Hitman - episode 2 | Xbox One

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​Read part one of our review here.

Episode Two continues the game’s trend of being placed in a huge map with an overwhelming number of options available to carry out a few tasks. The biggest tip for any HITMAN game is to spend your first playthrough messing about and exploring, seeing the patterns of the targets and the best escape routes, where disguises are left lying about, etc. Proceeding with this mindset, the mission score would have resulted in minus points if possible, thanks to around 80,000 being taken off for knocking out and killing near enough twenty 'non-targets', as the game calls them. They're all working for a chemical weapons manufacturer, they're all culpable!

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by Tom 
​Berry

​@pass_controller

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Platforms: Xbox One, PS4, Microsoft Windows 
Developer: IO Interactive
Publisher: Square Enix
Players: 1 

The new location, Sapienza, oozes colour and brightness in a refreshing change to the drab Parisian building-y thing. The Italian level is incredibly big to boot. The levels for HITMAN are concentrated around replaying, and as such have vast areas to explore to compensate for the relative lack of levels on offer, compared to previous games (around seven in total once fully released). This means that creating your own contracts or playing other people’s will offer more variety. Whereas the Paris level felt confined to the building and a bit samey, here it feels like the game has opened up.

​There's lots of variety in the map as well, starting off in a tiny urban district just off a beautifully crafted coastline, heading into where most of the story action takes place; a fully explorable mansion and surrounding grounds, not to mention the ancient towers and underground caverns housing secret laboratories. A level this big does have some slight frame rate drops on Xbox One when in larger areas however, though this is barely noticeable.

​The story mixes things up when it comes to objectives by having you destroy a virus too. This is interesting thanks to the more direct approach you are forced to take in order to complete the objective; requiring you to throw out your best laid plans akin to a spanner into the works. In what could be one of the most difficult infiltrations so far for amatuer players (read 'us'), the fully guarded lab is hidden away and requires lots of thinking and patience to get into. It's a fresh approach that, whilst seeming unexpectedly linear, just means you have to think about your plan a bit more, “I can kill this target in so many ways, which shall I choose?” is replaced with a puzzle; “There's the objective, how do I crack it?” It's a nice change of pace in what is otherwise a run of the mill assassination, with another cutscene at the end which might as well just say 'story stuff'.

“I can kill this target in so many ways, which shall I choose?”

HITMAN's episodic approach so far has been rather light, the monthly release schedule has been barely adhered to with the second episode releasing over seven weeks after the initial content. The only updates have been a few Escalation Contracts that see you doing the same hit over and over in more difficult ways. As such, Contracts mode remains the big draw, with challenges in story mode making replaying levels more palatable, a bit more inventive, and appealing to go through again and again. It's a shame that the Elusive Targets haven't arrived yet, as these would go a long way towards bringing everyone back into a game that most can get enough fun out of after a few play sessions. More regular updates are needed in an otherwise consistently brilliant return to form with Episode Two.

Now to go back and see if that woodchipper works...

Pros

• Even more satisfying to pull off perfect murders
• Sapienza is beautifully crafted 
• Some real depth afforded by the freedom of approach

Cons

• Losing network connection still loses progress
• Offline players still suffer limitations
• Regular content updates absent or not worthwhile

Score TBD, check back when the game is content complete