Whilst attempting to grasp the understanding of how Hitman 1 and Hitman 2 are linked, I'd led myself down a rabbit hole that had me reading all about how the 3 modern Hitman games are interwoven and the mission timeline has you constantly jumping between all 3 of them. Also, it turns out Hitman : Blood Money is not Hitman 2 either, which seems like an obvious oversight, but that's just a confession to how confused it all got me at one point.
In simpler terms though, Hitman 2 is the successor to Hitman 1. They're both included as separate DLC packs within Hitman 3. I think the original element to this game that confused me was the final DLC pack, titled Hitman 2 Expansion. We don't need to go into detail about that right now, but I originally thought it was a continuation of the Hitman 2 story, when it just turns out to be made up of a few additional missions that exist separate to the main story. DLC within DLC, if you will.
However, despite the fact that they are different games, Hitman 2 is identical to Hitman 1. Naturally, you'll visit different locations, tackle a brand new set of missions and experience a different story, but the template for the foundations that lie around all of this are practically the same.
The story consists of 7 different missions, and the 6 locations you'll visit on this occasion include New Zealand, USA (twice), Colombia, India, the Andaman Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean.
I said in the Hitman 1 review that the strongest suit of the Hitman games has always been it's brilliantly creative level design, and Hitman 2 maintains a high standard of this, with every mission offering an array of choice on dispatching your targets. It should be testified to that a game that barely changes it's template formula can still offer such extensive variation between 2 games, but the depth of the level design is so good, it helps to maintain a fresh-feeling approach each time you jump straight back into a level.
Mission Stories return. They're still a little bit too keen to hold your hand through levels with the amount of information they reveal about your targets and subsequent opportunities to kill them, which was my biggest criticism of Hitman 1, but they're still mostly engaging, and the cathartic feeling they give you leading up to the dispatch of a target is ever-present.
Most people would feel the necessity to be critical of a game that doesn't really make any significant changes - Especially for a sequel - It's just more of the same again, and I don't think that's a bad thing in any regard.
The similarities also extend to the trophy list. Again, there are 13 on offer here, and the trophies follow the same template as they did in Hitman 1. There are 6 trophies awarded for beating 6 of the missions you'll progress through on any difficulty, and a further 6 for achieving level mastery of each too, which totals 12 of the 13 trophies.
Interestingly, the "Shadows in the Water" level is excluded from the trophy list entirely, though you'll still need to beat it to progress to the final level of the game. I imagine this to be down to limitations on trophy points quota - 13 trophies is alot for a single piece of DLC content, and it's possible there were challenges in meeting this, which meant a level had to be sacrificed along the way.
Level mastery works in the exact same way as it did before. You're provided a number of various challenges that you have to complete within the level. Completion of these will award experience points, and these experience points go towards the mastery of the level. You'll need to reach level 20 for all the levels bar 1, for which you only need to reach level 5.
There isn't a need to go into much detail about the level mastery system. My views on an unchanged system remain exactly the same as they did before. I do still like the way that setting the level target to 20 ensures you complete the vast majority of the level challenges - The brilliance of Hitman's level designs and possible outcomes deserve to be explored to their fullest extent, and this is exactly what the level mastery trophies promote. Good implementation of longevity that doesn't just feel like grind-padding.
I stuck to Professional difficulty throughout. This isn't the hardest difficulty level, but it's still enough to make you think about your approach and always maintain consciousness of your surroundings. Without the trophies driving a necessity to beat the game on the hardest difficulty, Professional is a nicely balanced medium.
The remaining trophy requires you to complete The Last Yardbird Sniper mission on Silent Assassin. This is fairly simple, and the Sniper missions will become more prominent later on.
As briefly mentioned, there is a final DLC pack for an expansion to Hitman 2 to go through, but reliving these first 2 episodes in full with the modern facelift of level mastery applied to them has made me excited to go back through Hitman 3 again at some point.
