Murdering people is wrong. Unless they are bad people. If popular fiction has taught us anything, it's that murder in the name of good is a noble cause – the ends justify the means. Hitman 2 takes just such a stance as Agent 47 is tasked with dismantling the Shadow Client, the mysterious client from 2016’s reboot, and his militia.

The game is only due for general release on 13 November, but as is standard these days - just look at the release date confusion around Battlefield V - if you pre-ordered a specific edition, in this case the “Gold Edition”, you got access to the full game from 9 November. I was one of those that, immediately on it's announcement at E3, put down my R1 500 for the game (having loved the 2016 reboot), and so have had the time to play and give some early impressions.



Starting with what hasn’t changed is quite easy as, honestly, not much has been added to the core mechanics. You still get dropped off at an entry point with minimal equipment. You still walk around the map and try blend in, searching for people having conversations that inevitably guide you to one possible solution for your murder puzzle, and you still achieve that puzzle via a combination of disguises, sneaking, using the environment or items in it to kill the bad guys. If you like, you can still use the "Instinct" mechanic that helpfully highlights guards, usable items, interactive parts of the environmental to help you plan your kill. All in all, if you played the 2016 game, you can quickly jump into the sequel.

The developers have helpfully remastered the levels from the 2016 game, making them accessible if you already own it, or you can purchase these remastered missions at a half the price of the standalone game. I haven’t touched them yet, but I'll be very happy to head back to Sapienza and Morocco when I am done with the new missions.



Having played the first prologue mission twice - the first attempt was successful but slightly disastrous as the guards caught me killing my target and forcing me to fight and flee - and got halfway through the Miami stage through before I failed miserably at trying to get away from a nosy NPC, I can say that this game is everything that I hoped it would be; more of the same. There are no extraneous mechanics, although the prologue in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand starts off easily enough as there are initially no guards to sneak past getting into the mission area. The game simply requires you to exercise patience and be aware of your surroundings as you watch the various characters wander about on their patrol patterns. As always, haste will be your downfall, so if you can remain calm and patient and you will get through the game relatively unscathed.

The Miami mission is large, loud, and colourful. The first opportunity is easy to find as you'll encounter a mechanic you can take down and disguise yourself as. Just be careful, a few guards and that damn nosy NPC I mentioned before can see through your disguise. If you can make your way to the paddock, you'll have a number of ways to stealthily take out one of your targets.

The game once again includes dozens of challenges in each level, ensuring even the Prologue chapter has about six or seven replays worth of activities. Being flexible in your approach during any mission will see you unlock many more ways to slaughter your evil targets, and with it comes that warm fuzzy feeling of both ridding the world of evil and obtaining an achievement/ trophy.



Performance-wise, on my reasonably powerful PC, the game stuttered and dropped frames at an alarming rate on Friday night. During a couple of gunfights, I even experienced momentary freezes. After a Windows update - that thankfully resulted no deleted data or activation's deactivated - I rebooted the game and it performed well. I noticed some dropped frames once or twice, dipping from 60FPS to just 55FPS, but that was not that noticeable and did not impact gameplay.

So far, the game hasn’t surprised me, but I did not expect or want it to. It looks to be a healthy extension of the first, and I am more than happy with that. I'll have my full review ready by the end of the week but, in the meantime enjoy, watching me start well and then fail miserably.