Hitman 2's Santa Fortuna is impressive to look at, but Alice's gameplay isn't
Warm up the cement mixer!
It almost feels wrong to put a precision killing machine like Agent 47 into the hands of a total newcomer, but sometimes needs must. As the video team's resident Hitman fan was off assassinating some brain cells on a stag do, I was left to attend a hands-on with the newest stage in Hitman 2. It's called Santa Fortuna, and whisks you off to sunny Colombia. Hitman has always been a game that interests me - I like sandboxes, I like stealth and I always join the Dark Brotherhood in Skyrim, so I guess I like assassinating people too (in games). I’ve edited many videos on Hitman, so I really thought some of those skills would have transferred by osmosis. Boy was I wrong.
For starters, I was playing on the professional difficulty, and secondly it was on PS4, and I have no idea how to steer a PlayStation controller at the best of times, let alone in a time-limited capture event. I gave it my best shot though, despite having an absolutely terrifying Agent 47 look alike reaching into his suit jacket inside pocket every time you so much as glanced at him, and having to ask for help on the most basic of actions. Given all that, I think my run wasn't a total disaster, although Matthew’s sighs of disdain say otherwise.
I completed two big kills, which is saying something. In my first run around I got quite far into taking our target number three, too, but ended up smashing my rat-poisoned, cocaine-filled, novelty bus souvenir into the face of the hippy I was trying to disguise myself as. Failed that one then. But the two I do manage to kill are Rico Delgado and Andrea Martinez. Dressing up as a bad celebrity tattoo artist, wandering casually up to Rico, making small talk with his wife, promising her that yes, of course I’ll make the tattoo on his neck look more like her, and then ramming all those tiny needles into his ear - delightful!
Andrea Martinez was far more fun to kill, though. An opportunity opened, pointing out a rickety statue that could quite easily and accidentally fall on top of her after a grand opening, but I decided to ignore that. Instead, I had Agent 47 subdue a local shaman (note: I didn’t kill anyone I wasn’t meant to, as is the Dark Brotherhood way. Different game, same morals of course). Shaman 47 had to go to Martinez’s construction site, where the workers were on strike due to digging up some old bones. 47 had to perform an interesting interpretive dance to bless the ground, and allow them to continue working. It’s just as bonkers as it sounds, but doesn’t last nearly as long as I wanted it to. After knocking out a worker, realising that wouldn’t work, dropping a wooden crate onto nobody, and badly assassinating Martinez, I reloaded from an earlier point and killed her in such a dramatic way that I couldn’t help but chuckle. Let’s warm up the cement mixer, lads.
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