By volt - April 12, 2003

Hitman 2: Performance

This has to be one of the best games of 2002. At first I did not like it at all. The first mission was boring and seemed just like another "walk around" dull game. I realized it wasn't so bad after all. The next missions were very interesting and challenging. IO Interactive did a superb job with the AI and the whole environment. It's not one of those lame and out of style shooters. The attention to detail that has been put into developing the game is simply amazing. Remember that stealth is the key to success (not that you can't finish the mission blowing everything up hehe).

Some key features of Hitman 2: Silent Assassin:

• Pick up contracts in exotic locations around the globe: Sicily, St. Petersburg, Japan, Malaysia, and India.
• Operate in a non-linear world where the outcome of your actions and proficiency as a hitman are measured on a balance between stealth and aggression.
• Stalk and eliminate your targets up close and personal, in either 1st or 3rd person perspectives.
• Execute your assignments with a diverse arsenal of equipment, from armor-piercing sniper rifles and explosives to chloroform and poison darts.
• Acquire and carry weapons and tools from mission to mission through an enhanced inventory and save-game system.
• Original soundtrack composed by Jesper Kyd and performed by The Budapest Symphony Orchestra.

P4: 1.6A @ 2.39GHz / 512MB PC2100 / Stock Gainward Ti4600
AMD: Athlon XP 1900+ @ 1.6GHz / 512MB PC2100 / Stock Gainward Ti4200

The game had to be patched because of issues while saving game settings as well as some oddities in the main menu. Nothing major but pretty annoying. I was very happy with how our Ti4200 performed. We've used medium details (though displacement mapping was enabled) otherwise the game would stutter around when everything was set to high. I haven't noticed big of a difference anyway. Enabling Anisotropic filtering was killing the performance too much, that's why you only see FSAA of 0 (off) and 2X in our benchmarks. Without Antialiasing the game ran very smoothly, no chopping or slowdowns (both 800x600 and 1024x768). At higher resolution it crawled, especially when playing outdoors. If you'd like to get rid of some of the jaggies, switch over to 800x600 and turn on 2X FSAA. You should be getting around 52-55 FPS (with a similar system setup). I do not recommend 1280x1024 mode at all. It's an overkill for the card, especially with high/medium game settings. By the way, did I mention I highly recommend this game? :)