Hitman: Contracts

In Hitman: Contracts, players control protagonist Agent 47 from a third-person perspective, who is sent to various locations across the globe to assassinate specific targets. A wide array of weapons can be used, from kitchen knives, assault rifles and handguns to belt-fed machine guns. While stealth and subterfuge is encouraged, the game allows the player to take a more violent approach and gunfight their way to their mission goals. As players progress through the game, they can collect the various armaments found in the levels, allowing them to be used in future missions. Aside from the more straightforward ways of killing targets such as gunplay and strangulation, several missions allow the player more subtle ways to eliminate hits, such as judicious use of poison, or arranging "accidents" like a heat-induced heart attack inside a sauna.

Players are rated on their performance based on several factors; key among which are the number of shots fired, non-player characters (NPCs) killed (and whether they were armed adversaries or innocents), and the number of times the guards are alerted. The lowest rank is "Mass Murderer", which is awarded to players who kill large numbers of NPCs in the pursuit of their target and do not use stealth. The highest rank is "Silent Assassin", which is earned when the player accomplishes their mission without being detected, and generally without killing anyone other than the intended target(s).

On 17 March 2004, around two years after the events of Silent Assassin, Agent 47 is shot and critically wounded while carrying out a mission in Paris, France, for his employers, the International Contracts Agency (ICA). Returning to his hotel room, he reflects on his past, beginning with his escape from Romanian special forces after killing his creator, Dr. Otto Ort-Meyer, at his own facility. 47 then recalls various contracts he carried out over the years, including the assassination of two sexual fetishists who had kidnapped and murdered a client's daughter in Bucharest, Romania; the killing of a black marketeer in Kamchatka, Russia, selling weapons to terrorists, and the destruction of their weapon labs aboard a submarine; the murder of a corrupt nobleman and his son in England; the assassination of a biker crime lord in Rotterdam, Netherlands; and the killings of three of his five genetic "fathers", namely arms trafficker Arkadij Jegorov, who the bikers were doing business with in Rotterdam, terrorist Frantz Fuchs – incidentally, the brother of the terrorist buying weapons in Kamchatka – in a hotel in Budapest, Hungary, and the Triad boss Lee Hong in Hong Kong, China.

During this time, an ICA doctor arrives and performs emergency surgery on 47 before he can bleed out, but officers from the GIGN storm the hotel to capture 47. While the ICA doctor is forced to flee without dressing the wound, 47 regains his strength and prepares to deal with the officers, before recalling the briefing for his current contract. He remembers that he had taken out two of the three targets he had been sent to eliminate, all of whom were involved in a child prostitution ring in Eastern Europe. He also recalls that the third target, corrupt GIGN officer Albert Fournier, survived 47's attempt on his life after being tipped off to his presence, and was responsible for his injury.

The third Hitman game was originally meant to be the final game of a trilogy, but due to time pressure from IO Interactive's publisher, Eidos, IOI split into two teams to work on Hitman: Contracts and Hitman: Blood Money at the same time, with Hitman: Contracts being a smaller game containing remastered levels from Hitman: Codename 47 (2000) in addition to new levels. Hitman: Contracts was developed on a tight schedule to release two years after Hitman 2: Silent Assassin. The game was released in 2004 in North America on 20 April, in the UK on 30 April, in Australia on 13 May, and in Japan on 14 October.

Hitman: Contracts received mostly positive reviews. Critics praised the improved gameplay elements, graphics, soundtrack, darker tone and atmosphere, while criticism was directed towards the familiarity and the lack of significant changes and additions from the previous game.

Although GameSpot's Greg Kasavin liked that some of the missions from Hitman: Codename 47 are featured here with graphical enhancements, he did feel it was a "cheap move." Kasavin also criticised the normal difficulty in the game; he felt it was too easy and that players can take the 'Mass Murderer' route with little to no consequences. Air Hendrix of GamePro said of the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions, "In this captivating outing, 47 revisits the past while modernizing the nagging flaws of his previous games, making for his best trail of assassinations yet."