only is it super annoying, but enemies walk way faster than I can sneak and often when I'm almost at the right spot they just walk away... It is ridiculous and painful. But that is not all. The game has suspicion system. Sounds awesome, but the execution is sent by the devil. The A.I. is so sentitive that the game is almost unplayable. If you run, guards will instantly begin shooting at you. If you walk and look at the side, guards will begin shooting at you. If you walk and then stop, guards will begin shooting at you. If you walk, but it is too close or a bit detouring away from the guard, they will shoot you! You have to walk in a very precise manner for guards not to get suspicious and even then, often you'll get unlucky and they will shoot you after you walk away from them anyway... Another issue is that sometimes you need to dress up as guard, if you do not carry the firearm, guards may shoot at you, but if you carry the firearm, even a holstered one, the civilians will freak out and then the guards will begin shooting at you... And all of this is extra tedious as your walking speed is so slow! The stealth is absolutely broken through and through and it is not fun at all. It requires an insane amount of time and I simply do not have the patience for such slow gameplay.
NPC A.I. – also completely broken... In most missions something goes wrong. For example, there is a mission where I put some poisonous fish in a dish and the servant is supposed to take it to my target. But no, the servant just walks in, then the animation happens that she is picking the plate, but she does not. She goes away with the plate left on the table. So I have to wait till she'll come back, she finally picks it up in her 2nd attempt and when she brings the food to the target – nothing happens. The target simply does not eat the dish even though he should... And this is just a single example of how the A.I. refuses to work. Even in the first mission there is some weird soft-lock. If I do not kill my victim without an alarm for some reason he will not carry the key which I must have in order to progress. If afterwards I did not watch walkthroughs on YouTube I would have never figured it out that it is the game which is broken and not me being unsure what to do. There are many seemingly cool missions in this game that always get ruined by the broken A.I. which then leave me no choice but switch to combat. I really tried to play this game stealthily but all the constant game breaking glitches forced me to choose combat instead.
I have not even mentioned the other game breaking glitches. In one mission, I had to use sniper rifle and for some reason I could not hit any targets with it, all the bullets just did not hit anyone or anything, not even windows. Another major problem I had, not a glitch, but the game has a limited amount of total saves you can have at a time for your whole game. But it does not tell you that! And it allows you to continue to save, but those new saves simply do not get created. At first, I thought that maybe the mission is broken or that I have used up all the saves even though it said that I still had 4 of them, but I learned that I had to delete some of the previous saves to make some space...
Another problem I have with this game is its poor level design. It is often made of massive empty spaces or repetitive copy-pasted layouts and very bland environments in general. What is super annoying is that in some maps there are hidden doors that you must somehow know about if you want to progress in a stealthy manner. Those doors do not show on your map and I only found out of them because enemies open them up when they run on alarm. How should I find them on my own is anyone's guess.
I can praise one element in this game though, that many missions, on paper, have awesome concepts, but I could not even play them properly due to the glitches...
4/10