Hitman 2: Silent Assassin

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47 wearing the clothes of an enemy guard in Tubeway Torpedo.

Hitman 2: Silent Assassin is a stealth-based shooter game, developed by IO Interactive and published by Eidos Interactive. It was the second installment of the Hitman video game series. Its predecessor is Hitman: Codename 47 and its sequel is Hitman: Contracts. The game was released first on October 1, 2002 in North America. It was also released on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, Xbox and the GameCube. It has sold more than 3.7 million copies, as of April 23rd, 2009.

Gameplay

Hitman 2: Silent Assassin features mission-based gameplay. On each level 47 is given a set of objectives to complete, inevitably featuring the assassination of one or more people. However, how missions are completed are up to the player, and there is almost always a large variety of ways to complete missions. One can take a stealthy approach and move in and out of the level avoiding confrontation, or take a more straightforward run and gun attitude.

Many features introduced in the previous game still remain; 47 can find disguises or remove them from an incapacitated target to blend in with his surroundings better and access restricted areas. This plays in with the "suspicion" system; a bar beside your health on the HUD represents how much suspicion you are garnering. Taking precautions such as holding weapons that the person you are disguised as would be carrying and keeping a distance away from people who would logically know you are not one of them helps to avoid suspicion, while acting oddly in ways such as running and being in places where the person you are disguised at would not logically be found at rouses the attention of enemies. Eventually your cover can be blown if suspicion gets too high, and the disguise will no longer be of any use.

Hitman 2 also introduced the concept of a post-mission ranking system, in which the player is given a status based on how they completed the mission, rated along a stealthy-aggressive axis, between "Mass Murderer", a non-stealthy player who kills everyone, and "Silent Assassin", a stealthy player who manages to complete the level without being noticed and only killing the intended target(s). The game rewards the player for critical thinking and problem solving, encouraging the player not to treat the game as a simple shooter. Achieving Silent Assassin status on multiple missions rewards the player with bonus weapons.

Synopsis

Agent 47 has retreated to a church in Sicily to seek peace. During his time in the church, he works as a gardener for the priest, Father Vittorio. 47 views Father Vittorio as his best friend and mentor, attending regular confessions to admit his sins.

One day, after confession, Father Vittorio is kidnapped and a ransom note is left for 47, demanding 500,000 dollars in two days. 47 decides to go back to his old job as an assassin to track down Father Vittorio. He contacts his agency, who thought he was dead, and makes a deal with his handler, Diana, to carry out some contracts for them if they can help him locate Father Vittorio.

Diana accepts the deal and lets 47 know that according to their information Father Vittorio was kidnapped by a ruthless Sicilian Mafia capo named Giuseppe Guilliano, who is holding the priest in a cell under his mansion, dubbed Villa Borghese. 47 sneaks into the mansion and kills Guilliano, but fails to find Father Vittorio. He is later told that a satellite image show Father Vittorio being taken away by 'Russian-looking types in uniform'.

47 fulfils his part of the deal and the Agency is pleased to be working with 47 again. They offer him three times the going rate for each job to continue working for the Agency. 47 accepts and travels to different countries, including Russia, Japan, Afghanistan, Malaysia and India to carry out his missions, assassinating the assigned targets.

47 eventually learns that the entire thing was a scam by a former Spetsnaz assassin named Sergei Zavorotko, an Agency client whom 47 had been working for all along. Sergei had hired 47 to kill all the people who knew anything relating to a major nuclear warhead he had purchased. Sergei was also the brother of Arkadij Jegorov, who was one of 47's "five fathers".

Finally, 47 tracks Sergei back to the church in Sicily, where he holds a terrified Father Vittorio hostage. 47 eventually kills Sergei, leaving Father Vittorio alive. Afterwards, Father Vittorio gives his old crucifix to Agent 47, asking him to follow the right way and find peace in his life according to his inner soul. Agent 47 takes a final look at Father Vittorio and leaves the church, hanging the crucific on the church's wooden door, realizing he will never find peace there and goes back to a life as a hitman.

Reception

Hitman 2: Silent Assassin received generally very favorable reviews. In Rotten Tomatoes the PC version received a rating of 90 % fresh, 8.8/10 with a highly recommended -tag, based on nineteen reviews. In another meta-review site, Metacritic, the PC version scored 87/100 based on twenty reviews. The reviews of the PC version of the game were the most favorable but the versions of other platforms, namely Xbox, GameCube and PlayStation 2, were practically rated as good as the PC version. Gamespot gave it a a score of 8.6 out of 10, saying that it "fixes virtually all of the problems of its predecessor" and is still an "outstanding" game.

Controversy

The game's release sparked controversy due to a level featuring the killing of Sikhs within a depiction of their most holy site, the Harmandir Sahib. Eidos claimed that the enemies in the level were not Sikh, but simply guards, and that the "temple" was in fact a hospital.Vorlage:Fact However, this is contradicted by a depiction in the game itself, which refers to the site as a gurudwara, or Sikh temple. An altered version of Silent Assassin was eventually released on the GameCube and Windows platforms with the related material removed from the game.

External links

• Official site