If hurling millions of bullets per second at aliens has got you down lately, and you're bored of first-person Vietnam war games, than IO Interactive's new Hitman: Contracts will be like a cool breeze on a hot summer day. By that, I mean a cool summer breeze with a Garrote around your throat, but you get the picture. Hitman: Contracts, the third game in Eidos' series, is by no means a revolutionary step in the stealth genre, in fact, it's only a little more than a basic upgrade from Hitman 2: Silent Assassin. But the pure exploration of stealth gameplay is relatively unmatched in any game on any system. IO has once again created a strategic game of ploys, guises and choices, tailor made with a genuinely brilliant sense of pacing, intelligently designed levels, each layered with dozens of ways to beat them, and enormous sense of style and delivery.

Gameplay
IO Interactive's title is a vaguely named game for a reason. I'm not certain how good that reason ends up being, but thought was put behind it. When I first heard the name, I thought it was going to be a collection of random levels, like a "best of" game. It turns out that's not far from the truth. The story begins with Agent 47 limping into an apartment with a serious body wound and need of a doctor. During this period of pain and suffering, Agent 47 flashes back to missions he once completed, and you get to play them out. Some of them are indeed levels you have played before, or close to them, anyway, including the first level wherein our bald killer escapes from the hospital in which he's just murdered his maker. A little Biblical, perhaps. The level is from Hitman 1 and players must get out of the complex before getting caught. Seems like a well disguised repackaging of goods, no?

The answer is not all that simple. Agent 47's flashbacks, and his pain, grow more and more intense, and each one transforms into a former mission, predominantly ones you've never played before. The story is told in this scattered, hazy fashion with a concrete sense of pacing and logic, but also with a purposely hidden motive, which brings Agent 47 back into the present and progresses into the future. I'll spare you the story, but the story, it turns out, doesn't really play that big a role in this effort. I had figured IO would dig deeper with this Hitman, but that's not the case.