Hitman Contracts review

Hitman 2: Silent Assassin was a cracking game.

You played Agent 47, a bald man in a black suit who killed to order. What made the game such fun was its open-endedness. Rather than having one prescribed route to completing your mission, you were free to choose your own method - blasting your way to victory - or, as the title suggested, slinking from shadow to shadow.

From the outset, Contracts dazzles you with its gloriously revamped graphics. Everything - streets, ships, skies and people - are beautifully drawn. For the game to look its best, though, you need a very powerful PC, ideally with a DirectX 9 graphics card. We played it on an Athlon XP 2800+ PC with a GeForce 4 Ti 4600 graphics card, and at its highest quality settings, the game crawled. Be warned.

Beyond its improved looks, there's little to separate this game from its predecessor. Again you can either wade in, guns blazing, or stealthily creep your way to your goal - usually an assassination. Some of the new locations add a bit of spice to proceedings. One of my favourite missions involves bumping off the host of a sex party in a meat factory. Kinky.

Despite these strained attempts at making Contracts different from its predecessor, it soon becomes apparent that Eidos is fighting a losing battle. The game's central character is an assassin, so all he can really do is kill people. And that's pretty much all you have to look forward to in this game. You don't even have to worry about the wafer-thin plot that held the last game together. Contracts is really just 47's greatest hits - and it suffers for it. If anything, this is underlined by the one attempt the game's designers have made to separate it from its predecessors. More violence.

Fans of Agent 47 will love Contracts. If you're not a confirmed fan, save yourself over a tenner and buy Hitman 2: Silent Assassin - it's more forgiving of less powerful PCs, and a more original and absorbing game to boot.

Author: Martin Cooper