The game does a pretty good job of teaching and explaining all the control mechanics to you early on and in the context of the story--see, 47's employer wants to make sure he hasn't gotten rusty and so offers him a quick refresher course. The fact that most of Hitman 2's controls will be instantly accessible to anyone who's played any recent shooter speaks to how greatly the designers have improved the sequel's controls since the original. Suffice it to say that all the original game's control problems are gone and that Hitman 2 basically controls just like your typical first-person shooter. The main difference is in the presence of an easy-to-use context-sensitive menu, which lets you do things like pick locks, put on disguises, climb through windows, grab useful items, and so on.
The original game's extremely steep learning curve isn't nearly as insurmountable in the sequel, since at normal difficulty, 47 can sustain massive amounts of damage (thanks to good old genetic engineering) and can still finish most missions if he blows his cover. Also, the fact that you can save your progress during missions certainly helps: Seven saves are available per mission at normal difficulty and two at expert, though none are available at professional, the toughest setting. The professional setting offers an additional challenge in that the real-time area map you have constant access to will not reveal enemy positions, whereas on normal and expert, you'll see incoming enemies as blips on this screen. Also, aiming is noticeably more erratic at the two tougher settings--you'll need to manually compensate for your weapons' recoil, which actually makes the weapons seem to pack more of a punch. At any rate, between the multiple difficulty settings and the game's end-of-mission ranking system that rewards you for staying stealthy, and of course the inherently open-ended design of the missions, you may find that Hitman 2 has a lot more longevity than most other single-player action games these days.
Hitman 2 certainly looks superb, on every platform. Sure enough, the game looks its best on a high-end PC, though the Xbox version is about as good, and the PlayStation 2 version also looks great. While the game does look similar in many ways to its predecessor, its slick, polished graphical presentation stands up to the very best of what the genre has to offer. Crisp, colorful textures are used to bring both the game's indoor and outdoor settings to life, though textures in the outdoor environments can seem a bit repetitive. Weapons are all rendered with meticulous detail, down to alternate reload animations depending on whether you're playing from the third-person or first-person view. You also won't see a great deal of variety in the character models in each level, though all characters are motion-captured to lifelike perfection. You'll appreciate that many of the characters in the game do have a distinctly unique appearance, and you'll really enjoy the game's stylish cutscenes, which often take the form of surveillance footage taken of 47's targets. In one remarkable mission, you'll have nothing to go on but an old black and white video of the target as a young child.
Yet perhaps the most notable aspect of Hitman 2's graphics is its use of what's now commonly known as "rag doll physics," meaning that characters don't die in any prescripted fashion, but rather go limp as they're struck by the simulated force of your firepower. Sometimes this effect is amazing, like when you blast a ninja from out of the rafters and watch him tumble to the ground or when you take out an enemy sniper and see him slump dead over a railing. At other times, the rag doll effect lives up to its name, and you'll see a foe go flopping end over end in a manner that's more comical than anything else. All in all, it's still a very cool effect, though those who played the original Hitman might wish that it were refined more for the sequel.
The game's exotic settings are large and detailed.
Sure enough, Hitman 2 sounds as impressive as it looks. The jarringly loud and clear report of each of the game's various firearms is very convincing, and characters all speak in their native languages--though if you start shooting, you'll start to hear innocents uttering the same cries for help over and over. The voice acting in Hitman 2 is generally solid, and 47's voice in particular, with its slight European accent, is particularly good and much improved from his voice in the original. But the music is probably the highlight of the audio presentation. Featuring a booming original soundtrack, parts of which were performed by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, Hitman 2's music effectively underscores the action and also weaves in some cultural themes that help establish each new setting. And the way the music fades to a soft, ominous tone after you assassinate your target in each mission may send shivers down your spine.
Hitman 2 is exceptionally well done in most every way and represents a major improvement over the original. A true multiplatform game, it wasn't developed for the lowest common denominator, but it instead showcases the best of what the PC, Xbox, and PlayStation 2 have to offer, as though the game were specifically designed for each. Clearly, many of the design decisions made by IO Interactive were directly in response to common criticisms leveled against the original, but these improvements don't come at the cost of a simpler or easier experience. Even the most experienced gamers will find a serious, rewarding challenge in the game's highest difficulty mode, yet the well-rounded design of Hitman 2 means just about anyone with a taste for the subject matter, or just a stomach for it, will really like the game and its distinctively cinematic style.
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