Review By

Gene Park 8.0 RATING

Filmmakers often comment on the thin borderline between evil and good. Among the best Western films analyze the anti-hero, a person who blurs the definitions of heaven and hell, seeking redemption for sins of the past. Clint Eastwoods Unforgiven is most prominent in my mind, a solemn meditation on the mythical stigmas that come with the genre, as well as being a telling account of ones past catching up to him. The best dramas revolve around a central character that you are initially unable to connect with. The true skill of a filmmaker lies in his or her ability to have the audience empathize with those that are morally decrepit, revealing a sort of mutual dependency of mankind, the common thread that binds a killer and a saint.

Hitman 2: Silent Assassin begins like a classic film, sometimes Spaghetti Western and sometimes crime epic. Agent 47 is a retired hitman. Instead of picking off targets, he picks off tomatoes in a Sicilian Catholic Church. He prays to God, asking for forgiveness and searches for peace of mind. Agent 47 is a genetically enhanced hitman, or in a sense, a mistake of Creation. Still, the priest finds time to listen to his confessions, offering penance and redemption. That is, until the priest is kidnapped by the local Mafia. Every time Agent 47 wants out, they pull him back in.

Agent 47 contacts his former employers for information, and you are suddenly thrust into the world of a professional hitman. Its possible, almost encouraged, to walk through the entire game and kill only your primary targets. Sometimes you would have to dispatch others one way or another, so you can steal their uniform. Or maybe you can sneak through the sewers undetected. Or snipe your target from a church tower several yards away. It doesnt matter. The only thing that matters is that you kill your target. Killing has been one of the most common goals in videogames. This game is no different, yet it is different.

Hitman 2 is a third-person shooter which plays like a first-person shooter. The game even has a first-person mode that functions perfectly. Your goal is to kill, and you have a number of weapons at your disposal. You start out with dual .45-caliber handguns, a silenced pistol, anesthetic if youre feeling compassionate and the classic fiber wire, for the most gruesome and silent kills in the game. Eventually youll get a gaggle of automatic weapons, shotguns, as well as a variety of sniper rifles. These arent the only tools used for your missions though. You also get a lockpick, binoculars and various melee weapons you can pick up along the way, including a golf club and a scalpel.

Your most valuable ability is to change into anothers clothes however. In the first level alone, you are presented with a myriad of options. Should you ditch your guns and disguise yourself as a postal worker deliver flowers? Should you disguise yourself as a grocery delivery boy? Or how about a guard? Each option is completely situational, but all must end the same way. The Dons corpse must be at your feet. The artificial intelligence (AI) works wonders concerning disguises. Chances are a bald white male with a barcode imbedded in the back of his neck isnt going to fit in with just a turban, especially if hes packing a huge .50-caliber weapon. Running around also raises suspicion. Your disguises can very easily be seen through. A suspicion meter will keep track on how well youre keeping cover, which adds to some very tense moments in enclosed hallways. If you cant get a disguise, you can enter into the very slow "sneak" mode, which is essential in making kills with the fiber wire.

If your cover is blown, the best course of action is to whip out your guns. The back of the box boasts a balance of "surgical precision with visceral violent outbursts." The game displays violence indeed. The game features a strange physics that makes dead non-playable characters limp, like rag dolls. Its convincing to actually see an enemy lose its "life." Sometimes the effect is comical, and youd wish the system was more refined, but it makes dragging bodies more lifelike. At the end of each level, you are rated by the amount of stealth and aggression you used.

Every level has you killing, but each hit feels unique in its own right. One level has you hobnobbing with politicians and upper echelons of society as you search for a general, who winds up flirting with a maid, and unknowingly, death. Another has you kill a target during dinner. Hes heavily guarded, so you would have to find some way to sabotage his meal, which just happens to be the deadly fugu fish. Other unique scenarios can involve pagers, cellular phones, car bombs, poisoned champagne, potato chips and a surgery gone awry. Every kill can be unique experience, and creativity breeds satisfaction, your only reward. If you run in guns blazing, there is a nagging sense of the incomplete, as if you did it all wrong. Fortunately, you can revisit every level and you can bring along the arsenal of weapons you amass throughout the game.

Hitman 2 isnt a perfect hit however. Much too often, there would be glitches that would have enemies pop through a door. Another annoying problem is the music sometimes skips. Ive traded my copy in for another one, and both copies had the same problem. Ive only experienced this problem with Hitman 2 for my Xbox. Also, some levels are not very polished. Some levels display a remarkable depth of creativity that blows the lackluster levels away. One level required you to get across a snowy field. The goal was simple, yet frustrating because there werent that many options on what to do. Melee combat is often inconsistent as well. If I chop someone in the head with a fire axe, he shouldnt be able to run away and shoot me.

Fortunately the control system is very intuitive, mirroring the standard FPS console layout. The first-person mode works well with the third-person view, which gives you a better peripheral vision. Your in-game saves are limited to seven on normal, two on expert and none on professional, rising the stakes just far enough to not be frustrating. The real star of this game is the music, composed by Jesper Kyd and performed by the Budapest Radio Symphony Orchestra. The lumbering Agent 47 can look like a grim reaper, and the aftermath of his wake look like deaths touch. Kyds music sounds like death. From the title screen to the after-kill music, each piece is chilling, reflecting the coldness of murder, and the numbness that comes after each kill.

Numbness indeed. Sometimes a target wont know what hit him, and probably wont feel a thing. Neither will Agent 47, who at the beginning of the game was confessing his murderous ways to a priest. The beginning of the game really fooled me into thinking I was about to explore the psyche of this deeply disturbed man, and how he might make sense of all this killing. The game provides no answers until the end, with the final level aptly named "Redemption at Gontranno." Most great action films end with a final bloody confrontation where the violence is an extension of the main characters emotional trauma. Unforgivens climactic shootout will always stick out in my mind as chilling and heartbreaking. Hitman 2s final shootout is spectacular, and couldve very easily had the same effect on me. Instead, these fantastic examples of character development and exploration bookend what is essentially your run of the mill tactical espionage game. The plot even begins to lose coherence in the middle, before picking up in that last great shootout in the church.

There is a sense of finality in the conclusions Agent 47 comes to, and his numbness to the murders he commits throughout the game support this. Hitman 2: Silent Assassins is a fantastic stealth shooter that, for the most part, utilizes its strengths to great detail, providing a unique experience in terms of level design and the morality of killing in videogames. I cant hold anything against it if the game didnt take advantage of this unique opportunity to provide a wonderful character study. Still, I cant help but lament the treasure this game couldve been, maybe dissecting the anatomy of murder and profiling the mind of a true killer seeking, then abandoning, forgiveness from a God whom he cant call his own.

Disclaimer: This review is based on the Xbox version of the game.

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