IO Interactive have had a rough go of things on the business end of things, but HITMAN and HITMAN 2 are triumphs. All of the HITMAN levels can be imported and played in HITMAN 2 with all of the new features and tweaks, cutscenes and all. This is how I played it. Both games are masterfully created, the open sandbox/simulation environments offer so much variety and different ways to approach the targets, without being overwhelming. Every single level just drops you in and the story naturally unfolds before you as you explore and pull on the different threads.

The real fun comes from replaying the levels multiple times, exploring different stories/character interactions, and trying to complete various challenges like the Silent Assassin and Sniper Assassin achievements for each mission - what set out as an attempt to capture the magic of Blood Money resulted in 2 games as good or better than Blood Money.

One con worth noting is the disappointment that you can't go back and play all of the past elusive target missions which dropped from time to time. I get why they wanted them to be timed events to keep the community engaged as the different episodes became available, but now that all of the episodes have dropped and we are on the brink of episode 3, I would really like to have a shot at those missions