Hitman 2 (2018)

[Art Blade]

Finally Hitman 2 has arrived (I only noticed two days ahead of time, should have noticed it on November 9th already but I was busy with Killing Floor 2 It's an "early access" because of the Gold Edition)

The first impression is overwhelming

this is the actual start of the first mission, not a cutscene.
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[BinnZ]

 

[PZ]

Can't wait to read of your impressions!  Graphics are impressive, and much like I see in Odyssey.

[Art Blade]

Something cool about my new Hitman2 Gold Edition: I got ALL missions from Hitman1 and some of my HM1 gear available WITHIN the new game, it's called "legacy" pack and available to me because I had the GOTY edition of HM1. Now I can play those missions again but with the new HM2 gear and game system

first kill
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First off, there is a mini map and a few other HUD elements when playing. The very first pic was without because the game hadn't yet introduced those basic elements to me but still, the graphics are like that. Same with the new pic, it's without any HUD because it's a cutscene of my first kill and first silent assassin rating and "suit only" at the time. And yes, there's a katana dangling from my back

What you're seeing is agent 47 (aka hitman, the player-controlled avatar) wearing a tactical swimsuit (he beached his dinghy at night on the shore somewhere in New Zealand next to the house) in the master bedroom, smothering the spark of life of the female target using a black pillow. Next to her in the same bed is some bloke whom I had attended to first by administering a tranquiliser dart to the temple (might have caused some cerebral haemorrhage but who cares) so he wouldn't rudely interrupt the assassination of the woman, let alone becoming a witness or worse.

I reloaded once because I had realised that using a computer triggered a cutscene followed by tons of hostiles everywhere, among which was my target. And I hadn't yet learned the layout of the—until then empty—house I was snooping around in. After reloading a save prior to using the computer, I made myself acquainted with the layout and planned a route to the bedroom from where the game put me after the computer cutscene (which was somewhere on the first floor not far from a guard posted next to the bedroom who prevented me from accessing the room) and the only other way was through a door I hadn't unlocked yet because I hadn't found the picklock yet and that door led to a balcony and from there through another door into the bedroom. The only good thing about the first part before reloading was that I had learned that the target would go to the bedroom. No guards in there, as opposed to everywhere else in the house. So that's why I wanted to go there, and I did after the cutscene once I was prepared for that.

I hid behind a curtain and waited. I was close to the adjacent bathroom and bedroom, in a little corridor that was more like a massive wardrobe. There I listened to the man and woman while they were taking a shower and talking, then they had a smoke on the balcony and finally they went to bed. The same bed. Actually, I didn't expect them to go to sleep and I hadn't got any plan on how to do the job, really, so I was surprised and pleased when I learned they went to go to sleep there.

Fortunately I had found a tranquiliser pistol with exactly one dart. Perfect for that guy, and the female target never knew what happened to him. I choked her while she was still sleeping. You need to know that the bedroom (and other rooms as well) had a massive window in the ceiling and on the roof was a guard patrolling. Not really much of a quality time you can get like that but that wasn't my problem. My problem was that I might get spotted while doing my thing there. The final result was perfect, both people were still lying in the bed as if sleeping and the roof guard couldn't tell she was dead and he was zoned out, except for that dart sticking out from his temple, perhaps, but it obviously wasn't visible to the guard. Cool inconspicuous assassination, really, for I hadn't planned it, and I hadn't even used any disguises. Just like a ghost, I stayed invisible and unnoticed all the time.

When I left the house to get to the mission exit, the rubber boat I had arrived in, the whole beach was beaming with guards because they had found the dinghy and were on high alert.. what a mission. I had to create a distraction (shot a gas canister loaded onto the back of a Jeep) and while the guards ran towards the car, I hid in tall dune grass and then ran to the boat and escaped unnoticed.

Cool mission

[Dweller_Benthos]

Sounds cool, could you have hidden the boat somewhere to avoid detection there and got away clean? That would be interesting.

[PZ]

What a great idea to build in the older game missions into the new game with the new mechanics. Definitely makes one want to explore that game.

I wish UBI*bleep* would do something like that in their AC series - I would love to do the old Ezio games with the new mechanics.

[Art Blade]

@D_B: nope, it's mission-related.

@PZ: that's the difference between devs/publishers who care for their customers and those who care about money. Also, after a lot of moaning and asking and begging of the fan base, they re-introduced the much loved "suitcase" which used to be for instance in HM:Blood Money, one of the most-loved iterations of the game. The then new release of Hitman (2016) caused a lot of sadness when the suitcase wasn't available anymore. The suitcase allows you to smuggle items like a sniper rifle through control points where the player gets frisked. Also, carrying a suitcase isn't conspicuous while carrying a sniper rifle is, so it comes in very handy to have the rifle with you without raising suspicion. And now, it's back They actually listen to the fans. My Gold Edition comes with two suitcases. The additional bonus one shows a couple of stickers, like a tourist's suitcase, and those stickers are from locations of the prior Hitman game, like Sapiensa. Nice touch

[PZ]

You're so correct, AB 

Profit drives way too much these days.

[Art Blade]

in this case, the developer team "IOI" split up with their old publisher Square Enix and maintained the intellectual property of the Hitman series. They then were free again once more and teamed up with Warner Brothers (the games division) for distribution reasons (physical copies for the consoles) but generally speaking, they're their own boss. That freedom and the support of their fan base encouraged them to pull off the new Hitman2 game. And boy, after two completed missions, I mean it when I say: they did a really good job. For instance, they did NOT temper with the established control and movement system. True to the old saying, "never change a running system," they just added a few things. More precisely, they managed to improve a few things. So as a "returning" player (coming from Hitman "1" 2016) I absolutely felt right at home when I fired up the game and started to play. No bad surprises. It actually feels like a true continuation. Both the game handling and the story which builds on the previous game feel "right." I am more than happy


Now, there's something else to report, regarding steam support. Within 24 hours they actually solved a problem I had.

You may remember that I posted vids in the summer about me playing Sniper Assassin, which was a stand-alone version of a game mode of Hitman2. It kind of broke. It was still in my steam library but instead of the "play" button, there was a "purchase" button despite the fact that it was never purchasable. I thought I broke it somehow because when I downloaded the new Hitman2, I decided to slap those roundabout 60GB onto my 125GB SSD with 119GB accessible thanks to those windows files and all that. The SSD already had got Kingdom Come Deliverance on it, some 50GB, totalling 110GB. What I didn't expect was the legacy pack with the old missions came as a second wave with an additional 30GB and you guessed it, I obviously ran out of disk space in the middle of that update. I deleted KCD to free up disk space but the download wouldn't resume. So I deleted that half-done Hitman2 game and re-downloaded it, this time slightly more than 100GB (oh yes, it wasn't an easy decision, I didn't like that but it was the only solution to get this over with) and that was when I realised that Sniper Assassin had a "purchase" button and wasn't accessible anymore. I thought I had disabled the pre-purchase status by deleting HM2.

The first reply to my support ticket came only ONE hour after I had requested help from steam support. It wasn't a bad reply but didn't nail it so I replied that it didn't solve the problem and I gave them some additional info including a screenshot from my steam desktop. When I got home today, the new reply was waiting for me: They actually researched the problem and gave me a link from Warner Brothers which revealed that Sniper Assassin had been disabled starting the world wide release on November 13, 2018, as it now had become part of the HM2 game in form of a game mode. So it wasn't even steam's fault that Sniper Assassin didn't w0#k anymore. Although I didn't like that the game had been taken away from me like that, it was a fact, and well, it was now part of the main game of HM2. So I do have it back, only "inside" of HM2.

After that, Steam Support deserves capital letters I suppose

And just "by the way," although it should have been the other way round, something about the game itself: I finished the second mission, again without being spotted (Silent Assassin rating) and like the first mission, without ANY help from outside. No YT vids, not guides, I figured that stuff out by myself.

There are three difficulty levels now. They call them Casual, Professional and Master. Before, in Hitman 2016, it was just the hitman game without choices but later, because fans wanted it, they added a much harder mode called Professional which in the new game resembles the Master difficulty. So I am playing on the new Professional, the middle difficulty which is demanding enough

killer android
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The new mission map essentially was something like a mix of a Tech Expo and a race event with Formula One cars on steroids on a NASCAR track. So lots of areas like the race track itself, VIP lounges, tribunes, paddock, a hotel, a waterside and so on and so forth, beautifully done. I had fun killing one target while I was disguised as a flamingo mascot and the other target was more on the RoboCop side of things, I had him killed during a demonstration of an automated weapon system in shape of an android that looked more like a robot. Didn't go well for those two but it went very well for me

[Art Blade]

I just want to add that hiding in tall grass and blending in with larger groups of people is a new feature, it allows you to conceal yourself in plain sight of so-called enforcers who can otherwise identify you even if you're wearing a disguise. It is a feature that was introduced in Assassin's Creed some time ago and obviously the devs thought it would be a cool new gimmick for Hitman2. Which it is

Also, they added a lot of new weapons. For instance, I unlocked a very wet-looking fish as a melee weapon The tranquiliser pistol is new, too, and likely a lot more useful than running around with a concealed wet fish just to clobber people over the head with it when the opportunity arises Many items, specifically melee weapons, can be thrown to knock people out (if the item is blunt) or kill people (if it's a sharp item) from a distance. That was possible before already but still, I want to use that fish at least once for fun Some melee "weapons" will break on hitting something, like bricks and coconuts but they're still useful when used properly. This game has always had its own kind of dark humour as you might have guessed

[Dweller_Benthos]

haha I like the idea of taking someone out with a wet fish.

[Art Blade]

something interesting about this game's way of saving progress:

You can stack different mutually exclusive achievements in a single mission. If, for example, you first kill someone with a specific accident and then reload a savegame prior to the accident kill and then kill the same person in a different way, like with poison, and then finish: you'll get both scores added. Other games "say" that you finished with poison and ignore the accident so you'd have to play the same mission twice, one with accident and one with poison, to get both achievements. Here you can just unlock different achievements with several savegames and you'll get them all once you finish the mission.

Also, if you haven't yet discovered a map area, it won't show on the map what it is until you visited it. Like, ah, that's the control room. If you then reload an earlier savegame from before you discovered it, it will now show "control room" even though it wasn't discovered when you created that savegame. So it "remembers" that you unlocked it, no matter when you did.

Both features are very cool.

[Art Blade]

guys.. someone made a fun vid. People knocking themselves out with a carefully placed rake.. LOL

[LowPolyOWG]

 

They definitely got raked

[Art Blade]

I tried that "flamingo exit" as seen in the vid but it didn't give me any rewards which is a pity. To get there as a flamingo, you're trespassing for quite a bit so it's not an "easy way out" at all. I used a savegame I created after killing the main targets so all I had to do was to exit but in this case, I had to retrace some steps to retrieve a security uniform in order to pass most areas and reach a flamingo mascot I had spotted, then I followed him and knocked him out, took his dress as a disguise and from there it was quite hard to make it to that helicopter platform. I actually shot a couple of security guys and nearly croaked, this is NOT a shooter game and firefights are usually the worst you can do and it is very hard to survive. However, I managed and it was still entertaining