Dom Robinson reviews

for Xbox

Distributed by
Eidos Interactive Limited

First thing for you to do is visit the training area to sharpen up on your skills. Then, as the first level begins, you're in a cold white room, where a scientist writhes about in agony - because you've just shot him. He tries to explain something important, but... you break his neck. I thought with the initial level name like "Asylum Aftermath", this was all going to get political but no. You're in the Sanitarium and must escape. However, the place is full of SWAT guys and you can try and shoot your way out, but fans of the previous games in the series will know that the most efficient method is to dress up like one of the workers and sneak your way out - doesn't always work though. And it clearly didn't work for many of your apparent colleagues as the first part of the level is littered with bodies of bald men in black suits, rather like yourself. Just what the hell has been going on - and can you be the first one to escape alive?

The graphics aren't massively different from before, but then they were perfectly fine to begin with, save for the occasional jaggie as you walk about, which it would've been nice to have seen erased so it loses slightly for that. Still, there are cool shadows as you move about, plus lovely blood effects when you've murdered someone and they ooze out all over the floor, to add to the gore and violence that's already aplenty. The info screens and onscreen display icons have been moved around a bit but there's nothing there that's not tough to get your head around. Soundwise, this is also first-rate as the alerts sound out when you're spotting, the dialogue from Russians talking to each other, plus the excellent gunfire - all in superb DD5.1 sound.

The only niggle is the control system which still takes some getting used to and you can still press the wrong button as you try to get to grips with it. One thing that's annoying this time round that I don't recall from the last game was that if you press the right thumbstick down, it goes into first-person view and when accidentally pressed it becomes very disconcerting indeed. This wasn't in the previous game when I played it and I wish I could turn it off as third-person suits this series best. On the plus side, as well as shooting the baddies, stealing their clothes, the game having quick loading times and the ability to interact with almost everything, such as killing the lights.

For those new to the series, if you're not sure whether to buy this and can't get a demo then Hitman 2 is already out on budget. Either way, there are three levels of difficulty - 'normal' allows 7 saves per game, 'expert' allows two and 'professional' gives no further chances - get it all right in one go or start all over again. Of course, as you go up the difficulty range, it also gets more... er... difficult. In this release, you can now change weapons from an inventory menu while the game is paused, rather than having to do it during gameplay - when you'd previously always get killed! There's also a sort-of 'hit-o-meter', well, morelike it's more painful to get shot in the head than the arm, for example. You can climb over walls and through windows, as well as jumping to another balcony, although the latter takes rather too long and once you've started and realised you didn't mean to go that way you can't back out of it. I just wish I'd played more of the original Hitman game, but the lack of ability to save your position hindered it immensely and I couldn't deal with it. I don't feel as scared this time round as I did with its prequel because it's more like Hitman 2½ rather than a third game, which might be why the number was left out of the title this time round.

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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2004.