[Erkki]

I've played through Hitman Contracts about 2 times now and I must say I'm rather disappointed with the game. It pretty much feels like an add-on rather than a sequel and is full of bugs.

The levels are mostly good, but there are only a few that I really like. Most of the levels are remakes of Hitman 1 missions, although I can't say how many changes have been made to them, because I played Hitman 1 a long time ago and don't remember.

The only improvement seems to be in graphics, mainly the "post filter" effects. And even that doesn't work very well as it makes the sniper rifle scope very blurry if turned on full.

And that's certainly not the only bug. I have had tens of crashes; sometimes doors suddenly become un-interactive; the screen turns white when 47 dies; the screen turns black when the end credits should be rolling; etc... I haven't applied the patch, but it is clear that the problems are so numerous that one patch probably can't fix them all (I've heard the sniper rifle thing is fixed at least).

Everything else is exactly like in Hitman 2. And the new missions are not really that good, except maybe 2 of them. The game can be played through in just a few hours on the Normal difficulty if you just go in shooting everyone who is on your way.

Eidos and IOI had a chance to turn out another really great game if they would have introduced some innovations and fixed all the problems.

[LauraMac]

I am glad I read this.

Damn , I was thinking of getting this next week, will wait now and see how the patch works for people. Hmmm

[Erkki]

Glad I could help

But actually I just mentioned the bad parts. The game is still kind of fun, but too short and only a couple of missions are really good.

What I personally was hoping for is that they would have made the environment more interactive and filled the levels with more equipment and objects to use, and make the gameplay more freeform so the player can work out his own way of doing the hits.

Because as it is now, if you want to get the silent assassin rating, you have to choose among a couple of paths that the mission designers foresaw (just like in Hitman 2 but this time I was expecting more) and that usually means trial & error, trial & error, trial & error.

And it really seems backwards to me that at the professional level, there are even less saves allowed than in Hitman 2 (which awarded you with a single save for making progress in a couple of places) -- in Hitman Contacts there are absolutely no saves in the Professional difficulty.
This has made me want to throw the computer out of the window at times, so I actually stopped playing in Professional.

[LauraMac]

This has made me want to throw the computer out of the window at times, so I actually stopped playing in Professional.

Well having had to buy my PC a nice dinner out after what I said to it during my Midnight Nowehere run though and my mouse - well it's no longer even talking to me.

I will still wait a bit on this one. Though I really did love the first two games - and I have this gift credit and ohhh I will probably cave in any way and get it - sigh *no will power*