Continuing on from my blog last week, tonight I continued my playthrough of the Hitman series with Hitman 2. Square Enix was nice enough to include Contracts and Blood Money in the update to the Humble Bundle today, so now I am the owner of every Hitman game. Hitman 2 sees some major changes from the first game, almost all for the better. The original Hitman had no mid-mission saving regardless of difficulty, an insane control scheme that bordered on completely broken even with extensive fiddling, and a scoring system that made many victories anything but. The sequel fixes every one of the these issues and generally improves on the first game in just about every conceivable manner.

In Hitman 2 the titular assassin actually controls like you would expect. You can now hold down a key to run instead of having two different keys for run and walk. Switching between weapons is much easier and quicker, as is interacting with objects. From top to bottom the control scheme has been entirely reworked and it is a vast improvement. Also new is the ability to save your game mid-mission a limited number of times. The money system from the previous entry that punished you for your sloppy play doesn't seem to have carried over from what I can tell. I appreciate not having to worry quite so much about my methods, but as far as I can tell there doesn't seem to be any reward for getting through a level without killing someone.

The improvements to the controls also mean that it is now possible to shoot your way through some parts of levels, whereas before getting seen meant you might as well just restart. Visually the game is a marked improvement over the previous entry although I had to download a mod to get the game to work on my computer. Overall, though, while I simply couldn't enjoy the first Hitman in any way, I found myself liking the second game a lot more. I likely won't play the game through to completion. It was okay, but still not that fun, but for those who enjoy stealth games more than I do, Hitman 2 holds up well over a decade later.