The second expansion of HITMAN 2, The Last Resort, comes with a pretty straightforward mission: all you have to do is kill three targets. Easy, right?

Obviously, there will be many spoilers.

Three targets, plenty of opportunities
Ljudmila Vetrova, Steven Bradley and Tyson Williams are the names of your soon-to-be-deceased victims and they are all associated with the Haven Corporation. This shady company offers a little help to criminals, including the Partners, on whose trail 47 and his associates still find themselves. Hence the slogan: Change yourself forever.

Where to find your targets
Ljudmila will roam the resort, circling around the guest huts – with particular interst to one of them – to the restaurant to check on new menu suggestions by the chef and get frequent massages at the spa. Also, she has a lucrative offer for Tobias Rieper, 47’s chosen identity at the resort. As you can probably tell, there should be plenty of opportunities of retiring Ms Vetrova.

Steven is Haven’s top software engineer and also a fitness freak. Which is why he hangs around the gym a lot, when he is not busy working on a private little island or pestering the scuba instructor about those keys he confiscated after a lamentable accident.

Tyson Willians is the CEO of Haven. He is not feeling well, which is why he wanders around his mansion wearing pretty much only a bathrobe. To relieve his suffering, he has contracted the services of a doctor, who can be found in one of the guest huts. The doctor has prescribed pills that don’t seem to work, but they can easily be poisoned to deliver a permanent cure. Also, Tyson is feeling terribly hot and longing for his indoor pool/bath tub to be finally in working order again. The perfect setup for a classic hit.

Walking and sneaking around the island, I have found only one meager dose of emetic rat poison, but plenty of lethal starfish and flowers. I actually assassinated Steven Bradley by way of starfish while he was leaning against the scuba instructor’s little shack. Starfish to the face and he was gone. There are many more subtle methods, too.

1. Three ways to eliminate Ljudmila Vetrova

Death by trapdoor
Ljudmila will be wandering around the resort and stop by the hut of one particular guest, the one and only Jason Portman, 47’s lookalike first encountered during HITMAN’s last mission on Hokkaido.

Listening in on conversations you will learn that she wants Portman out of the hut, presumably to snoop around, and you can do that for her by sneaking in yourself (best climb up from the shallow water up to the balcony where Portman is frequently seen on the phone) and silently taking Portman down.

All that is left is sabotaging the trapdoor in the bathroom. You may as well leave now, unless you want to watch Vetrova plunge to her death.

Death by poison
Ljudmila is responsible for running the resort, so she looks into the chef’s suggestions for the menu, too. A perfect opportunity to take her out, either by administering emetic rat poison and offing her in the bathroom, or by administering lethal poison. I took some along for that.

So, once you arrive on the island, head towards the restaurant and look out for a cleaning cart standing next to a door on ground level. Behind the door, you will find a member of the household staff and a waiter. Use a conveniently placed hammer and/or wrench to knock both out and hide their bodies.

Take the waiter’s disguise and make your way up the stairs and through the window into the kitchen. Turning on the ice machine, you can lure one of the cooks out and knock him unconscious, then walk into the kitchen and prepare the dish for Vetrova before poisoning it. That’s it.

BTW, if you choose the rat poison, be careful, as you will have to walk into the ladies’ room and there will be other guests there who will call for help if they spot you.

Death by accident/garotte (Mission Story A lucrative opportunity plus Island and Chill-Tropy)
When you check in as Tobias Rieper, the receptionist will inform you that Ms Vetrova left you a note. You can call her from one of many phones strewn throughout the resort to tell her you’ll meet her at the restaurant. There is even a phone in the security post by the radio tower, which is very useful if you set out to gain the “Targets ahoy”-challenge, since sniping Vetrova from the tower is only possible once she crosses over from the bar area to the restaurant and vice versa.

Now, give her a call and meet her at the restaurant. She will task you with retrieving a USB drive from Williams’ villa. Do that (read below in Death by promotion) and call her again to meet her at the spa in one of the massage rooms. Give her the drive and wait for her to turn her back on you while standing at the railing, then give her a shove (be sure that the guard to the left is looking the other way) for an unnoticed accident kill. Or garotte her and then throw her body into the water.

2. Three ways to eliminate Steven Bradley

Death by fitness instructor
This one is great fun, I think. To get at the fitness instructor’s disguise you will have to use emetic rat poison to lace his drink on the service counter. Do that, follow him, take him out and disguise yourself. Go back to the gym and wait for Steven Bradley to arrive.
You can use the time inbetween to give instructions to the other patrons. You can even instruct the guard shadowing Bradley to do pull-ups, which will occupy him for a while and you could use that window of opportunity to follow Bradley and kill him on the way to the scuba instructor’s shed. Or you could entice Bradley into doing bench presses and choke him with the handle of the weight bar when noone’s looking. I confess I did not manage to do that unnoticed.

Death by exploding water scooter (Mission story The water horse)
You will need a remote explosive for that. Best bring one along, else you will have to disguise yourself as one of the resort security guards to get into the security hub with the radio tower where you would also find one. Now, the best way of approaching this mission is by disguising yourself as the scuba instructor.

If you do this after having eliminated Tyson Williams and wear the disguise of a villa guard, you can use that also. Now, there are two sets of water scooter keys. One has been confiscated by the scuba instructor and you will find it on his person. The other is lying in the sand right below the little setup on the private island, where Bradley goes to work.

Anyway, you will need a disguise and the water scooter keys. Also, you need to know which water scooter to prep. It’s the one tethered next to Bradley’s private island. To get the scuba instructor’s gear, poison the oxygen mask he frequently uses with emetic poison. He will walk to the hut on the left, all you need is follow him in, then knock him out in the bathroom and take his disguise plus the keys.

Wearing the neopren will gain you lenience with the guards on the private island, but best keep in shallow waters until you have prepped the water scooter with the remote explosive. Make sure noone is looking your way. Now approach Steven Bradley and watch him enjoy himself on the scooter before blowing him up to get the “MS Annihilation”-achievement.

Death by poison/accident
This is a tricky one. Either equip emetic or lethal poison, get a disguise to get onto Steven Bradley’s private island, then take out the waiter (and maybe the other dude hanging around, if he spots you) and put on the waiter’s disguise. Take up position by the drinks setup and use the poison. Once Bradley arrives, serve him and he will either die on the spot, if you used lethal poison, or walk to the edge of the shallows to puke (gross!), which means all you have to do is give him a little shove to make him disappear forever.

3. Three ways to eliminate Tyson Williams
When it comes to Tyson Williams, the first question you have to be asking yourself is: How to infiltrate the villa? There is a pretty straightforward way, if you disguise yourself as the doctor (see below), but if you missed that opportunity or want more of a challenge, here is my pretty fool-proof way of breaking and entering:

Go around the left side of the wall surrounding the villa until you see a spot where the top-guard has been removed, allowing you to climb over. Drop into a crouch and use the greenery to conceal youself as you make your way around the villa, passing the entrance gate and coming across an emergency hatch, which, alas, you cannot open. A little further you will see a water plane and a lone guard. Pick up a coconut on the way and sneak along the shoreline to get behind the guard. Throw a coin into the bushes and wait for him to investigate before knocking him out and taking his disguise. That’s it.

Death by poison (Mission story Take a deep breath)
Now, you could poison Williams’ pills in the guard’s disguise, but since he stopped taking them, that won’t work for you. Unfortunately, you will have to get the doctor’s disguise very soon after having arrived on the island. Else, he will already have paid a visit to Williams.

So, the doctor resides in the hut left of 47’s. You can get down into the shallow water and walk around the huts to listen in on conversations, btw. Now, you will need to get into the hut somehow. Either equip a lockpick, get the master key from one of the guards or find the key (I did so once, in the shallows at the private island, close to the downed boat).

Now, sneak into the hut and hide in the bathroom. Turn on the water and wait for tthe doctor to come in. Watch out, a house maid may follow him closely, so best get some tool to knock both out quickly. Take the doctor’s disguise and get rid of your gun and other lethal objects, as you will be frisked. Then go to the villa and you will be led into the master bedroom. Poison the pills as you wait for Williams to arrive then insist the pills will work. Williams will dismiss you and you can leave, while he takes the terminal dose.

Death by drowning
Starting from when you got the villa guard’s disguise, take the hammer lying on the crates the guard was previously leaning on, then walk around the front of the villa and step into the room on the left. You will find a butler there. Knock him out and hide his body, then take his disguise and the master key.

Go back into the foyer and up the stairs, turn left on top of the stairs and walk into the second room on the right. Beware, there are a couple of people who could spot you. There is a door to your left, leading into the bathroom. Go in and knock out the staff and the guard. Hide both in the cupboard. Then use the screwdriver to repair the pool.

Now walk out and wait for Williams to arrive. His bodyguard will lock the door then take up position outside on the balcony. Once Williams is lying in the tub, use the key to sneak back inside and drown him. That’s it and you can walk away.

Death by promotion (Mission story Idle hands)
Again, start from where you acquired the villa guard’s disguise. On your way there, you already should have picked up on a mission story involving the stolen USB drive Ljudmila asked you to retrieve. Now, you can do that and give the item to Ljudmila, or give it to Williams instead. First, though, we have to get it. To do that, walk towards the bar on the side of the villa and wait until a tech guy arrives for a drink.

Follow him into the underground facility and go down two sets of stairs to where the servers are located. There is a staff rec room where you will notice a woman on the phone, trying to reach Ljudmila. That’s your thief. Walk into the locker room, close the door behind you, knock out the other guard and hide his body in the cupboard. Then wait for the thief and repeat. BTW, you will find the gas suit in that locker room, in case you were going for that achievement.

Now pick up the thief’s locker key and retrieve the USB drive. Find Williams on the top floor of the villa and give him the item. He will be so pleased he will want to promote you. To do so, he leads you to his safe room, where all that is left is taking out the guard then kill Williams. And you are done.

Even more fun things to do
As always, there are many more challenges and there is one that still eludes me that I really want to accomplish: finding the treasure. I found two pieces of the map, one in the security room below the gym, the other on the boat captain, but where are the skull and bone? Actually, after many, many playthroughs I realised it had to be on Steven Bradley’s private island, which looks kind of like a skull on the map. Search behind the shack in the sand between the palm trees and be sure to bring a shovel…

Also, I accidentally managed the All the fish in the sea-challenge, by grabbing one of the highlighted fish swimming close to the shallows.

The Verdict
Like The Golden Handshake, The Last Resort is a fun expansion to HITMAN 2. Which is why I am very much looking forward to the next one.

Until then, keep on playing!

Cheers

Vanessa