Everything gameplay wise is elevated and refined. This MIGHT just have the absolute greatest traversal system in any video game, EVER. I just have a real big caveat with this game as a whole. The length of the main campaign.

It took me about 15 hours to beat this game's story compared to Spider-Man PS4 taking me about 25. I took my time with each game too and yet my my time spent in Spider-Man 2 feels so much less. I spent $70 bucks on this game and it feels a little disappointing. The side activities are also shorter. There's significantly less to do or it is recycled like in with the Picture side activity. I LOVED my time with this game, but it is not GOTY material and certainly not as phenomenal as the first game was. I Want to love this as much as I did the last game, but I would be lying to myself if I said that. I have to say, wait for a sale if game length is priority. Quality is off the charts and I applaud Insomniac for making this, the DLC for the first game, and Ratchet and Clank all in the span of 5 years and still having such a high mark of quality and success. I will continually play the Insomniac Spider-Man games because they are all incredible and I loved this game so much. But this did not entirely feel like a new game at times. Still, Insomniac and Sony are killing it as always and I'm mostly satisfied.

Hi-Fi Rush don't mean a thing.

In the absolute broadest sense, I want more games like Hi-Fi Rush. I want more original IP, I want more studios to make games that seem outside of their wheelhouse, I want games to tackle new ideas and genre fusion can be a good place to synthesize something unique. I want more small-scale games that aren't structured with the goal of being the only thing I spend my free time on for the next year. I want more games that run at high framerates and resolution even if that means cutting back on the highest gloss new visual technique.

But if I look just a little closer at any part of this thing I just don't get it. As an action game it feels sluggish, stiff. As a rhythm game, I mean, come on; you get 8 licensed songs and they're all corny bullshit from over a decade ago, not new enough to be fresh, not old enough to be revered. Half the songs are from 90's acts who had certifiably entered a "washed up" or "sellout" phase by that point, and mixed in you get things like a Wolfgang Gartner novelty Mozart remix. People praised the original soundtrack (i.e. "streamer mode") when the game came out, saying that playing without the licensed tracks was no real loss, and I just really don't know how anyone listening to either score could interpret this as anything but an insult to both.

The game is full of platforming segments, but between the player's complete lack of momentum and how completely ineffectual both jumping and airdashing are, every single obstacle is a clunky chore. During combat the game practically plays itself; in fact, the idea that you don't really need rhythm to play this rhythm game was a selling point (although "selling point" may be a poor choice of words since everyone's playing this on GamePass). The entire experience feels like a checklist, there's just not a single moment of joy in playing this. There isn't even much extrinsic motivation because it always seems that even if I keep my style meter at S for an entire battle I end up getting a B. The only difficulty curve this game has starts at "win sloppily" and goes up to "win skillfully" but when the ranking gives you such an unclear idea of how well you're actually doing, why should I care?

This game has the misfortune of being the next high-profile action game after Bayonetta 3, and looking and feeling a whole lot like a worse Transformers: Devastation, and that's Platinum at their absolute most milquetoast. Its style could be best described as "inoffensive", the main character is just a regular guy, the robots you beat up are just regular robots, and everyone else looks like what I see in my mind's eye when I try to imagine "a RWBY character who only shows up in one episode", or "dollar store Promare". There's a guy who does JoJo poses, when you pick up collectables an announcer says "Excellent!" following by some electric guitar noodling. It's an original IP in the literal sense of not being directly based on an existing license, but it feels so attached to pre-existing media that I don't think it stands particularly well on its own. A game referencing Xenogears is not a replacement for new games as interesting as Xenogears.

The game has rhythm but it has no bounce, it gives the player no medium of expression, it's a consistent, plodding march. I don't even know what's "Hi-Fi" about it, it's an MP3 player and some earbuds!

After the rollicking start to the World of Assassination Trilogy, Hitman 2.... also exists!

That's not a fair statement at all really. Hitman 2 is an excellent successor to what Hitman 2016 started. The fun filled antics of the Hitman franchise continue with some great ideas. The sheer scope of ways you can fuck around with people, the mayhem you can cause, the murders you can create... its truly masterful. The gameplay and UI are even improved upon, with subtle changes used to make a smoother experience.

Still, it was hard not to get a sense of something being... off, this time around. The strength of Hitman 2016 is that, while the serious spy plot does exist, its cultivated in service to the maps the devs want you to run around in. And I do think that thesis still holds true... for the most part. To propel its story forward, the game occasionally gives you a secondary task beyond murdering a few people. Gather some intel, steal some evidence. That small gameplay change ends up drastically changing some of the freedom of the overall experience. Its particularly damning in the Whittleton Creek level, forcing you to scour the map for three pieces of information for some reason or another. Those secondary objectives existed in the first game too, but its so much more egregious in this version.

The plot itself also intrudes itself in ways harder to define. Part of what makes modern Hitman work so much is the joy of killing some terrible rich people. That joy is still there, but it starts to lean on the weird quasi-racist angles of targets present in the 00s games. Drug lords and pirates just feel... less justified, in a way. The evil billionaire secret society is the obvious villain they've set up for two games. Spending half the game cooperating with Providence and killing all the people supporting your obvious future ally feels sort of like I'm being given the runaround. It also makes Lucas Grey, a character who I'm supposed to be excited to partner with, kind of look like an asshole! He's incredibly willing to toss aside his loyal lieutenants just for the sake of being besties with 47 again. But because all the targets are still awful dipshits, it also makes him look scummy for teaming up with these kinds of people to begin with. Its really mixed messaging and it hurts the story they're trying to invest players in.

Finally, the levels themselves. I'm less confident in this argument but I've reached a conclusion: I think a lot of levels feel less personal than before. In the first game, it truly felt the maps reflected the people you wanted to kill. Dalia and Viktor's fashion runaway. Silvio Caruso hiding from the bright world outside in his dreary, crumbling manor. Zaydan and Strandburg attempting to use their power to control and manipulate a whole country, as the crowds demand to see them punished. They were hyper realized, informing you about the state of the world and how your targets make it worse.

Hitman 2 doesn't seem to have that kind of same character work in its level design. A master rival assassin lives in... a house! A race track and a tech expo are connected to each other and holding events at the same day, I guess. The drug cartel stuff. This is all fairly nitpicky details and its possible I'm looking for justifications for my frustration. I do think the second half of levels are far more coherent. The Mumbai level gets you a sense of how a local community is supported and/or harmed by the intents of the local crime heads. Whittleton Creek gives you a strong set-up of the quiet nightmare of American suburbia and how both normal people and Soviet defectors try to manage their daily lives. The Ark Society creates a secluded island where all the rich morons hoping to wait out the apocalypse gather. That design ethos still exists! It just didn't feel like that push-pull of character vs. world was quite functioning as it should.

All this rambling aside: its Hitman. I love Hitman. I can be vaguely frustrated, but I'm always gonna give it up for Hitman. Respect the name.

I’m putting on my shades.
To cover up my eyes.
I’m jumpin’ in my ride.
I’m heading out tonight.

I’m Solo, I’m Han Solo.
I’m Han Solo.
I’m Han Solo. Solo.

After 10 years I'm starting to think the fact that a serial abuser, four groomers/pedos, an e-beggar, an alt-right chud, and two actual sociopaths in my life all loved osu! might not be a coincidence.

Also when I watched some official osu! tournament in like 2013-2014 on Twitch, the presenter accidentally went to their desktop and the background was some loli in a bikini so there's that. I guess that's not very surprising though since every other map has scantily-clad lolis as the background.

At least I had fun for the thousands of hours I put into this oh wait no I didn't, good riddance, give me back 250GB+ of hard drive space on your way out