Hitman 2

Whether you're knocking the household maid down the stairs with a golf club or sneaking silverballers into a mansion through a milkman crate, Hitman 2 was one of the most iconic games of its time, but the game's total creative freedom in how you take down targets is what appeals most. Real contract killers have a professional binding to kill only the target, but Hitman 2 makes killing everyone so fun that you may find this unspoken professional rule a bit of a hassle in the video game world, where you just want to have fun.

How It Stacks Up

The first Hitman game had some fascinating ideas and controller slamming difficulty, but it failed to carry out their ideas where it counted. Luckily, the sequel, Hitman 2, fixes almost every complaint made in the first title, and it preserves everything we liked in the first game. Even better yet, the game lets you be yourself. For example, if you have little patience for taking down targets, you can adopt the collateral damage-based approach.

Hitman 2: What We Need to Know

Hitman 2 put us into the shoes of Agent 47, a contract assassin who murders targets from across the globe. One of the cool things about this game is the vast changes in the game. The game starts out where you're trying to repent from your evil ways, and you have now decided to live in a monastery. However, without giving away the plot, circumstances bring Agent 47 back into the underground world we all know and love. Before long, he's fully immersed in a dangerous world with criminal elements and other powerful targets that he's been hired to kill for money. At times the contracts seem unconnected, but over time, you grow to see the big picture.

Total Creative Freedom

How you enter this sandbox world for a kill will ultimately depend on you. As the game progresses, you see how many different ways you can kill a target. The only thing that matters at the end of the level is how the target's heart has stopped breathing. You can choose to play either with a bulldog's snarling approach, or you can enter like a prowling tiger waiting for the opportune moment to strike. Most missions offer you a substantial reward for stealth, but you never have anything restricted to you. In Thief, the game was great, but you had no choice but to remain stealthy if you wanted to survive. Hitman has always been a franchise to let you approach the problem from whatever angle you want to do it with. In this way, Hitman offers you an even more personalized mission where you can achieve your goals by whatever means you wish, and many times, you will enjoy the game so much that you will try to use different weapons to do it with.

Pros

• Total freedom to take down targets.
• You have a long and winding list of levels to play through—21 to be exact.
• Rich selection of weapons to use.

Cons

• Sometimes you get caught for no reason in this game.
• The guards of most levels of poor AI.
• The levels in Japan are some of the most frustrating in video game history.