Hitman:Contract Now, I know this is a bit late as far as reviews go, but I hadn’t played Hitman before. I’d heard of it when it was first coming out, but I was too busy listening to the Beatles and playing games like Riven, which involve no violence or death. Now that I’m a bit older, I felt it was time to play a game where I can actually shoot people, and not feel like I’m in a war (*cough, Halo, cough*). Now that I’m older, I can actually appreciate things like Guns N’ Roses, Black Sabbath, Hitman, and Scarface.

Now, to be completely honest, this game felt like it had made a good decision in combining multiple elements of other games, but it didn’t feel completely defined. What I mean by this is that the game felt like a mix of XIII, Splinter Cell, and Grand Theft Auto.

However, each of these games had a key element that kept the game play fun and constantly playable. XIII had an authentic comic book feel, a great story line, and various weapons for different situations. Albeit, XIII did corner you into using specific weapons because they were practical, but you still had the option of using as many guns as Master Chief. In XIII, your arsenal was a long list of weapons from throwing knifes to RPG’s. Splinter Cells defining characteristic was the multiple stealth tactics to take, while keeping the kills simplistic, and the objectives difficult. And Grand Theft Auto’s defining characteristic was it’s complete openness and the ability to choose multiple paths and options for your job.

If you’ve been paying attention, you can probably note the similarities between these games and Hitman. In Hitman, you get a wide arsenal of weapons. In Hitman, you get to choose your various stealth tactics. In Hitman, you have the openness to choose your own path to get the job done, and most areas are very open for exploring and manipulating.

However, Hitman was not as defined as these other games. Hitman did not have that one specific characteristic that made it special. Now, you might say, “But it’s greatness and sheer versatility that makes it special.” But what I say to you is that a Swiss-army knife is versatile, but I can trust a pair of Sai to have more versatility, and it looks so much cooler when you use Sai (Sai are those things that Elektra uses [their like a shrunken trident, with the middle prong being longer than the side ones]) instead of a Swiss-army knife. Another, more simple man reference would be instead of eating a Philly-cheesesteak, just have an old-fashioned T-bone steak. Instead of making it all complicated and fancy, just keep it simple and to the point. Hitman is more like the Swiss-army knife, or the Philly-cheesesteak. Understand?

Another point that bugged me was that after a while Hitman felt extremely repetitive. It seemed like the targets were all the same. It never felt like the targets did anything special, or were any different from the other targets when it came to the objective. Now, it did change up a bit because you’d occasionally have to save someone, but it didn’t feel like they really matter. Perhaps it was that you couldn’t connect with you clients and feel the necessity of executing the mission in a specific way. Whatever the reason, the missions didn’t feel vital, and you very seldom felt like you couldn’t control a situation. Now this was due to extreme NPC’s. They would either be extremely intelligent, and recognize that you were not friendly, or they’d be extremely dumb and hardly notice that people were dieing.

As well, the missions constantly felt like that you could have fun with the stealth, but it was so much easier to just shoot your way and cause a big ruckus, and then just change costumes to finish each little part from the pile of corpses you might create. This little feature felt sort of unnecessary. The missions should’ve either been designed to limit your aggression, or you the stealth tactics should have been made more inviting with greater simplicity. Or, it should have been stressed by your employers that it needed to be quick and quiet, or that it needed to be a big mess so the cops would take a week to process all the data on the target.

Now, as far as positives, the game was very comfortable. It was easy to get into a groove of sequences, and the stealth tactics were emphasized easily by the game and fun to follow, but they were often long and arduous, or confusing. The guns you could use felt very authentic and the information was extremely accurate. As well, the ability to choose from a variety of costumes is a fun feature, especially when you’re trying to lie low after a long firefight. As well, the cleanness of using a sniper rifle was excellent compared to the long process in other games where you’d find yourself reloading after one shot, taking minutes to reload, or the scope would be so crammed with data you couldn’t focus on the target. The sniper in Hitman: Contracts was extremely easy to use and was a key component to keeping the game interesting.

All in all, I must say this game was a fun break from the calm and mundane of Riven, Guitar Hero, or The Beach Boys. It’s great to feel like a professional and actually be able to get a job done with precision and complete alienation of fears and ideas. But, the game felt very repetitive and often drawn out, but luckily I’ve been informed that the other Hitman games were an amazing improvement and had much more to offer than Contracts, so you should keep your eyes open for reviews on the rest of the Hitman series. Hitman: Contracts gets a 2.5 out of 5.