Hitman 2

I have to say, Hitman has a very strange (but strangely consistent) ideology pumping through its veins behind its red, bloodied face. It is bizzare that it would manage to be so straight, despite the fact that it so blatantly desires to have no ideological message behind it whatsoever. In Hitman, violence solves nothing. No one "wins" when you use violence. Individuals cannot, and will never, be able to stand in for the power structures that support them. In Hitman, this is blatant even in the game's design quirks: If you shoot someone dead in the street, even the guards protecting your target will continue to do their rounds, messages will continue playing regarding the deceased's future plans. The power structures propping up the deceased are so powerful that they escape even death. And even in the game's plot, the vacuum is almost instantly filled by some other person that's going to do something someone wants a bit more. The structures stay the same. It's extremely fascinating to see.

This game hits EXACTLY the right gameplay loop for me. It's weird, because I usually HATE stealth, but this game manages to make it not just fun, but rewarding AND desirable. The act of sneaking around, distracting someone for just a split second, smacking them in the head with a brick and dumping their body in a container JUST before the other guard turns the corner is intensely satisfying. The rewarding feeling of executing a clean kill is never broken when you get caught, and end up killing every single guard in the entire level. At no point is the game so frustrating that it requires a break. The controls are smooth, quick when they need to be, slow when they ought to be, and create a wonderful tension that really adds to the fear of getting caught that you always have to have. The cover and crowd features are absolutely brilliant, and make levels feel a lot more generous with their stealthiness. You feel like you've vanished in an instant before their very eyes.

"Hitman 2" was fun, but it's literally just a set of new maps with no significant change compared to the previous installment. IO Interactive is now an independent studio, and it looks like they had to cut costs with the cutscenes. The plot never mattered much so I am glad that they gave priority to the gameplay, always as fun as it needs.

I don't tend to write positive reviews. I'm bad at it. But for this game, I will try my hardest, because it needs more attention.
Hitman 2 has six different levels, which can theoretically be played in any order. The story doesn't matter, and is better off skipped entirely. Diana's mission briefings are all you need.
Hawke's Bay excepted, Hitman 2's levels are huge open sandboxes for the player to explore and find every unique and interesting way to kill the targets. You're supposed to play each level multiple (and I mean MULTIPLE) times in order to find every nook and cranny, and the game did an amazing job of keeping me engaged through many, many plays of each level.

Let's talk about the second level, Miami. There are two targets, but I'm going to focus on the first, Sierra Knox, who is a racecar driver currently in the championship race. The race lasts twenty minutes after Agent 47 arrives. There are a few different assassinations 47 can perform that involve the winner's podium, but Sierra doesn't win the race by default. In order to perform these assassinations, 47 has to find a way to force Moses Lee to lose the race, for which there are several methods.
47 can also disguise himself as a member of Sierra's pit crew, and sabotage her car. Or he can disguise himself as rival racer Moses Lee and accept her challenge in a drinking game, where there are three ways to poison her. As always, there's lethal poison, and emetic poison so she'll throw up into a toilet, where 47 can drown her. But the drinking game involves lighting the drink on fire, so 47 can spike the drink with race fuel, causing Sierra to light herself on fire.
Hitman 2 provides many, many opportunities for unique assassinations. I didn't even get to all of Sierra's unique assassinations. Hitman 2 wants you to replay every level multiple times to increase your mastery rating for that level, and to that end, it provides you with enough content to justify playing the level even beyond getting to max mastery.

It's not all sunshine and roses, however. The final level, the Isle of Sgail, left me with absolutely zero desire to replay it. The targets are just uninteresting. It's nowhere near as bad as Colorado from Hitman 2016, but that's not much of an accomplishment.
Every Hitman 2016 level can be played in Hitman 2, which greatly extends the game's already huge lifespan.
This is a game everyone needs to try. My definition of a 5/5 is a game that I can replay over and over and over, fulfilling its primary purpose as a piece of entertainment. I've already done that with this game, despite only having it for a month.

Up there with Blood Money for sure. The amount of choice and cool setpieces is impeccable, the AI isn't quite where it needs to be and the always online stuff still sucks, but you get a lot of value out of the levels on offer. Story is nicely paced too despite the budget cuts.