Pass the Controller | Latest news, reviews and reviews in video games
  • Home
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Features
  • Videos
  • Community
  • About
    • Contact
    • Meet the Team
  • Home
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Features
  • Videos
  • Community
  • About
    • Contact
    • Meet the Team
>

Hitman - episode 2 | Xbox One

9/5/2016

 
Picture

​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!

Picture
by Tom 
​Berry
Picture

​@pass_controller

Picture
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?”
Picture
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

Comments are closed.


    READ MORE

    News
    Features
    Videos

    Comment Here

    Categories

    All
    Action Adventure
    Adventure
    Air Combat
    Arcade
    Family
    Fantasy
    Fighter
    Hardware
    Horror
    Indie
    Management Sim
    Multiplayer
    Narrative
    Open World
    Party
    Platformer
    Puzzler
    Racing
    Roguelike
    Roguelite
    Role Playing
    RPG
    Shmup
    Shooter
    Sim
    SoulsLike
    Sports
    Stealth
    Strategy
    Survival
    Virtual Reality


    Archives

    February 2025
    December 2023
    November 2023
    September 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    July 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015


    RSS Feed

Pass the Controller

News
Reviews
Features
​
Videos
Community
About

What is PTC

About Us
​Meet the Team
​
Contact Us
Find our reviews on:
  • OpenCritic
  • vrgamecritic
© COPYRIGHT 2014-2022 PTC / JMP.
​ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.