Hitman - Contracts

A man is slumped against the wall of a Paris hotel room with a bullet in him, and everything that follows is what his mind coughs up while he waits to see if he survives the night. That framing does real work. Because the missions are memories rather than contracts, IO Interactive could reach back into Hitman: Codename 47 and rebuild its Hong Kong hotel and Romanian asylum jobs with the newer engine, and could let the whole thing curdle: rain, sodium light, meat lockers, corridors that look like they smell. This is the grimmest the series has ever been, and it is deliberate.

Mechanically it sits close to Silent Assassin, which was still the sharpest stealth-sandbox template of the generation. Each level is a closed system with guards on routes, a target somewhere inside, and several disguises circulating that will get you deeper if you can separate a body from its clothes without being seen. The fibre wire is back and quicker to use. Sedative syringes and a longer list of improvised kills widen the options, and the notoriety-free structure of Contracts means the pressure comes entirely from the mission rating rather than any carried consequence.

What has aged is the guard AI's tolerance for the absurd. Disguises are read almost purely as a costume check, so you can walk a heavily armed 47 past men who watched a colleague vanish thirty seconds earlier. Save slots are limited on the harder settings, which turns a botched approach into a long walk back. And the shooting, if you are forced into it, is stiff enough that the game essentially punishes you for reaching for a gun, which arguably suits the design more than it wants to admit.

The standout is still the Meat King's Party, a basement of butchered excess that the game presents without commentary and without music, letting you decide how much of it you want to look at. Contracts rarely reaches that pitch again, but it establishes a tone the series has been circling ever since: professional violence photographed like a crime scene rather than an action scene.

It is the shortest and least ambitious entry in the original trilogy, more a bridge between Silent Assassin and Blood Money than a step of its own. It is also the one that decided what a Hitman game should feel like to be inside. Play it for the atmosphere, and for the odd pleasure of watching a hitman remember his work as a nightmare rather than a career.