"A great game with an intresting stealth mechanism which should keep you playing for more than 20 hours..."
Hitman Contracts starts out with agent 47 escaping from a hit in France heavily wounded.
While lying on deaths bed, he starts to flashback on his old missions.
The First one mission takes place exactly where Hitman: Codename 47 (which was the first game in the series) left, having his creator killed hitman escapes from the SWAT team.
Hitman Contracts' gameplay is very interesting; you can play the game like shooter, just shooting everyone in sight, which is not the ideal way to play hitman, instead you are supposed to use disguises, rig explosives, poison beverages and strangle your enemies silently, and in a few occasions use a sniper rifle.
The gameplay is very fun and challenging if you're going after the 'Silent Assassin'-rank.
If you go after the 'SA' rank you might spend 1 hour or more on each mission.
Although you often feel the bullsh*t when your cover is somehow blown, because you sometimes lose your cover while running, I mean come on!
If you see a fellow guard running, your first reaction is to shoot without questioning?
And the enemies would have a more difficult time recognizing your face if you are running.
The visual design is nothing spectacular, especially for today's standards but at the time they were allright, not anything to put up against Doom 3 or Half Life 2 tho'.
It's not very convincing that the enemies don't recognize that you are a traitor since they all look the same.
The level design is also great and offers variation to how you complete it.
But there are a couple boring and hard levels that you just wish to skip.
'Contracts' also remakes 5 of the missions from the first game and the first mission of contracts, 'Arkham Asylum' doesn't count.
The sound design is epic and engaging and it is composed by Jesper Kyd.
The voice acting and effects in general sound pretty good, but as in many games, it's not convincing when Russians or Chinese etc. people speak broken English.
The atmosphere is often quite disturbing, especially the second mission where people take drugs, and perform sexy dances, even if they are surrounded by puddles of blood and horses and pigs hanging from the ceiling.
The music is also epic and a bit disturbing at times and creates mood well.
The controls work very well on both PC and Xbox, where in the pc you've got the WASD keys, two types of sneak modes and easily accessible commands with the RMB and mousewheel.
All in all, this game is a great experience if you have the patience for stealth, but if you want to shoot your way through a game, I wouldn't recommend it.
Score:
Story 7
Gameplay 8
Design 9
Mood & Atmosphere 9
Controls 9
= 8.4