Hitman 2 is great as a sandbox, each of the levels a huge world full of detail, funny dialogue and situations where you can do all sorts of crazy stuff. The attention given to the story is to be commended, as well; it is not at all unusual to hear two NPC talking about something that happened in the last game, or to run into a character from several episodes earlier. The way it all fits together is really impressive (the slideshows that have come to replace most of the cutscenes between the episodes, much less so). As a game, as something that is supposed to challenge you, however, it utterly fails. The AI has not only seen no improvement since Blood Money, it may have actually gotten worse. The enemies are borderline deaf and blind, have the reflexes of a turtle and no brains whatsoever. Want to get rid of all the guards on a level? Just kill one, hide nearby, wait for someone to find the body and bring more guards, then kill them too. Repeat until all of them are dead. Yeah, that STILL works. Not that it's needed; I got the Silent Assassin rating in a couple of episodes on the first playthrough, and I wasn't even trying. The elusive target missions are more difficult, but not by much; basically, they are about taking the time to follow the target around and learn all of their movements, formulating a plan, testing it by stunning the target first (as long as the target is alive, you can restart), then, if it works, putting it into action. They are not challenging so much as they are time-consuming, which is not to say they are not fun and rewarding. I guess that applies to the game as a whole: it is fun, but not quite in the way it's supposed to be.