Have I played Hitman: Contracts? Yes…and no. In typical fashion, I rinsed a demo of it when I was younger and never actually bought the game. It was very vintage Ian Hitman, but I reckon he had a better walk back then.
The demo mission took place in snowy Siberia. It was my first experience of playing a Hitman game, and I remember being entranced by the idea that I could steal someone’s costume and hide in plain sight. Every stealth game I’d played up until that point had been Big-Red-Exclamation-Point-Prevention: The Game, so walking among my prey felt liberating.
And that walk, it was glorious. Animations were quite jagged in the early noughties, as opposed to the smooth strides of today. So Ian had this slight crook in his step in Contracts, a stiffness to his gait which gave off an air of being a bit unhinged. Like a “something about this man is slightly off” feeling. I miss it nowadays. Ian Hitman is almost too cool in 2021.