Hitman 2: For Better Or For Worse? by: The Button Man | November 23, 2002 Level/Mission Design IO-Interactive were always going to have a really tough time improving on classic levels such as "The Lee Hong Assassination" and "Traditions of the Trade" (Budapest Hotel) from the original. They have, of course, done an extremely good job. All of the levels in the game really work in evoking the feeling of real places in real countries, generally more successfully than in the original. The addition of the weather effects system really helps (you'll always remember the subtle sand storms in Nuristan and the lightly falling snow in St. Petersburg), and the actual level design shows tremendous attention to detail in relation to architecture. Virtual tour of a Mafia haven. Even if you've never seen a Mafia villa in Sicily, you'll recognise such a building instantaneously after you've played the game. In addition, the levels are now far more complicated, and you rarely get the feeling that rooms have just been quickly filled with props because the designer was running out of ideas. In fact, this design complexity is continuous throughout the game, and a little exploring will bring you to areas you would never normally go to, all decked out with the same attention to detail. This is certainly an improvement. However, this improvement is not always seen in the mission design. On average, the pure variety of missions that 47 is sent on makes the game a more interesting affair. Now, alongside assassination, we have industrial espionage, theft, tracking and rescue missions, and with the simply vast variety of ways to complete your goals, this does keep everything interesting and up-to-pace. However, something is still missing. Can anyone remember the fun of having to track down the dentist to get hold of his bomb, only to find he could be having lunch, going for a swim (under the eyes of that huge female attendant!), enjoying the sauna or playing in the casino. And even when succeeding here, you had to kill his brother, either by posing as a bell boy, or jumping balcony to balcony to gain silent access to his room. And all the time, you'd be under the watchful eye of 20 or 30 guests, a brigade of security guards, and a SWAT team waiting around just in case. So that only left getting out of the hotel with a large bomb in a case. Find 'em and kill 'em - that's about it. Or how about Lee Hong? You had to destroy his standing amongst the triads by stealing his symbol of power, and then kill him. You had to gain access to his restaurant, get into his brothel, extract information from a prostitute, help her to escape over the rooftops, find a prisoner in his maze of a basement in order to get the combination for one of four safes, find the right safe, open it unobserved, and retrieve his statue. When you had delivered that, you might try to poison the man, only to be treated to killing his over-sized bodyguard, and have to try and face Lee Hong down in his heavily guarded hideout. All of this in one level. Ok, so these two examples are probably the best ones from Hitman, but being the best, they should have been the benchmark for all levels in Hitman 2. What we tend to find, however, is that the mark is almost always in the same place, doing the same thing, or alternatively he/she only follows a simple movement routine, making tracking him/her down exceptionally easy. Here, the variety ways of dealing with the task in hand does come into play (sounding false alarms, distraction techniques, cutting the power, stealing golf clubs, delivering pizzas, "nicking" the coffee, and an all out assault can all be potential solutions in some situations), and they do serve to keep things more than interesting, but we are still dealing with fairly simple behaviour. Why isn't our Mafia boss popping down to the library for a bit of a read? Why, on such a glorious day, isn't he occasionally enjoying the sun in his orchard, nor having a quick paddle? The levels present are excellent, as are the ideas behind the missions required of 47, and the mix of tactics available. However, this lack of complex behaviour in the targets leaves them feeling, to an extent, fairly shallow and simplistic. Of course, there are still come classic levels in here (the first and last St. Petersburg levels, alongside "Terminal Hospitality," "Basement Murder" and "Graveyard Shift" are all superb in my opinion), but there could still have been so much more.

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