In the hands of death...
Agent 47 is back with Contracts, it all begins with him stumbling inside a hotel, saying something about being betrayed, the gamer suddenly realises 47 has been shot. As he comes into his room he colapses, in his dreams he remebers what happened just before he slaughtered his clones in the Romanian Laboratory. That's the first mission, escape the swat teams invading the place. All the other missions follow the same procedure, a quick CG shows us 47 in the hotel room, trying to keep himself alive, and all the while he has hallucinations, which are actually past missions, the missions the gamer must to play. Like in the other games those missions are never very easy, but they go from a normal difficulty to extremely hard (like the last one). Again, being patient and observing the targets' movements are the most important things to be done for anyone who wishes to do well in the game, since getting big guns and shooting your way through won't do you any good most of the times.
The scenarios are very realistic, big spaces with criminals, policemen and civilians; all under your cold merciless eyes to do as you wish, after all, sometimes you gotta, say bring down one or another cook to get his clothes enter the kitchen and poison somebody's food... You'll travel throughout the world during your missions always being free to eliminate the targets anyway you want.
The variety of guns is simply huge, but then again it won't be very useful for anyone who wishes to play the game like a true hitman and achieving the best scores, for those there's always the good old "piano cord", so you can strangle the target to death, clean and silently. For everyone's delight, Agent 47's suitcase is back; for those who don't know it, it is a sniper suitcase, and when you choose to grab the sniper you even get to see 47 putting it's pieces together. This allows you to carry the sniper rifle on public places without causing panic on the crowds.
Artificial Inteligence has improved, which is good and bad at the same time, after all, the better AI the harder the game. This actually means it became far more difficult to fool certain people when wearing a disguise (for example, there's a mission where there are fox hunters and they all know each other, which means: wearing their clothing may fool the security but not the hunters).
Sound is great, the effects are gorgeous, like when you change from a room where there's lots of music and go to somewhere else, you'll still hear the music, but very faint, very realistic. Plus, if someone opens the door the music will become slightly stronger.
Graphics are better than before. Nothing exptional, but extremly well detailed anyway. The way the characters move their limbs could still be a lot better though.
Hitman: Contracts is wonderful for fans of the series and anyone who likes a good stealth game. It is definetely not for impatient people; after all each mission can take hours if the player intends to do it well done. Poison, shoot with a sniper from far away, strangle with the cord, suffocate with a pillow, anything goes in the world of contract killing.