At E3 last week, I had the chance to play Hitman 2. The Hitman series is one that has always been in my peripheral vision, having only played a couple of the original titles on the Xbox. As I stepped into the WB media area to play the Hitman 2 demo, all I knew was that the Hitman series is about creatively killing targets as a bald man with a barcode on his head. After beating the demo (while carrying on the MonsterVine tradition of breaking demo builds), I walked away with a newfound interest in the Hitman series, entirely because of how ridiculous the game let me be.
The goal of the demo was to assassinate a racecar driver mid-race. The driver was known for being involved in some illegal shenanigans involving arms trading, making her the latest target for Agent 47. I started the demo with essentially no weaponry, as Agent 47 undergoes a pat-down as he enters the stadium. As soon as I got in, quite a few unique assassination options presented themselves.
What I was supposed to do was poison an engineer, steal his outfit, and sneak into the pit where the driver would pull-in for repairs. From there, I was supposed to plant a bomb on her car, and detonate it as she drove off. As I went towards the engineer, I knocked into him, causing him to drop the glass of wine I was meant to poison. As the engineer angrily stormed off, I hear a quiet “oh” from the WB representative who was guiding me. As it turns out, the engineer isn’t supposed to drop his drink, meaning I’d have to find another way to kill the driver within the demo’s boundaries. This actually made the experience better though, as it meant I got to experience the ingenuity of Hitman 2 first-hand.
At one point in my assassination I donned a flamingo mascot suit. While disguised in the suit, I threw soda cans and fire extinguishers at janitors and security guards, knocking them out in the goofiest way possible. I changed into a security guard outfit, but this didn’t make me any less careful. I always closed the doors after me and walked far away from anyone who might recognize me, though the urge to hurl cans at people’s faces was always present.
Eventually, the WB representative told me the location of a sniper rifle that could be accessed in the demo. While I wasn’t exactly good at blending in with other NPCs (apparently it isn’t normal to crash into people as much as possible), I eventually found the sniper rifle and made my way up to the roof. My sense of timing isn’t the sharpest, so it took a few drive-bys for me to finally hit one of the driver’s wheels, making her car flip and crash in a rather fatal manner. The job may not have been done eloquently, but it was done nonetheless.
The amount of assassination methods this small demo of Hitman 2 presented me with was quite impressive. For example, apparently I could have posed as the Flamingo to make my way to the driver, though this would have required much less can-tossing (which is a hard pass for me). There were quite a few different weapons, distractions, and alternate routes at my disposal, meaning even when I broke the demo, I wasn’t walled off from finishing it. I also liked that the demo never reprimanded or stopped me for messing around (see: can-tossing), as the developers seem to understand that goofing off can be half the fun in games like this. I’ll definitely be checking out the first season of Hitman in the near future, as Hitman 2’s demo gave me the dose of ridiculous but lethal fun I didn’t know I was missing.
