Hitman: Contracts

Rating: A

Playing Time: approx. 15 hours

Out of all the Hitman games that I've played so far (currently up to part 2 of World of Assassination), three of them stand out as oddballs. HC47 has a mountain of jank and a very different sense of identity, as I'd talked about in that review. One of my future reviews will get to the Hitman game that doesn't feel like a Hitman game. And then there's Hitman: Contracts (hereafter H3C, to differentiate it from both HC47 and the 2021 release called Hitman 3), which somehow manages to simultaneously feel like a random bag of disconnected missions and yet deliver a tight, incredible experience that I'm saddened didn't become more standard for the series going forward.

First, let me come out and say that I loved H3C, if you couldn't guess already from the rating I gave it. Built on a refined version of the H2SA engine, H3C has a simple and brilliant premise: 47 got shot in the gut by someone who knew to expect him, so he's having a series of flashbacks to previous missions while getting patched up by an underworld doctor in a seedy Paris hotel that's moments away from being raided by a GIGN team under the direction of the police inspector who shot him. It's a sensible complication for a contract killer to have to deal with, it's something that hasn't come up before in Hitman since 47 is canonically pretty much perfect at what he does, and yet the fact that the botch was implied to be because of an information leak (which would get confirmed in the next game) makes it palatable without detracting from 47's character identity.

Following an opening that would not be out of place in a horror game, the first immediate improvement from H3C is evident: the tutorial is siloed off into its own separate part of the main menu where it never has to interact with the rest of the game. The prior two Hitman game tutorials were quite bad, so I was happy to see it made optional in this case (something that sadly would not be repeated until 2016, but I digress). The first mission makes no effort to hide the surreal and nonlinear nature of the story this time: the first cinematic involves 47 imagining that 47 is shooting 47 in the temple (it's less suicidal than that sounds like) before reliving his escape from the asylum in Romania following the death of the doctor who put him through the tutorial in HC47. There are definitely changes from how that all played out in HC47 (the secret lab under the asylum is much more elaborate, there are several more dead 48 clones, the 48s no longer have the stupid smile that I liked interpreting as a single of the genetic tampering, and the DPIR don't start their raid until after 47 is back in the asylum rather than that having been what drove him down into the secret lab), but overall, I'd say Asylum Aftermath was the first time that a Hitman game had a good "escape from forces hunting 47"-type of mission.

It also introduces one of the major changes from H2SA: NPC guards in H3C are significantly more lenient about 47 running while disguised; it'll still increase suspicion, but it's no longer a nigh-instant alert, and there are times when running past some sentries will actually let 47 get through safely while walking would take long enough that their suspicions will overflow into an alert. On top of generally increasing his movement speeds while sneaking or crouching, this makes getting around large maps much less of a hassle while still retaining tension in areas with lots of enemies where it can take a few tries to figure out when it's better to walk or to run. All in all, I found this to be a welcome change, and it's part of why I think H3C had my favorite gameplay of the classic Hitman games.

Getting into the first real mission of H3C (as in the first one with targets to take out) cements it has having the darkest and grittiest tone of the series: someone has hired 47 to kill a child sex trafficker and his corrupt lawyer while freeing their daughter during an opium-laced BDSM-themed party at a meat plant celebrating the trafficker's latest court win. While the previous two games basically had 47 going after James Bond villains, H3C showcased that he's part of a shady criminal underground full of people who frankly are better off dead. I'll say this more than once, but of all the Hitman games, H3C did the best at presenting the tone of being a cold, professional contract killer. Not only does that retroactively improve the story of H2SA (by giving some actual examples of missions 47 engaged in that might better explain his existential crisis in that game), but I think it would be the natural fantasy of a game about playing as a contract killer.

On that note, before going any further, I have to mention the amazing soundtrack composed by Jesper Kyd. It's simply wonderful, and it was absolutely deserving of winning a BAFTA for best original music in 2005. I'd liked what he did with the previous two games, but as someone who was entirely on board with the darker direction of H3C, this one has had my favorite music for the whole series.

Sadly, the first real mission also presents one of the shortcomings of H3C: with the exception of the final mission, the presentation for each mission is pretty bad. Since the framing is for all of them except for the final mission to be flashbacks triggered by whatever 47 is going through in the hotel room reminding him of some detail at the start of each, they can feel like a disjointed mess. The player has to maunally bring up the objectives summary to get their briefing and to be informed of what they're supposed to do. To a degree, I can understand it, and the transitions from the hotel room to 47's entry to the next mission he's thinking of are cool, but then needing to pause and find out what the mission's actually about is a momentum-killer. I'm not sure there's a good way of resolving that, but I think it's still deserving of being called out as a flaw even if I don't have a good solution in mind.

As for the missions themselves, there was a leap in how much environmental interaction 47 has compared to H2SA. I think H3C was the first to allow for hiding a weapon of your choice inside of objects to carry it inconspicuously (particularly through frisking points), which was previously restricted to only sniper rifles that 47 starts with. Things like poisoning food, hiding bombs, messing with water fixtures, and so forth are also much more common. Maps tend to have multiple ways of getting between important areas to a greater degree than H2SA (though it was admittedly pretty strong on this front already in most of its missions). Setting off a car alarm is very important for getting a silent assassin rating on the final mission. While it didn't quite get to the point of freeform environmental manipulation (that would be a significant part of the next Hitman game), it was impressive just how much was done with scripted interactions.

On the down side, this also causes a situation where getting a silent assassin rating is generally just a matter of finding the right way to set up an environmental interaction that would end with the target's death. That's not to say that garroting or headshots were bad mechanically (I definitely did more than a few of those), but there was almost always something unique that could be done to at least present a safe opportunity to kill a target, if not killing them directly in the first place. It wasn't a major problem, but as someone who enjoys some difficulty in their games, this did often make it easier to find a way of getting a maxed rating. That said, when I watched videos of other people doing silent assassin playthroughs, I often didn't have the exact same solutions that they did, so it was cool that the game supported open choice in approach and still retained some difficulty.

In fact, this was the first Hitman game where I don't think any missions mandated (neither directly nor through gameplay restrictions) a particular way of killing the targets. Along with some other touches (such as the inventory changing to a horizontal/elliptical display of icons rather than a dropdown menu), this was one of the conventions that H3C established for the rest of the series.

In what I'd consider another gameplay improvement from H2SA, nonlethal incapacitation was changed from the horribly-clunky chloroform rag to an anesthetic syringe. It was still limited in both duration (about seven minutes) and uses (once per syringe, which typically meant once per mission), on top of being slow and guaranteed to cause an alert if seen, so it was a quality-of-life improvement while still retaining some flaws. Additionally, since H3C didn't allow the player to pick a loadout unless replaying a mission, playing on Expert or Professional difficulty almost meant that 47 would never start with a silenced pistol, which I thought was a good change since it forced me to play more stealthily even on my learning attempts at a mission.

About halfway through the game, H3C starts presenting remakes of missions from HC47, going over killing all of 47's gene donors except for Pablo Ochoa (which was welcome, really, because the Colombia missions in HC47 were terrible). Unfortunately, due to the story framing mentioned earlier, the story around all that is basically not presented at all, making them feel like a grabbag with a bizarre difficulty drop when it comes to the remake of the first Hong Kong mission. This was probably the weakest part of H3C for me; not really a remake nor clear enough to stand on its own, it ends up being an effort to try doing both without quite accomplishing either. Granted, those missions were still fun overall, especially with getting to use H3C's style of gameplay instead of HC47's, so I'm not exactly complaining about them, but they lacked the polish in the rest of the game that made missions like Meat King's Party or Beldingford Manor among the best in the series to me.

Fortunately, this is redeemed by the incredible final mission. Firstly, it comes with a wonderful monologue from 47 that I have to quote:

"This room... this bullet... there's a bullet for everyone. And a time and a place. An end. Yes, maybe this is how it has to be. Inspector, you've obviously learned too much about me. I can't have that. Not even in my death."

After that, the mission starts out in the hotel room with 47 having recovered just as smoke grenades are launched through the windows and only a moment away from GIGN squads coming up to the floor from both ends. It's a small mission, with the unique presentation of starting with two targets killed already (the next game would reveal that these were the actual targets for 47's mission in Paris before the inspector became a loose end that needed cleaning), with hostile forces everywhere hunting for him. And all 47 has to do is kill the inspector in the middle of all that, ideally without getting noticed or taking out anyone else. Based on what I've played of the Hitman series so far, it's my favorite final mission, and while I wouldn't put it among my favorite missions in total (since I prefer missions that play like "normal" missions, for lack of a better description), it is one of my favorite gimmick-based missions.

Now, to address the elephant in the room, yes, H3C can feel more like a collection of cool missions than like a complete cohesive game, especially with the contrast between its original missions and the HC47 remakes (which, despite their updates, were still clearly simpler and had less developed environments). Personally, I didn't mind that much, since I think the missions individually were strong enough overall to carry the game and fit well with the narrative framing, but I can entirely understand someone being put off by that.

H3C is also rather short (only 12 missions, the same as HC47), and while I wouldn't say its tone was a radical departure from HC47 and H2SA, it was significantly darker than either of them and really the rest of the series, too. It left behind the high-adventure feel of those, and it didn't have the half-serious/half-comedy split that later titles would, so what was left was the grime and slime of being a contract killer in an underworld that wanted that service. The tone and mood of the game are incredible, but they aren't going to be for everyone.

Which is ultimately more or less a good summary of H3C as a whole. I think it's hard to say where it or H2SA (or Hitman: Blood Money, which I'll get to reviewing next) was the best of the classic games, because each has its own strong and weak points. What I think is safe to say is that it's absolutely an iconic game worthy of placing among the best in its genre. It's not going to be for everyone, but what it does well, it does exceptionally well, and I think it has the best balance of accessibility and difficulty in the series. Easily a top-notch game, held back mostly just because there wasn't more of it.

Rating: A

Playing Time: approx. 15 hours