Gaming Glories: Hitman: Contracts (Vol. 1, Iss. 3)

Gaming Glories is a special edition gaming feature that allows writers to revisit and explore games that have helped shaped their gaming history. Each volume features a different writer examining different games within each issue. Enjoy!

Have you ever wanted to step into the finely polished shoes of a bald assassin with a tattoo of a bar code on the back of his head in a nice suit with a red tie and tight leather gloves? No? Well…you’re missing out.

Hitman: Contracts, the third entry in the Hitman series, developed by IO Interactive and published by Eidos Interactive, is a stealth video-game in which you play a professional assassin going from mission to mission taking out targets. Contracts was released in April 2004 for North Americans and Europeans, and six months later in October for Japanese fans.

The story in Contracts for the most part is Agent 47, the assassin, re-living some big hits in his killing career. At the start of the game, a cut scene is shown were after leaving an assassination (which we see in future title Hitman: Blood Money), 47 is shot by a french police officer while trying to get back to his safe house. He makes it back but collapses out of shock and starts to have flashbacks of his big hits. This is where the actual game play begins.

A brief explanation of who and what 47 is: Agent 47 is a genetically-enhanced clone. His “number” which is tattooed like a bar code on the back of his head is 640509-040147. The 64-05-09 is his date of birth while the 04 makes note that he is in the fourth series of clones, the 01 means that he is the first of that series and the 47 is the order in which he was cloned. Five dangerous men often known as the ‘five fathers’ contributed to 47’s creation with their DNA. One of these men, Dr. Ort-Meyer, was the man behind the madness. Ort-Meyer ran a mental asylum as a cover for his genetic experiments. He was the one who created the clones and the other four ‘fathers’ were former comrades of his who helped back his projects. 47 eventually breaks free from the asylum and joins the ICA, an assassination organisation where he rises to the top and becomes the most requested hit-man on the roster.

In his first hallucinatory flashback, you play as 47 in that Romanian asylum he grew up in, just after breaking Ort-Meyer’s neck. As we run through the mission, we encounter mad inmates, some who commit suicide, and a lot of clone bodies (it’s a little strange seeing so many dead look-a-likes of your character) who 47 killed on his way to take out Ort-Meyer. We also see SWAT teams storming the building. Your goal in this mission is simply to escape.

I don’t want to go through every mission because it would spoil a good game but basically, 47 hallucinates through the whole game in “real-time”, remembering past missions and hits he completes, which you as the player play through, while the french cops close in on his whereabouts. After completing the last hit in the flashbacks, 47 finally comes around. He finds the hotel surrounded by the police and this is now the last mission and hit. This hit being in “real-time”. Your hit in this last mission is Inspector Fournier. He’s a target because he has found out the identity of 47 and that’s something 47 can never allow.

Moving on to the gameplay. I can say that it was pretty damn smooth. In order to kill his targets, 47 could use a variety of ways. You could use your trusty fiber wire and strangle them, use your custom silver baller pistols and take them down, or use environmental happenings amongst many other varied weapons. There is an assortment of weapons to be had in the game and you can collect them by having them in your inventory when finishing a mission. Environmental happenings depended on the mission. In my favourite mission, Traditions of the Trade, you have to kill one of your ‘fathers’- you can kill a target by drowning them in a swimming pool, locking them in a sauna that is over-heating, pushing them off a balcony and even smothering them with a pillow. It all sounds pretty grim but it is a game about an emotionless assassin and the targets were generally all bad characters. 47 is an anti-hero in a sense. One of the most fun game mechanics of Contracts and other Hitman games is that once you knock out or kill a target, you can disguise yourself in their clothes. This helps you access areas you wouldn’t normally be allowed, depending on the disguise, and it is pretty essential especially when you are doing a Silent Assassin run.

When you finish a mission, you are given an assassin rating. There are several but I will only be focusing on two for this article. Ratings are affected by several things including people killed, times spotted, guards alerted, shots fired, etc.

The best rating you can receive for a mission is Silent Assassin. To get a Silent Assassin rating in Contracts, the player must:

– Kill nobody except the target. That means no civilians and no guards.

– Fire no more than two shots. It’s even better to not use a firearm at all.

– Have two alerts or less. Preferably no alerts but your best chance is to learn all the guard positions and changes and work your way around without bothering them.

The worst rating you can receive for a mission is Mass Murderer. You get this if you run through the mission, killing whoever gets in your way to get to the target. You will be rewarded with a new weapon when you pass a mission with a Silent Assassin rating.

The soundtrack in the game was composed by Jesper Kyd and he himself described the score as being ‘dark’ and ‘psychological’. I absolutely love it. The music totally heightens the tension at the right moments and helps push the stakes even further. Do I make this decision or not? Do I take out this guard now or wait until he changes his position and slip by? It makes you think on your feet and it is so satisfying that you just have to try it out for yourself.

Run through missions as a bald mad man murdering with a pool cue and a sniper or sneak into a building, learn the guard movements, get to the target unspotted and get out, the choice is yours. Have fun assassinating folks with your fine assortment of weapons and tools and enjoy the lovely locales every mission has to offer. I sure have.

As a footnote, I’d also like to add that yes, there is an actual ghost in this game. A ghost. Yeah.

“Inspector, you’ve obviously learned too much about me. I can’t have that. Even in my death.” -47

Words by Gerard Thornton