As Hitman: Contracts opens, the ever reliable agent 47 lies dying on a cold floor. That's a pretty abrupt opening act for any game, even one as unremittingly violent as the Hitman series tends to be, but it's also an excellent plot device to allow 47's mind to wander back to past missions and (you've guessed it) force the player to play through them in an exceptionally free-form style. Some have been grabbed and reworked from earlier Hitman titles, and others are new to Contracts, meaning that long-time fans of the series still get something new, along with something a little more familiar.
Hitman: Contracts is all about assassinating key targets within a level and getting out the other side with your bald skull intact. You're typically killing for the greater good -- and some of your foes are capable of some really rather nasty acts, if you read their in-game biographies -- although there's also normally a fair smattering of innocent civilians around if your blood lust knows no sating.
While at heart Contracts is a stealth game with a particular fetish for killing, it's surprisingly free-form as to how you go about achieving your objectives, to the point where you can play it as a rather simple run and gun title. Do that, however, and you're missing out on the pure beauty of sneaking around in enemy disguise, dropping laxatives into soup and silently strangling key targets right under the noses of their normally alert bodyguards. And no, we're not kidding about the laxatives. In case you hadn't guessed, Contracts isn't a game for the kiddies, by an incredibly wide margin. Blood spatters against the walls after gruesome shotgun blasts, you're always equipped with a silent and deadly cheese wire, and on the game's second level, enemies can track you by the number of dead whores you leave lying around. If that sounds like tasteful family entertainment to you, we can only assume you're a member of the Manson family.
Hitman: Contract's visuals tend towards the mundane, at least in the PS2 version we reviewed. While there are some cool locales and some very grim murder animations in the play mix, there's also a fair amount of visual clipping and tearing on offer. For some reason, when running around, 47's legs will often stop moving, making him seemingly 'skate' over solid ground. It's not a game breaking flaw, but it irritated the heck out of us every time we saw it, possibly because on the whole the Hitman Contracts experience is so well laid out. The relatively bland animations, are offset by some generally excellent visual design; rather like Manhunt, this is a grim and gritty game, and everything's been given a solid wash over with a dark and moody brush. The grim ambience is enhanced by the inclusion of a suitably dark score, and even the voice sampling has been well done.
47 controls moderately well, with only a few odd design decisions to make the game harder than it should be. The map's the key offender here, as it remains 'live' while you're checking it out fullscreen. You can change weapons, and the game pauses, or check your mission objectives in the middle of a firefight without risking damage, but if you look at the map at the same time, you'll be dead before you've figured out which little logo represents you. It does allow you to see where each level's opponents are patrolling in real time, but it's still an annoying factor, especially on later levels or higher difficulty settings, where guards tend to give you very little breathing space regardless.
You're also likely to struggle with the stealth controls, which for some reason are mapped to the same button as the 'duck' command, so expect to botch your first few attempted stranglings. For some reason, Hitman Contracts needs a big chunk of memory for each save game file, so you'll need to clear out some serious space in order to play. It's not on the level of Cricket 2004, our current hall of shame winner in space terms, but it can be irksome to be repetitively told you don't have enough space on a memory card every time you go to save.
Hitman: Contracts isn't a game for everybody -- its dark subject matter ensures that. If you're after a stealth game that isn't simply a matter of 'stealth to point A because that's the only way it can be done', however, it comes highly recommended, as each level can be replayed any number of ways, depending on how you mix up your stealth and blasting action.
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