The Top Shelf: The Second Round 030: Hitman 2: Silent Assassin
by mento
Welcome to The Top Shelf, a weekly feature wherein I sort through my extensive PS2 collection for the diamonds in the rough. My goal here is to narrow down a library of 185 games to a svelte 44: the number of spaces on my bookshelf set aside for my PS2 collection. That means a whole lot of vetting and a whole lot of science that needs to be done - and here in the second round, that means narrow...
Welcome to The Top Shelf, a weekly feature wherein I sort through my extensive PS2 collection for the diamonds in the rough. My goal here is to narrow down a library of 185 games to a svelte 44: the number of spaces on my bookshelf set aside for my PS2 collection. That means a whole lot of vetting and a whole lot of science that needs to be done - and here in the second round, that means narrowing our laser focus to one game per week (at least). Be sure to check out the Case File Repository for more details and a full list of games/links!
Extra Note: We've entered Shelftember! In this much-vaunted month, we will be processing one of the second round entries every day. I'll be spending one hour apiece with each game - inspired by DanielKempster's backlog-clearing series "An Hour With..." - and determining its fate from there.
The mistake I've made with the Hitman series these many years was thinking it was far too dour and self-important; a game about an expressionless bald man pulling off assassinations with Swiss-level precision as classical music plays in the background to frame the beautiful tragedy of a well-planned and well-executed death. You know, operatic shit. Rather, the Hitman games - as evinced by recently playing the 2016 reboot and again with my hour spent with Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, here - deliver something of a deadpan (so to speak) subversive streak of self-effacing humor that makes these games far more approachable than they initially appear. Elements like how 47's guns are nicknamed "Ballers" or how the opening tutorial tells you that, verbatim, "you can escape from speech and cutscenes by hitting the X button". It's any wonder why I once took this franchise so seriously and stayed away.
That approachability goes double for the game's mechanics, which while offering a great variance and complexity in how you snuff out targets and what you can interact with in the environment (and how enemy guards might "interact" with you if you're being too conspicuous), can often go out of their way to make it evident how to succeed and present in-game what your available options are, either through hints, points of interest on the map, or through a list of context commands for every interactive object in the game. Between the real-time map, the briefing with its constantly updated list of objectives, and the inventory screen that gives you some idea about how each item you have could be used, it's never unclear as to what you should be doing, without necessarily giving away how to accomplish it, and for a 2002 release it still looks pretty good even now: I almost mistook it for an early PS3 game during its introductory cutscene until the first character model came into view (which, while not bad here, are a useful shorthand for which console era you're in).
Hitman 2 has a story that I don't care about - something about Agent 47 being forced back into action after his priest friend is randomly kidnapped by the Mafia during 47's incognito stay on the island of Sicily - and it doesn't take long for Agent 47 to gear up and start hunting. The first mission in the local Don's mansion works well enough as a tutorial: it is possible to shoot one's way through, since there's something of a bait and switch regarding its "don't make noise or they'll kill the hostage" threat, but there's a handful of opportunities to get close and do the deed without alerting anyone. I was spotted almost straight away despite stealing a guard's uniform - there's no telling which NPCs are fooled by the disguise, and everyone's constantly moving around anyway - but I'll admit to being in a hurry and not taking my time to learn every quirk of the stage and its inhabitants, or at the very least systematically killing everyone who might get in my way and hiding the bodies. Without the constant feedback of reward through discovery and Opportunities - the wonderful mini-walkthroughs the modern Hitman game has for some of its showy assassinations - I don't feel quite as invested to explore every approach Hitman 2 might have to take down its targets.
I don't think I'll be sticking with this Hitman 2 playthrough. For as much as I've come around on the series in recent months, these stringent stealth games are still a little too frustrating and slow-paced for an inherently impatient guy like myself, and I think there are better options available. Buying the rest of the maps for Hitman 2016, for example, or maybe even booting up the original PC version of Hitman 2 on Steam which I purchased some time in the past and probably has all kinds of wonderful mod support the PS2 version lacks. What Hitman 2 demonstrates, I've determined, is promise: it'll take the future games of the series (besides maybe the fundamentally distinct Absolution) to make good on it to the extent where I might want to get involved in its world of pure assassination.
Result: Eliminated.