HITMAN 2

The game encourages players to “master” each level, complete challenges, do all the story missions, and come with new ways to approach these situations. You are rewarded with new starting points, items, and other useful trinkets and perks. Unlike most games that are dense with content, I actually want to take advantage of it all, rather than quickly getting through the story through brute force and never stopping to smell the roses like I do in many open-world games currently on the market.

Hitman 2 may just be more Hitman, but it's somehow even better than before. The levels are all fantastic, the assassinations possible are all clever (and silly), the satirical writing is at its best. The assassination sandbox has never been more satisfying, and its slight technical hiccups and lackluster multiplayer do little to hold back the baldest assassin of them all. Even in your sixth or so time prancing through a map, you're bound to discover a new opportunity, or a new potentially-weaponized surprise, around the corner.

Hitman is about experiencing the anticipation of seeing whether a plan will work when you try it for the first time. It's about feeling the tension of briskly walking away from a bad situation, hoping you can lose the suspicious guards. It's the satisfaction of knowing the machinations of a level so well that when a target moves into a particular place at a particular time, you have the perfect way to intervene. Hitman 2 is a familiar experience, but in the Hitman world, familiarity is an incredible strength.