Hitman 2 review: A game that isn’t ashamed to be a game

One of my regrets from 2016 is that I didn’t play enough Hitman to put it higher on my game of the year list. Throughout early 2017, I played dozens of hours of developer IO Interactive’s rebooted assassination simulator. And I fell in love with it. Since then, publisher Square Enix gave the titular Agent 47 the boot along with IO Interactive. But the studio didn’t collapse. Instead, it went independent, made a publishing deal with Warner Bros., and dropped the previous game’s episodic release model.

Now, the developer is back with Hitman 2, which continues the story and mechanics from the previous game. The entire package feels like it was the second season that IO never delivered for Hitman 2016. And while that might feel like a negative, it isn’t. This is more Hitman in all the right ways.