this game is a step backwards for the series. cards on the table, i knew that this game was almost certainly not going to compare to silent assassin, and i tried to adjust my expectations knowing that. for me, SA was a meteoric high and i wasn't going to fool myself into thinking lightning would strike twice. still though, i was expecting this to at least be good. yet, this game really doesn't feel like a progression from SA. it feels like a regression that amplifies the preexisting problems that SA already had while also creating new ones. i feel there's a nonzero chance i'm being overly harsh on this game because of the high standards SA set for me, but that doesn't diminish my lack of enjoyment when it's all said and done.
it feels weird writing this and thinking "the aesthetics of this game should be addressed by the second paragraph", but there's an undeniable appeal the series has in presentation. hell, there's a reason some people still praise the 2015 hitman E3 trailer to this day despite it having exactly 0% gameplay. hitman is more than a sum of its parts type of game; it's not just about killing your targets and trying to avoid detection, but also doing it with flair. style isn't a gameplay mechanic or measured stat in the game, but it's a significant part of the experience. it's a shame then that so much of the dominant strategy of this game is just waiting for cycles. SA had moments where you had to wait for certain cycles to pass (i.e. that afghanistan bazaar level where you had to wait for colonel amin and he takes his sweet ass time), but most of the time you always had something you could be doing to advance your goal or you were waiting to activate a trap on your target. in contracts, i regularly had to wait on cycles to do silent assassin runs, and it takes me out of the experience and immersion knowing i'm just waiting on an AI routine most of the time. i know this point makes me sound like an impatient asshole, but it really does weigh on the experience when out of 12 levels, there's only 3 that i can recall doing silent assassin where waiting for at least 20 seconds did not occur.
with regards to narrative aesthetics, the game's a miss for me. due to the framing device of "47 is on the verge of death and reliving his previous jobs in a dying dream sort of way", almost every level is dark, moody, and smothered in rain. i've seen the arguments that this fits 47's cloudy and hazy mental state, and sure, i get it, i just also feel as though we lose a lot of diversity and identity when they're all made in a relatively uniform aesthetic. this game also feels like a growing pain with regards to level design because there's a much greater emphasis on complex interiors, but a lot of these maps have either entirely wasted effort (did you know there's a police station in deadly cargo? or that you could poison tea in the slaying of a dragon?) or have a lot of wasted space (beldingford manor, rondevouz in rotterdam). i hate to say "make the levels smaller", but there's genuinely not a lot going on in a lot of these levels that justifies the scale of them. they feel big and aimless in a bad way rather than a "there's so many infiltration methods" way. and, sure, it's cute how they brought back the four triad missions from codename 47, but the first three are all small levels that exist only for build and are largely unnecessary. 47 is reminiscing, we can just skip to the lee hong assassination that he otherwise had to prep for and no one would mind.
compare that to SA, where you have a variety of environments and interiors to explore. you could go from the italian countryside to a classy and crowded dinner party to an ancient and largely vertical castle in japan to a subterranean bunker in india. contracts has some variety, yes, but considering we spend a third of the game in one location, it sticks out in a much worse way to me. i don't need hitman games to be globetrotting gallivanting, and i'd largely be fine if there was an entire game that just focused on one homogeneous group of targets (i.e the russian mafia, american politicians, upcoming witnesses to a trial, etc.). this game just lacks coherent theming that ties it all together for me and makes it more than its individual pieces, and that's probably the worst single flaw about the game. it feels like it has lost the style and panache i so greatly loved in SA.
i do have my fair share of gameplay nitpicks, and it was very tempting to air them all out for all to see in this review. i will name a few to make my point: guard AI is somehow worse in this game because where SA's was draconian, it was consistent, meanwhile contracts' is completely erratic and inconsistent to a fault; why do people take showers that last eternity in this game without any other routine for the AI to engage in; the inventory has a huge bug where sometimes 47 will grab the wrong item and this happens with a consistency of 5%; doors will open both inwards and outwards even if they are listed as opening only one way on the map; hunter and hunted requiring you to memorize and perfect the first 10 seconds of it is a gigantic pain in the ass and makes it my least favorite mission by far; etc. etc. still, these aren't the silver bullet for this game to me. i ultimately got less joy out of this game because it was doing less to engage with me and puzzle-solving the levels for silent assassin felt far less interesting and rewarding to me.
i don't have a neat way to tie this all up. this game felt exceptionally short to me despite being roughly 10 hours of gameplay for me. this game ends with a cliffhanger of "oh no we found out who the REAL bad guy is and you're gonna have to go after him next time 47!!!", so ending the entire reminiscence narrative with basically no plot resolution makes this game feel disposable. i haven't played the rest of the series, but i predict this game will end up in one of two fates. either i will replay this game in the future and find it to be a grower that had positives i neglected to appreciate, or i'll find myself doubling down on this opinion and end up dubbing this one of the least essential hitman experiences second only to codename 47 itself. that latter one feels much less likely, but the fact that it's still a possibility saddens me.
it feels weird writing this and thinking "the aesthetics of this game should be addressed by the second paragraph", but there's an undeniable appeal the series has in presentation. hell, there's a reason some people still praise the 2015 hitman E3 trailer to this day despite it having exactly 0% gameplay. hitman is more than a sum of its parts type of game; it's not just about killing your targets and trying to avoid detection, but also doing it with flair. style isn't a gameplay mechanic or measured stat in the game, but it's a significant part of the experience. it's a shame then that so much of the dominant strategy of this game is just waiting for cycles. SA had moments where you had to wait for certain cycles to pass (i.e. that afghanistan bazaar level where you had to wait for colonel amin and he takes his sweet ass time), but most of the time you always had something you could be doing to advance your goal or you were waiting to activate a trap on your target. in contracts, i regularly had to wait on cycles to do silent assassin runs, and it takes me out of the experience and immersion knowing i'm just waiting on an AI routine most of the time. i know this point makes me sound like an impatient asshole, but it really does weigh on the experience when out of 12 levels, there's only 3 that i can recall doing silent assassin where waiting for at least 20 seconds did not occur.
with regards to narrative aesthetics, the game's a miss for me. due to the framing device of "47 is on the verge of death and reliving his previous jobs in a dying dream sort of way", almost every level is dark, moody, and smothered in rain. i've seen the arguments that this fits 47's cloudy and hazy mental state, and sure, i get it, i just also feel as though we lose a lot of diversity and identity when they're all made in a relatively uniform aesthetic. this game also feels like a growing pain with regards to level design because there's a much greater emphasis on complex interiors, but a lot of these maps have either entirely wasted effort (did you know there's a police station in deadly cargo? or that you could poison tea in the slaying of a dragon?) or have a lot of wasted space (beldingford manor, rondevouz in rotterdam). i hate to say "make the levels smaller", but there's genuinely not a lot going on in a lot of these levels that justifies the scale of them. they feel big and aimless in a bad way rather than a "there's so many infiltration methods" way. and, sure, it's cute how they brought back the four triad missions from codename 47, but the first three are all small levels that exist only for build and are largely unnecessary. 47 is reminiscing, we can just skip to the lee hong assassination that he otherwise had to prep for and no one would mind.
compare that to SA, where you have a variety of environments and interiors to explore. you could go from the italian countryside to a classy and crowded dinner party to an ancient and largely vertical castle in japan to a subterranean bunker in india. contracts has some variety, yes, but considering we spend a third of the game in one location, it sticks out in a much worse way to me. i don't need hitman games to be globetrotting gallivanting, and i'd largely be fine if there was an entire game that just focused on one homogeneous group of targets (i.e the russian mafia, american politicians, upcoming witnesses to a trial, etc.). this game just lacks coherent theming that ties it all together for me and makes it more than its individual pieces, and that's probably the worst single flaw about the game. it feels like it has lost the style and panache i so greatly loved in SA.
i do have my fair share of gameplay nitpicks, and it was very tempting to air them all out for all to see in this review. i will name a few to make my point: guard AI is somehow worse in this game because where SA's was draconian, it was consistent, meanwhile contracts' is completely erratic and inconsistent to a fault; why do people take showers that last eternity in this game without any other routine for the AI to engage in; the inventory has a huge bug where sometimes 47 will grab the wrong item and this happens with a consistency of 5%; doors will open both inwards and outwards even if they are listed as opening only one way on the map; hunter and hunted requiring you to memorize and perfect the first 10 seconds of it is a gigantic pain in the ass and makes it my least favorite mission by far; etc. etc. still, these aren't the silver bullet for this game to me. i ultimately got less joy out of this game because it was doing less to engage with me and puzzle-solving the levels for silent assassin felt far less interesting and rewarding to me.
i don't have a neat way to tie this all up. this game felt exceptionally short to me despite being roughly 10 hours of gameplay for me. this game ends with a cliffhanger of "oh no we found out who the REAL bad guy is and you're gonna have to go after him next time 47!!!", so ending the entire reminiscence narrative with basically no plot resolution makes this game feel disposable. i haven't played the rest of the series, but i predict this game will end up in one of two fates. either i will replay this game in the future and find it to be a grower that had positives i neglected to appreciate, or i'll find myself doubling down on this opinion and end up dubbing this one of the least essential hitman experiences second only to codename 47 itself. that latter one feels much less likely, but the fact that it's still a possibility saddens me.