Trouble starts to set in with the first flashback stage. Set six years before the main storyline, the flashbacks put you in control of Leo Kasper, another asylum escapee who sticks with Da🦂niel throughout the game and goads him🐠 into all the horrific acts he commits. These parts are problematic for a number of reasons; they're a distraction from the central storyline, Leo is thoroughly unlikable and they introduce gunplay, which means stealth gets tossed out the window for a little while and replaced with duck-and-cover, head-bursting shootouts. Although you can perform messy stealth-kills with guns, it's next to impossible to use them in a stealthy manner for long; the second they're fired, all the goons will come running and you'll have a full-scale firefight on your hands.

Some later levels ignore stealth almost entirely, forcing you to repeatedly run out into the open and take down multiple baddies with an Uzi or a shotgun. These sequences are more repetitive and a lot less stylish than stealthဣ-killing, and they feel like cheating after you've spent so much of the game lurking out of sight, waiting for the right moment to strike. What's more, they're just not as much fun, especially not when compared to brilliant stages like Sexual Deviants, a trap-filled secret torture club that's a straight-up homage to the Hostel films. (Especially on the Wii version, where the clientele wear smart black suits and animal masks that, for whatever reason, don't appear on the PS2 or PSP.)