Hitman 2: Silent Assassin - Thoughts

Well, I tried.

I tried to be stealthy.

And sometimes, I'd succeed! Every now and then I'd throw on a doctor's coat and slip by some guards, or poison a meal and quietly creep back to the exit. Those were some of my proudest moments. But for most of its missions, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin set up brick walls. Sometimes it was a stubborn guard that refused to turn around. Occasionally I didn't cover my tracks well enough. But what I fell prey to nine times out of ten was Silent Assassin's finicky "threat" mechanic. And once I was discovered, only one method was left to my disposal: reload a save, and shoot that person in the head.

Before I get into the nitty-gritty, I have to clarify that Hitman 2: Silent Assassin is leagues ahead its predecessor in almost every way. There's more levels, more weapons, a greater variety of locations, and—shockingly!—intended methods of assassination that are easily deduced! Wow! No longer are you left running around a vast, empty military base, wondering how to silently subdue a coked-up maniac; now you can see your target playing golf on a balcony whilst spotting a sniper rifle in the garage. Being able to solve missions without a guide not only makes Silent Assassin a lot more playable, but also pretty dang fun... welllll, at times. More on that later.

One of the best additions to Silent Assassin is the inclusion of mid-level saves, rather than checkpoints. And since I was playing on the lowest difficulty this time, I got a whopping seven saves per mission (hey, in my defense it's labeled "Normal"!) What this does is drastically cut down on the repetition and trial and error, as you no longer have to ponder "can I walk with this gun out?" or "am I allowed in this room?" under the fear of jeopardizing your last five minutes of progress. I could've finished Codename 47 in a fraction of the time that I did, if only I could've saved before doodie (inevitably) hit the fan.

Hitman 2: Silent Assassin offsets this boon, however, by being a stricter game. Gone is the unnatural ability to hover behind a guard and effortlessly strangle him when there's no one else around. Instead, you have to stealthy approach your target at a tortoise-like speed, meaning that you can only strangle (or temporarily KO) guards if they're stationary. Running too is a major red flag to others—especially when you're in uniform—meaning that the ability to save is counterbalanced by your painful, glacial crawl past guards. And like with Codename 47, it's hard to tell exactly what guards can and cannot see, although this is a minor problem compared to Silent Assassin's clever—yet confusing—new feature: the threat meter.

I can at least commend Silent Assassin on introducing alerts based off of proximity, since it makes a lot of sense; a bald dude following behind an armed guard a hair's breadth away definitely seems suspicious. But the threat meter is extremely vague, as its throbbing red state can mean someone is merely suspicious of your actions, or they're about to expose you by perforating you with lead. This dilutes Silent Assassin to a bizarre coin flip in every instance where you slowly saunter past a guard, the meter unable to tell you when the switch from curious to violent is going to occur. Most of the time it's not too bad—all you really have to do is just keep walking—but if the guard stops in mid patrol or blocks a doorway you're heading towards, this can result in a bungled operation.

Not only that, but like with Codename 47, what sets people off can be downright unpredictable. Jog for a brief second and a civilian might scamper away to warn a guard, or walk into a back room and men will suddenly open fire, or secretively change costumes after being discovered and the guards will somehow manage to see through your disguise. But if you embrace your inner-psychopath and slaughter all the guards one by one, occasionally they'll run past you and not think twice... even as you're standing on the corpses of their kin. There were so many instances of confusion and befuddlement in my playthrough: being seen despite crouching behind cover, getting spotted by snipers despite my camouflage, not getting caught despite wearing a unique lieutenant's uniform, alarming a civilian because I occupied the bathroom stall they frequent (seriously??? You're going to rat me out for that?!!!) When the game works it works well, but a lot of the time it feels like you're one suspicious glance away from being assassinated yourself.

Early on, I realized that shooting people in the back of the head with a silenced pistol was the path of least resistance (thanks Normal mode). And though I tried my best to ghost my way through facilities and spare my enemies, Silent Assassin was quick to punish me if I made the briefest miscalculation (eg "I'm pretty sure it's safe to run now.") Add to this the fact that not only is anesthesia stringently temporary, but the hardest missions are arguably in the first third of the game, Russia & Japan being a long, demanding, and painful combination. I was thankfully able to finish the game with my stealth meter above my aggression meter, but I was irked by what this game forced me to do at times. Somewhere in Japan there's a castle full of dead ninjas, and I'm not proud of it.

Hitman 2: Silent Assassin finally gave me a glimpse into what the Hitman franchise is supposed to be. There are moments of brilliance sprinkled throughout it—like dropping a smoke bomb down a laundry chute and then disguising yourself as a firefighter to go "investigate" the source—but like its predecessor, the game is hamstrung by its imprecision. It still feels like luck is too influential on your success or failure—or maybe not luck, but unknown variables that you have to puzzle out through saving and restarting (anyone that's played the last mission will know exactly what I mean.) At the end of the day your meticulous plans can easily be quashed by some capricious—and often stupid—variables being rolled behind your back.

At least you can try to be stealthy, I guess.