E3 Hands On — Hitman 2

Hitman 2

While at E3, I was able to see Hitman 2 in a more intimate setting than just a trailer. Here is my take on Hitman 2.

We all knew it was coming and then it was secured when Hitman 2 received the official announcement just before E3 this year. Given how well the last one was received and still is played today, it would have been a bad move on IO Interactive to not follow it up with another great addition to the franchise and continue the story that sucked us in recently. They may have moved over to Warner Bros. to get the game out there, but that is not a bad thing at all as they also had Hitman 2 on the floor to play and see just where the game has progressed to. At least in terms of the first location revealed with Miami. A solid move since we are getting the full game this November 13^th for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

Before we dive into the full hands-on for Hitman 2, let us get a few house cleaning things out of the way. While the most recent game was set up in an episodic way with each “episode” being a new location filled with all the contracts and fun we could imagine, this one will be ditching that and as I was informed, all of the locations will be available from day one of launch. There will be no waiting for each of the six locations in Hitman 2 and the only wait you will have to endure is based on your time and not some elongated release schedule. This is an amazing move here as I always had to replay the last locations to remind myself of the ongoing story in the past and now we can do it all in one sitting.

All of that said, let us move right along to what I was able to play for Hitman 2 out at E3. Not the biggest surprise but it was the Miami mission that we saw the trailers for and will be seeing first when the game finally comes. Here is the mission briefing to get you up to speed before I dive into the rest. Of course, I was able to capture my gameplay out there and I have included it at the bottom of the page here. If for some reason you do not want the finer details and watch me fail or succeed through the mission, you can jump down there and see all of that. Maybe you will catch the finer details or why I had to shift my path as quick as I did…

Just like all of the locations and contracts in the last Hitman, it all started off with the usual mission briefing. In this instance, it was a truncated version of the mission as we only had to go after one of the targets and not both. I am guessing this was only for the demo, but I would not be surprised if IO Interactive added this feature in the final version of the game. It did seem to make things a bit more difficult knowing that I had to do all of this without alerting the other target in the process. Either way, my target here was the racecar driver and I was presented with two main ways to take her out. Sneak in and place a bomb in her car or shoot her with a sniper rifle and make it all look “accidental.”

As the last Hitman, these were just a few of the options we will have but for demo reasons, this was how I had to go. This led us back into the same restricted area gameplay we had from before. From the start and based on the disguise we are in we are only able to be in certain areas without being detained or escorted out. There are more options out there to hide yourself as, but I opted to go with the mascot and I was not disappointed. This could have been just for the demo, but it looks like Hitman 2 could be a bit of self-aware as the guy I took it off of was in the process of talking about how he snagged it off someone else to sneak into areas he should not be.

From there, Hitman 2 really stuck to the core gameplay that we all know and love from before. There was walking around and searching for clues on how to get close to the target. In my case, I started out on the path to place a bomb in the car. This meant that I needed to be disguised as one of the crew and to do so I needed to first look like a porter. This did not go well for me in my demo, as you can see, and led to me being spotted. This is where one of the new changes for Hitman 2 popped up. As I was only spotted for a moment, this did not compromise my whole disguise and only put the guards on alert. There are now variations of being discovered and not always a full “outing” when someone sees you doing something out of place.

Fast-forwarding a bit, and using some of the new weapon choices in Hitman 2, I picked up my disguise and then found that the same gameplay from before where some characters can always see through a disguise was also back. This is also where I found out that this is still an early version of the game as the drink I was trying to poison had gone missing and had to switch to a different approach to get to the end. Further showing how free-flowing Hitman 2 will be as we have always figured it would be.

From there, the rest of my demo went along the same lines as we would always have figured it would be with reaching a location and taking a shot. There was also no mention of having to extract ourselves from the missions in Hitman 2 as we did before, but I am sure it is still in there. I never had to do it, as you can see below, but the demo wrapped just as soon as I took the final shot after sneaking through more locations I should not have been. Nonetheless, Hitman 2 is shaping up to be a great follow up to the last title and continuing the story right along. Hopefully, for other fans out there, this paints the best picture for you to fully understand what to expect.