Worth mentioning you get all the gameplay and AI improvements coming to Hitman 2 in the original Hitman Season 1 levels as well as redone lighting and graphics improvements to the original levels. It’s super impressive stuff.
and people can see in mirrors now
Damn!!
I’m probably gonna get this on PC whereas I got the first on PS4 so I’ll have to buy another thing but that’s very good of them. IO are so damn likable.
There’s a jungle level. The transition from suit and tie in hong kong to the fatigues and ak in the jungle in hitman 1 was always something I loved (even though it was one of the worst hitman levels). so was kane and lynch dead men cutting from busting out of a prison to screaming at each other in a warzone in cuba.
jungle ost was great tho
2 Likes
Oh god I think the Sean Bean hit is gonna drop while I’m out of state for training. No 
Can’t wait for this one, though. Hitman was easily my favorite game from 2016. I just worry the break from episodic releases means I’ll just plow through the levels rather than linger on them.
Cool tip for anyone who has a console version of Hitman and wants to play those levels in Hitman 2 - uhhhh don’t delete that game just yet!
Hitman 2 prompts you to download a Legacy Pack, which should be free to people who own any of the multiple versions of the first Hitman, through Hitman 2’s menus. But every time you click the page for it in Hitman 2, it pops you over to the Playstation Store (in my case anyway) and asks for $20.
The solution? You gotta boot up Hitman proper, which got an update to allow you to download the Legacy Pack. And there it’s free.
At least it’s true to how convoluted and murky that store was in the first game!
Well, I don’t think anyone really comes to these games for the story, but the switch from very nice (and probably expensive) cut scenes to borderline motion comic animatics is, uh. Oh well! They’re fine. It just loses a little something, especially if you bounce between this game’s content and the missions from season one.
Speaking of! I don’t think there’s any way to carry over your progress from the first season. Which is fine, I guess. Barreling into the new missions with all manner of poisons and undetectable plastic pistols would probably trivialize the game. But, hey - who doesn’t love a chance to earn all those trophies and do all those challenges all over again? At least you can go ahead and unlock all of season one’s gear by playing those missions to mastery.
They’ve also implemented some of the new engine changes into the season one levels (enemies can see you skulking up behind them in bathroom mirrors now, if you’re not careful), as well as dotting some old (probably too easy) areas with enforcer enemies and otherwise breaking my perfect Paris routine (you can’t just leave the extension cord sparking in a puddle anymore, as NPCs will now walk through it). Can’t really tell if they’ve been visually spruced up beyond maybe some lighting changes (and I’ve played these levels all dozens of times, so I’m gonna trust my gut on this one).
Anyway! The writing. That’s still probably my favorite part of the new game. The utter deadpan David Bateson uses to deliver his lines as 47 bullshits his way into enemy territory is still very good.
I mean, the game itself isn’t bad. It’s more Hitman. So take that as you will.
One of my favorite things about this new game so far is how it rewards doing just a little more exploration.
Some slight spoilers for the games Columbia stage: right out of the gate you find a hippie (same guy from Sapienza in 2016) complaining that he broke a decoration filled with cocaine that he was supposed to deliver to one of the level’s targets. You can use it to poison the cocaine in it, but you have to find some glue first.
There’s a mechanic shop nearby where the shopekeeper mentions he sold it to a man working on a car nearby. You can get it from him, but it involves turning on a radio to lure him and very quickly knocking him out and hiding his body before a lady nearby sees you do it.
Or - a little further into the town is a shop where a lady will hand some glue over, free of charge.
an empty secluded beach house you sneak into and can setup in before the target ever gets there is such a great tutorial for this game
3 Likes
The Miami mission feels like a New Order -> New Colossus foot on the floor, really leaning into the targets as the most despicable people imaginable.
The Tim/Kotaku video talked about Hitman as an acting simulator or toybox, but the scripted opportunities are adventure game puzzle murders.
I’ve never played a Hitman game before and the more I hear about them the more hyped I’m getting. Should I start with Hitman 1 or 2?
Hitman 2016 (“1”) is very good and gets cheap often enough that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it, it was originally sold on a level-by-level basis and there was a ton of value there
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Start with 2016, 2018 is a direct sequel. If you have 2016 they add it to the menu in 2018 like a past season. You can get 2016 inside 2018 and play it with some new features and polish but I don’t think that’s important.
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hitman 2 has a demo innit