Below are thumbnailed links to all of the missions and I’ve also provided a retrospective on this project at the end.

• Mission 1: Asylum Aftermath
• Mission 2: The Meat King’s Party
• Mission 3: The Bjarkhov Bomb
• Mission 4: Beldingford Manor
• Mission 5: Rendezvous in Rotterdam
• Mission 6: Deadly Cargo
• Mission 7: Traditions of the Trade
• Mission 8: Slaying a Dragon
• Mission 9: The Wang Fou Incident
• Mission 10: The Seafood Massacre
• Mission 11: Lee Hong Assassination
• Mission 12: Hunter and Hunted

Details

My runthrough is recorded on the last version of Hitman Contractions, version 1.74 UK edition. Videos are recorded at 800x600 resolution and then downsized to 512x384 for the Flash video and 640x480 for the high quality version; Contracts does have a 640x480 choice however I found the quality of the Flash video suffered when shrinking. The high-quality version also has a sharpen filter applied to it to keep the sharpness of the original.

Subtitles are provided where possible and are enabled with the Flash media player; they are downloadable in ASS and are exported to SRT for the online version. If you are downloading the high-quality version and wish for subtitles, you can follow a tutorial or if you use Media Player Classic then it may be as simple as placing the .ass file in the same directory as the .avi file.

Disclaimer

After putting what I write in perspective I guess my website could now be on all sorts of government watch-lists for some of the topics I’m covering. It should go without saying that I unequivocally do not endorse or condone killing, professional or otherwise, of any sort and everything written is done so within the context of the game. Those who know me will know I have a strong separation between reality and fiction (apart from with squirrels who are omnipotent!) so this writing and narration should not be used as a character reference.

Retrospective

When I was wrapping up my Blood Money runthrough, one of my friends had started an unnarrated runthrough of Contracts attempting to do a Professional/Silent Assassin challenge; that unfortunately fell by the wayside and it wasn’t until a couple of months later that I started on my Contracts runthrough with his blessing. I decided to “store up” videos rather than doing one each night so the sequence wasn’t broken by me taking a night off or going and doing something else for a spell; however this meant once I got into the game, I lacked impetus to continue and feel out of the practice/record/commentate routine I had built up. A few weeks later I continued where I left off and started posting the results, this meant I had entires queued up for a week ahead of where I actually was in the game.

My decision to subtitle the runthrough was a late decision but definitely one I’m pleased with. I’m a big proponent of web accessibility and any alternate method I can provide for people is good with me, plus it gave me experience with the superb Aegisub which I had been itching to use on a proper project. The subtitles aren’t perfect and it was a learning curve of best practices and exploring the application, the narration style isn’t ideally suited to subtitles as I tend not to package my sentences neatly which is what subtitles like. As such there are times when a “sentence” in subtitle terms can last for over a minute of monologue.

One of the main reasons I wanted to continue my runthrough included the release of the Hitman movie which, without launching into a full blown review, was mediocre to pants and I needed to remind myself why I played and loved the games in the first place.

Future

This runthrough represents just about the top level of play for Contracts, the only way forward would be to do all-zero speed runs which are, in one respect, awesome and in another, game breakers. A lot of the speed-runs use glitches in the game to speed things up which is obviously just part and parcel of speed-running, however I like to settle within the game rather than to try and break it. This is why when / if I do a Hitman 2 runthrough, it will be the familiar Silent Assassin approach rather than an all-zero run. The AZ run in Hitman 2 requires some byzantine methods to achieve (such as swinging a sword through a car, or getting a counter-assassin hit by a bus).

It has been confirmed that a fifth Hitman game is on the way so whether IO Interactive are going to change the formula or stick with what the fans (myself included) love is the big question. The lure of more high-quality Hitman fun is far too much to pass up on. ¶

Hitman Contracts contains mature content and is wholly unsuitable for minors, some of these videos also contain flashing lights; fairly warned be thee.

Notes

This was always going to be a tight mission to narrate given that it needs to extol how it lies in both Contracts and Blood Money’s chronology as well as detailing the possible ways to go about achieving the mission. I do use “mission” at the beginning of the narration quite a number of times, primarily because I was trying to get through a lot of content in a short amount of time but it does come off as a little dense. There is an awkward pause towards the end when I was going to describe why I headed towards a different exit before settling on the one I used but time constraints once again had snuck up on me.

Details

Play time: 3:14
Rating: Silent Assassin
Difficulty: Professional
Shots fired: 0
Alerts: 0

There is nothing complex about this mission and only the first section needs to be done with any speed; as mentioned, if you don’t want to circle around using the roof and balcony hopping method then you can drop down the lift shaft however your timing needs to be impeccable from the get-go to do that. If you use the roof then killing the lights is the only neat way to get off the third floor and means that you can run past the SWAT team without worrying about them noticing you; if you have a shoddy monitor then you may want to slip the night-vision goggles on until you reach the floor below.

The police officer on the second floor is shouting for a drug-user to come out of his room; if you keep your distance from him it’s possible for the officer to ignore you and ask you to leave the hotel, get any closer however and he’ll recognise you and start shooting you. He does have quite good hearing so don’t run or walk too closely to him. If you pick the lock of the door, there is a gun and an extra syringe in that room and the drug user is either dead or comatose so don’t worry about him.

Once in the police officer disguise, just make sure not to get in anyone’s face and you should be fine. You can navigate using the sewers if you really want to avoid second glances but the overland isn’t very expansive and is easy to avoid getting spotted. One of the three exits, the ambulance, requires you to have the car keys from a wandering paramedic before escaping which is where the second syringe comes in handy. You can use the paramedic’s disguise if you choose but there is no golden disguise for this level, everyone is on edge; apparently using the paramedic’s disguise nets you a different ending than if you simply drive away in the ambulance.

The detective will open fire on you if you sneak too closely too him which I almost did and is what made him drop the megaphone and catch the attention of the SWAT member I was trying to turn away. It is possible to shoot your car (the fortysevenmobile) and start a car-alarm to distract the SWAT team however on an all-zero run that’s a bullet too many. Turning the SWAT’s attention isn’t precise and you can do it any number of ways, just remember not to get too close and not to pull out any weapons. Also remember to sneak away so as not to cause the SWAT’s attention to return and see the body of the detective.

My escape route was incorrect as it took me past too many police officer to be viable which is why I then switched to the remaining exit with lighter police presence around it; the only other choice would have been to go find the paramedic which I knew wasn’t necessary. ¶

Hitman Contracts contains mature content and is wholly unsuitable for minors, some of these videos also contain flashing lights; fairly warned be thee.

Notes

I tried a different tactic with my narration of this mission and sketched out some notes that I wanted to cover and had it open next to me while talking it through; this has the positive benefit of making the narration a lot better and a lot more focused, however it also highlights just how much I can’t say in the time given which is why (like in Mission 10) I realise at the end that I’m running out of time and have to wrap things up. I make a minor few mistakes here and there, the most noteworthy being when I talk about one of the guards and mention that I can’t “underestimate” walking that room, I actually mean “overstate” (under versus over). In retrospect I also seem to use the word “mission” a lot at the beginning but when listening, the usage doesn’t seem so bad.

Details

Play time: 8:09
Rating: Silent Assassin
Difficulty: Professional
Shots fired: 0
Alerts: 0

I made a promise when doing this mission that whatever safe location the CIA agent relinquished I would attempt to do it; thankfully he gave me one of the three safe locations that I know how to do. I mention in the narration but it’s worth mentioning that I’ve never been able to retrieve the Jade figurine when it’s located in Lee Hong’s office safe, I have either tried and been shot (a lot) or just restarted. The weapons depot safe is the closes, then the brothel’s, then the guard quarters; the brothel involves using the balconies to get into a room which has a locked inner door but an open outer door.

One thing I did want to mention but didn’t get the chance is about the prostitute’s path-finding during the “escape”. While you can more or less forget about her, sometimes she has the bright idea of using the door to her left when 47 is jumping from balcony to balcony; this is a good thing as it means there’s no chance of her falling and escaping with the code however I’m unsure as to the criteria which causes her to do this as it only happened a couple of times during my practice runthroughs. The route I take around the balconies is the only way to let her escape as if you take the shorter route (turning right outside the door versus left) then when trying to cross the bridge one of the guards will spot you.

I hide behind some boxes for the wandering Red Dragon guard, however sometimes the timing will be tricky and it is possible to hide near the steps near the outer door, or even just stand still. Like the T-Rex from Jurassic Park, he doesn’t seem to see you if you stay put although this may only be when he exits during the cut-scene.

It is possible to omit rescuing the prostitute and simply get the safe combination from Lee Hong once you’ve killed him. In that vein, it is also possible to not free the CIA agent and to take a guess as to where the correct safe is; if playing on easy or normal then saving before opening a safe may be in order. The safe location is chose upon entrance to the level (rather than when you speak to the agent) so saving before speaking to the agent will not choose a different safe location. When running for the kitchen, I take a wrong turn and almost run face first into some Red Dragon guards, but thankfully my reflexes aren’t completely dead yet.

When killing Hong, 47 seems to miss with his first fibre wire attempt which is why you see me ineffectually doing a second one, it seemed to be an animation glitch and Lee Hong was in fact dead, he just didn’t know it (Fist of the North Star style). I drag the body of Hong around the table which isn’t strictly necessary, but I don’t like there to be any nasty surprises as I’m sure you’re aware of by now. I do mention it but it’s worth repeating: Zun takes a shed-load of ammo to kill if you decide to shoot him, even with the M60 it will take a good three or four head shots to take him down. ¶

Hitman Contracts contains mature content and is wholly unsuitable for minors, some of these videos also contain flashing lights; fairly warned be thee.

Notes

The narration that I do for this mission has been edited slightly to remove some slight pauses in my speech; the reason for this is that the video that I narrated to wasn’t the final version, I had forgotten to chop out a cut scene with the Police Chief which had the knock on effect of mis-timing my narration after that. This was compounded by the shortness of the mission and having more to say that I didn’t get to which is why I tend to gloss over the details as the mission comes to a close.

A few slip ups here and there, the most prominent one calling the rat poison “rat point” which sounds like a new Logitech haptic device. There aren’t any major slip-ups but its certainly not one of my best narrations.

Details

Play time: 4:28
Rating: Silent Assassin
Difficulty: Professional
Shots fired: 0
Alerts: 0

When I go to drag the Red Dragon negotiators body into the sewer, I spend a good few seconds messing about as the ladder logic keeps taking hold and pushing me to move down the ladder which happens twice before I reposition 47 for an arm drag.

I mention that it is possible to pick the outer kitchen door lock; this is shown better in a later mission but it’s possible to cause guards to look to where you want them to by catching their attention and focusing it behind them, then moving to the front out of their attention which means they will remain obliviously looking behind them. It’s quick and easy to do for the two police guards facing the kitchen door however it’s not necessary if you can pick the lock with impunity before they show up.

The waiter is worth mentioning as he has two states: the first is wiping the bar down and the second is talking to the police guard positioned on the first floor. You can sneak by him in either state however the latter state is better for sneaking back into the kitchen as it means you’re not skirting his visual range. One of the problems with sneaking is it maintains the police guard’s interest which isn’t so much a problem but worth noting.

When placing the drinks on the table, be absolutely certain you’re placing the drinks and not the amulet as the menu options are directly next to each other; placing the amulet will cause the two at the table to start shooting you without pause.

If you decide to put on the Red Dragon negotiator clothing you’ll get the conversation about Hitman being European which I mention in Mission 9, The Wang Fou Incident. As the negotiator you get little freedom, the only benefit is getting the upstairs bathroom key from the waiter; pretty much everything else is off limits so it’s probably easier to spec out this mission as a chef than anybody else. ¶

Hitman Contracts contains mature content and is wholly unsuitable for minors, some of these videos also contain flashing lights; fairly warned be thee.

Notes

In all a fairly shoddy narration with a number of idioms and not completing trains of thought on more than on occasion. The most notable being at the end when I say there are many ways to achieve the mission and list precisely none; I also contradict myself by saying assassinating one of the final Blue Lotus targets “isn’t difficult” but then say no matter which guard you “get, it’s difficult”. What I’m trying to elucidate is the leading is not difficult however the positioning with the guards is as if you’ve caught the attention of the other two guards, it becomes nearly impossible.

I also mention that I have chopped out about a minute and a half (from an eight minute run) which is true, however the implication is the minute and a half was cut from further in the mission when in fact less than a minute was cut from there and in total I cut a minute and a half.

Details

Play time: 8:00
Rating: Silent Assassin
Difficulty: Professional
Shots fired: 0
Alerts: 0

The targets are in the restaurant for a limited time however planting the car bomb hurries them along I believe; the car bomb is about the only way to achieve Silent Assassin on this mission without being a savant with the fibre wire. If you mis-time the car bomb explosion and don’t manage to take out the two guards either side, you can garrote them if you’re swift, however they’ve more than likely “found” the charred remains of who was in the car, precluding a Silent Assassin rating. I’m unsure of the “official” canonical way to take out the two members who remain in the restaurant although the leading method seems to be the only way to obtain Silent Assassin as otherwise assassinating one alerts the other.

If this were Blood Money then a remote mine in the restaurant area would probably be the most expedient way of taking out all the targets, however with the absence of those, shooting is about the only other option available to you. I believe this is a hang over from the first game which had a similar Blood Money rating system but more impenetrable and with far, far twitchier guards. ¶

Hitman Contracts contains mature content and is wholly unsuitable for minors, some of these videos also contain flashing lights; fairly warned be thee.

Notes

At just over two minutes I went through many different iterations of the narration, trying to cram in as much pertinent information in the time available which is why there is only a single “um” and no extended vowels or garden-path sentences. I use the term “cadaver” in an odd way which is grammatically correct but not the most common way of using the term.

Details

Play time: 1:59
Rating: Silent Assassin
Difficulty: Professional
Shots fired: 0
Alerts: 0

“As difficult as you want to make it” is the mantra for this level. A streamlined reprise of the very first Hitman level, the route to the single target is open and varied; whether you take a disguise or simply camp out on one of the many towers overlooking the park is up to you, you can even go the whole hog and try to plant a car bomb but the gardener route is swift and relatively painless.

The second gardener who I mention may cause you trouble starts the level only a few feet from the park entrance which means there’s no chance of catching him before he enters the park, not without alerting some of the guards at least. His routine is to tend a patch of soggy ground, stand up and then work on another patch close by; I can only assume during the standing phase he sometimes manages to catch me spiking the tea. ¶

Hitman Contracts contains mature content and is wholly unsuitable for minors, some of these videos also contain flashing lights; fairly warned be thee.

Notes

It’s telling what a month in between runthrough attempts will do to the quality of narration: a lot of “sort of“s, “actually“s and “um“s in this one but overall a decent enough monologue. I trip over my words a couple of times, the most notable being when I try and describe how little the security guards care about 47 wandering around in a bodyguard disguise.

Details

Play time: 8:20
Rating: Silent Assassin
Difficulty: Professional
Shots fired: 0
Alerts: 0

There is a section in the first few minutes of my runthrough where I’m waiting for a security guard to exit an area before I pick the lock to get into the “murder” area. I try and close the door on the security guard before he walks through it, the reason for this is if you time the action right, the security guard will blit through the door without opening it which can shave a second or so off the overall time and while the trick worked in practice sessions, performance anxiety evidently made me miss the timing.

The route that I take is the canonical one for obtaining a Silent Assassin rating, while each assassination can be done in isolation you need items from both targets before you can obtain the chemical bomb. It is possible to sneak into the first Fuchs’s room without sedating the bodyguard although it does make it more taxing, however it’s worth doing to get the disguise which allows you to walk about the x-ray area unhindered. In a security guard disguise you will be shooed out of the x-ray area rather promptly.

My short quest to get a master key could equally be done on the second floor or ignored completely as with the proper timing you can pick the lock of the door without arousing suspicion. The reason I choose the third floor is the security guard on that floor circles away from the route I take to get the key, while on the second floor the security guard gets in the way somewhat. Picking is an option but I like to have a backup in case I need to think on the fly.

There is a way to get your sniper rifle into the building without gunning the security guards down and that is to place it on the ground immediately before you go through the outer metal detector then walk through and pick it up on the other side; with any luck you’ll have got it by without triggering an alarm. Moving it about within the hotel will be dependent on what disguise you’re in, bodyguards and security guards need not worry about the inner metal detectors. ¶

Hitman Contracts contains mature content and is wholly unsuitable for minors, some of these videos also contain flashing lights; fairly warned be thee.

Notes

A few gaffs in this narration, the most notable being when I describe difficulty levels and indirectly claim that you can save on “Professional” difficulty which you can’t, I meant to say “Easy” and “Normal” instead of “Normal” and “Professional”. I refer to the special forces as “SWAT” which isn’t technically true but their role in the level is such that it could easily be transposed to America where SWAT exists; the Dutch special forces go by the moniker Politie BBE. I also refer to a streetlight as a “light post” which was my attempt to be politically correct but just came out sounding retarded.

Details

Play time: 6:53
Rating: Silent Assassin
Difficulty: Professional
Shots fired: 0
Alerts: 0

As mentioned in the narration this can be a daunting mission to start playing as the gradual refinement process that I usually use can be insufficient when you have vast changes to the level structure happening at a predetermined time. The mission briefing will tell you to fit a GPS tracker to the car which is easier said than done if you don’t know you can talk to the lady in the window but it’s more or less useless unless you plan to track the car and disarm the bomb once it’s on the ship.

The route that I took keeps me out of the special forces’ line of sight, the alternative is to sedate a terrorist and steal their disguise and head on to the ship before the assault takes place. This requires a lot more speed but the end-game is more or less the same as you either take the detonator and trust the men with guns not to shoot you or you try and grab another disguise after disarming the bomb and killing Boris.

Out of the three warehouses which line the dock, the central one contains a number of terrorists while the other two are rife with police and special forces; all of them can be accessed using the sewers. ¶

Hitman Contracts contains mature content and is wholly unsuitable for minors, some of these videos also contain flashing lights; fairly warned be thee.

Notes

And so begins my repeated usage of “sort of” as a prefix to many phrases; it’s worrying how little I realise I’m doing it but it’s something that I’m trying to phase out. I also sound vaguely retarded while saying “investigative” which is probably more nerves than anything, were I to say it in everyday conversation it would probably meld into surrounding words. I also underestimated how long I had left in the narration and was about to launch into a tirade on other, lesser, ways to accomplish the mission but noticed I was at the extraction point.

Details

Play time: 6:51
Rating: Silent Assassin
Difficulty: Professional
Shots fired: 0
Alerts: 0

Despite being my least favourite mission in Contracts, the level doesn’t lock you in to one way of achieving Silent Assassin. My route through the level more or less bypasses the bar area of the compound which is where you can meet a buyer for the photographs the captive journalist took. It is possible to sedate the buyer and take his clothes: a snazzy bowler hat and sharp suit. The bar is a very twitchy area and is prone to the bikers who reside there snapping and opening fire on you for no other reason than they felt like it.

All of the bikers are paranoid which means in any disguise, even a top tier one (which are hard to identify in the plethora of leather), you can’t get too close to anyone as they’ll shoot first and not even both to ask questions later. If you don’t wish to snag the “free” disguise from the warehouse near the beginning, it is possible with skill, luck and patience to navigate your way through the biker compound in your starting suit without being seen but it’s tedious and easy to mess up.

The journalist tied up in the basement is hooked up to an electrical torture device; in my original walkthroughs I used a knife to end his misery, unfortunately this triggers a “body found” warning when one of the wandering guards enters the room so as hideous as the alternative is, it’s the most discreet method. The gang boss is a very easy target to take down as long as you have the disguise to be in the area he is. If you want you can use the buyer’s disguise to gain access but there are no “special” ways of taking him out as far as I know. ¶

Hitman Contracts contains mature content and is wholly unsuitable for minors, some of these videos also contain flashing lights; fairly warned be thee.

Notes

There are some minor vocal errors here and there, the main one being when I’m trying to describe the location of the fireplace in relation to Alistair Beldingford; the fire is located in the room the son is in, the room is not in the fire nor is the son in the fire. I use some colloquialisms which I’m certain some people haven’t heard, namely “faffing” which I’ve always taken to mean “moving about without actually achieving anything” which is precisely what I do in the stables (not to be confused with “paffing” which is a European slang word I believe); “tits up” is a crass version of “wrong” or “pear-shaped” and one which I should probably try and train myself out of using lest I use it when I shouldn’t.

Details

Play time: 7:39
Rating: Silent Assassin
Difficulty: Professional
Shots fired: 0
Alerts: 0

As mentioned in the video, one of my favourite Contracts missions, for once not simply because of the setting. The wealth of different ways of approaching the mission starts with obtaining access to the house, my strangled route through the maze and the bowels of the house is less than optimal but it goes straight for one of the best disguises with very few points where things could go wrong.

The house has numerous hidden passages and corridors that are worth exploring, the route into Lord Beldingford’s bedroom is especially worth trying to orchestrate into a plan as it bypasses at least three guards, all of whom could easily break your cover. My original plan was to smother Lord Beldingford with a pillow, that plan was scuppered however when I inadvertently caught him in the final phase of his “wander” sequence, I then changed my plan and garroted him which more or less guarantees the body will not be found. I could have waited for him to settle down in bed; this is not only tedious and unnecessary but prone to error as he can catch you in the act when he looks like he should be asleep.

In my runthrough I make a fairly significant journey to collect some poison from a bedroom on the other side of the house from where I was going to use it. I was also going to try and show the cutscene where Hitman delivers the poisoned whiskey to Alistair Beldingford, only having one syringe means that I need to save it for the stable boy. I never learned the route of the stable boy which is why I spend so much time exploring the stables looking for him; the reason for this is because the stable area is the final part of my runthrough which usually gets relegated to the “if it works, use it” methodology.

All in all, there are several points in this runthrough that don’t gel with my previous practice runthroughs which is why this one seems less refined despite my intentions otherwise. ¶

Hitman Contracts contains mature content and is wholly unsuitable for minors, some of these videos also contain flashing lights; fairly warned be thee.

I tend to ramble a bit when trying to describe the submarine section and how to go about taking out the patrolling guard; it isn’t so confusing in context but I seem to remember gesticulating when identifying guards which probably doesn’t translate well to sound.

Details
Play time: 14:51
Rating: Silent Assassin
Difficulty: Professional
Shots fired: 0
Alerts: 0

While certainly not one of the most complex missions in Contracts, The Bjarkhov Bomb is certainly one of the most expansive. The distance between each objective is the big time sink and a lot of the time is spent running between points rather than doing anything noteworthy. Fuchs’ disguise is the one that will get you unrestricted access to areas while the civilian uniform will allow you to run around the initial area unhindered, although obviously doing that is just asking for trouble. There are other possibilities of killing Fuch’s including sniping him when he (eventually) goes for the train, there is a sniper rifle in the tower above the service area for this very purpose, obviously this draws attention and is rarely worth the wait.

Bjarkhov isn’t very taxing as long as you’re in Fuchs’ disguise otherwise it would likely be a slow and tedious approach using a guard disguise and probably a few bullets. The submarine section is relatively easy and finding the bomb points is the most taxing part; in a radiation suit you have all the benefits of the civilian disguise in being able to run everywhere without risking a cover break. If you didn’t feel like picking up the bombs from Bjarkhov’s ship then the bombs in the submarine are towards the rear of it, as soon as you go down the stairs head right and you should find them in a small room off to the back.

The escape can either be on foot as I did, or on the train. The train doesn’t require a guard to be on it as well so if you choose that route then just start it rather than hanging around. ¶

Hitman Contracts contains mature content and is wholly unsuitable for minors, some of these videos also contain flashing lights; fairly warned be thee.

Notes

Nothing noteworthy about the narration to this mission; I perhaps overuse a few terms (“opium-fueled” etc.) but otherwise I don’t trip over my words like usual.

Details

Play time: 5:41
Rating: Silent Assassin
Difficulty: Professional
Shots fired: 0
Alerts: 0

The importance of closing the doors on the truck at the beginning of the level can’t be overstated, it’s more or less impossible to complete the mission with no alerts if you leave the doors open as even if you (for some reason) leave the butcher disguise he’ll get up and trigger a warning. There isn’t a way to get your ballers into the abattoir unless you’re willing to shoot everyone; inside the slaughter house gunshots are more or less ignored by the patrons, the guards on the other hand are a little more lucid.

The murder evidence can be obtained at any point throughout this level, the reason I did it first was more about timing than anything else. The other way to take out the lawyer which is more robust than the method I demonstrate in the video, is to wait in the toilets for the lawyer to come into. When he does, one of his cronies will check the stalls to make sure no one is about, however you can hide behind the door to avoid this; once the lawyer enters to do his business, it’s a simple matter of taking him out with your preferred method. If you do this last then his body won’t be found before you exit the level; the guard will stand outside the toilet like a chump for a long time before eventually coming in and finding the corpse.

You can’t get past the guard outside Sturrock’s room unless you’re either a butcher with food or a guard, the latter being more prone to failing due to the position of the guard. It’s easy to miss the curtains in the room and if you time it correctly then it’s possible to kill Sturrock without the leather-clad ladies seeing you, once they look through the window however they’ll trigger an alarm. It’s still possible to get Silent Assassin with this method, but it breaks an all-zero run. ¶

Hitman Contracts contains mature content and is wholly unsuitable for minors, some of these videos also contain flashing lights; fairly warned be thee.

Technical notes

I’ve eschewed doing a plain-text transcript of my runthrough this time in favour of properly timed subtitles / captions. The Flash media player supports them but they’re turned off by default; clicking the small “T” button in the toolbar will enable them. The subtitles were designed for the high quality version and I have no control over how the subtitles are displayed in the media player, hence why the text is large and sometimes splits onto three lines, dominating the video. The latest version of the JW Media Player no longer supports SRT subtitles and only supports an esoteric W3C Timed Text format which very few subtitle programs output to. For that reason, subtitles are no longer available within the media player itself.

There is a download link for the full subtitle file above which contains font hints among other things, if you’ve got Media Player Classic then place the .ass file into the same directory as the high quality .avi file and the subtitles should automatically play on open, a brief tutorial for this is available online.

Notes

Back with another Hitman playthrough, this time Contracts is the game of choice. I mentioned in a few of my Blood Money playthroughs that I had achieved a “zero bullet” run in Contracts, however it is apparently possible to do a “full zero” run, which is no alerts, no bodies found, no bullets fired etc. This seemed like a good challenge, especially as some of the later levels are vast and tricky. The game is running on the last patch released for it, 1.74, and has all graphical options turned on and I record at a resolution of 800x600. There is a 640x480 option in Contracts however after a bit of trial and error, the larger resolution works better and still allows for various screen paraphernalia to be viewable.

One of my friends started on Contracts while I was doing my Blood Money run however the project fell by the wayside; suffice to say I got his permission before doing this run as I didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes.

Due to the shortness of this mission most of the narration is spent describing the game and where it sits in the Hitman chronology. There is a slight pause when I try and figure out what I’m going to say next with regards to the story; in previous commentary attempts I had described Contracts as a segue from the first game, which is true but the grammar was odd so I reworded it.

Details

Play time: 2:13
Rating: Silent Assassin
Difficulty: Professional
Shots fired: 0
Alerts: 0

Nothing noteworthy about the mission; you may be confused to see me running so quickly through the level but this is due to timing rather than attempting a speed run although I’m not about to dawdle at any point unless absolutely necessary. There is a stun-gun on this level that is a good alternative to the syringe (of which there are many scattered about), however you can’t take it with you on any other mission so I leave it where it is. There is a “secret” to this mission in that if you collect Ortmeyer’s key from mission 9 (Wang Fou incident) then when you replay this level you can grab a mini-gun in his office; obviously you can’t hide such a weapon from the SWAT so a shoot-out is inevitable if you want to add it to your arsenal. If you hang around in the room where the SWAT members shoo you into, eventually they will come in and execute all of you.

A shoot-out is the only realistic alternative exit to this level; while the route that I’ve taken is about the quickest it can get, there are whole other sections to the house including a secret room in the basement and lots of upper floors with patient holding cells and so forth. The SWAT incursion into the house is triggered by reaching a certain point (just before the gate with a table of guns nearby) but beyond that you’re free to explore the house. The orderlies will sometimes try and subdue you if you’re in a patient uniform however the SWAT team will make swift work of them. ¶

Below are thumbnailed links to all of the missions and I’ve also provided a retrospective on this project at the end.

• 
  Mission 1: A Vintage Year
• 
  Mission 2: Curtains Down
• 
  Mission 3: Flatline
• 
  Mission 4: A New Life
• 
  Mission 5: A Murder of Crows
• 
  Mission 6: You Better Watch Out…
• 
  Mission 7: Death on the Mississippi
• 
  Mission 8: Till Death do us part
• 
  Mission 9: A House of Cards
• 
  Mission 10: A Dance with the Devil
• 
  Mission 11: Amendment XXV

Details
For my runthrough I played the latest version (1.02) of Hitman Blood Money on the PC. For recording the games I was in the lowest resolution of 800x600, this is so that HUD features such as the attention meter is visible on the smaller Flash videos. Ordinarily I play on 1280x960 but shrinking that would make HUD details tiny. All features apart from self-shadowing are turned on (anti-aliasing, high detail etc.). I used FRAPS to record the videos, and an average 10 minute run through would take up about 6GB; I then use the process detailed in one of my write ups to come out with a high-quality version and a decent quality Flash video version.

Disclaimer
After putting what I write in perspective I guess my website could now be on all sorts of government watch-lists for some of the topics I’m covering (especially Mission 11’s write-up). It should go without saying that I unequivocally do not endorse or condone killing, professional or otherwise, of any sort and everything written is done so within the context of the game. Those who know me will know I have a strong separation between reality and fiction (apart from with squirrels who are omnipotent!) so this writing and narration should not be used as a character reference.

Retrospective
I began doing my Hitman runthrough because I had watched a few other video runthroughs for Blood Money and was unhappy at the level of skill displayed and so set out to prove that Silent Assassin ranking was not only possible but preferable over the gung-ho, run-and-gun methods employed by some. I’ve always treated the Hitman games as a puzzler rather than a shooter and my enjoyment comes from figuring out the cleanest and most efficient way to take out the target(s) rather than how many bodies I create.

To an extent, playing it as I do means I miss out on some of the little nuances the game has to offer. For instance, my first experience with the game (on the Normal difficulty), I didn’t touch the weapon upgrades until I was forced to for the ninth mission and plot points such as the other assassins completely passed me by as I stealthed my way through the levels. I probably still don’t have a full grasp on the tenuous story running through the game — as evidenced through some of the inconsistencies in my narrations — but I never played the game expecting a literary tour de force.

I’ve been a huge fan of the Hitman games ever since the first one came out, and while that one had a similar monetary and rating system, it was far less accomplished than Blood Money’s and most levels degenerated into a shoot out rather than a slow-and-steady approach; and the game did nothing to deter that sort of play. Hitman 2 was a benchmark for the series and provided vast, interesting missions and rewarded you for stealthy, innovative play. Many felt Hitman Contracts was more of a mission pack than a fully fledged game and, to a certain extent, that’s true with the reprise of three missions from the first game; but Contracts epitomised everything I love about Hitman games: atmospheric and involved missions and a puzzle mentality to solving them. Blood Money is the logical extension of Contracts and continues the “story”, and while it contains relatively few missions, the levels are now larger, denser and more intricate than the previous games.

Future
Really this is me putting Hitman Blood Money to bed, there are very few places I can go from here apart from doing a speed-run (which one of my friends suggested) but that can wait for another time. I’m more than willing to do a Hitman Contracts playthrough and demonstrate the no-bullet run, however it’s coming up to silly season for games (Christmas) which may put a dampener on that idea; if I ever have a decent chunk of free time it’s certainly a possibility. From start to finish this project has taken two weeks which includes play (finding the best SA route on Pro), recording (replaying that route), narrating, encoding and write-ups all with a 9–5 job and several nights out in-between so this has been far from intense.

Who knows though, maybe by the time I get around to doing Contracts or even Hitman 2, a new Hitman game may have landed… ¶

Hitman Blood Money is classified as “18” in the UK and “Mature” in the US which means that it is unsuitable for minors; fairly warned be thee.

Notes

Another half-decent narration with very few “actually“s, I have noticed that I’ve switched to using “and” to conjoin a lot of my sentences which gives the entire narration a long, garden-path feel to it. Due to the unscripted nature of my monologues, I’m more than likely using the extended “and“s as a moment of repose to figure out where I’m going with things; this is why I’ll start down one route (e.g. speaking about one of the guards looking at the payment briefcase in Mission 9) and then get distracted with something else (probably shiny) and abandon my original route. As with all previous narrations I say “uniform” when I really mean disguise, although in some situations “uniform” is just as valid as “disguise”; I also say “library staff” at one point which is a throwback to my first narration attempt when I muddled the Whitehouse museum with a library.

Details

Play time: 12:20
Rating: Silent Assassin
Retrieved suit: Yes
Accidents: 0
Close Combat Kills: 1
Bullets fired: 1

It’s difficult to know where to start with this level, on the one hand the premise and execution feels very contrived and unrealistic, while on the other the mission itself is decent. I think it probably would have been better had the location not been the Whitehouse and perhaps a presidential retreat of some sort, but that’s here nor there. Really, there is only one way to do this mission and get silent assassin, the only variables are which disguises you get at what point.

About the only way to accident kill the vice president is to push him down the stairs he takes when walking the dog, but like other stair-pushing possibilities, it is far from guaranteed to kill him and you have the added annoyance of the small yapper-type dog following the VP around. Parchezzi can’t be accident killed and can only be eliminated by chasing him through the West Wing or through creative use of bombs, the latter causing bodies to be found which lowers your rating. ¶

Hitman Blood Money is classified as “18” in the UK and “Mature” in the US which means that it is unsuitable for minors; fairly warned be thee.

Notes

I wanted to get this narration done before I went to bed because then I could set the lengthy VP6.2 encoding process going and do the high-quality video at the same time; this means that it was done late at night which is why it has no less than three instances of me putting on character voices. Overall I feel it was a decent narration but there are a couple of errors I make, both during the summary of the mission: I say that the mission took 14:16 when it in fact took 14:46, my eyes had just about failed me at this point; I also say that the lift-kill can count as an accident which is true, but not in this case and the accident refers to rigging the pyro show. Sometimes the game does count lift kills as accidents though I’m not sure of the criteria which makes it believe they are.

Details

Play time: 14:46
Rating: Silent Assassin
Retrieved suit: Yes
Accidents: 1
Close Combat Kills: 3
Bullets fired: 0

In this mission I throw money at a guard’s head, I set someone on fire, get shot at by a lunatic in a cage match, strangle somebody in a lift and then garrotte a woman wearing only a strip of fabric and some angel wings. This is an excellent mission and if it weren’t for the tedious “duel me for the title of greatest assassin evar!” section, then this would probably be my favourite mission over “You Better Watch Out…”. The easiest disguise to get in this level is obviously the security guard in the first building, however no matter where you put his body, it will more than likely be found sometime during the mission; if you’re up for a bit of sneaking, the man throwing up is another easy target but this only gets you into the hell party main-area, probably the easiest way to advance from that suit is to kill the CIA agent when he gets into one of the lifts and then use his disguise although that’s a lot of waiting about. If you are the CIA agent you can start a transaction with Vanya and kill her that way although if you haven’t turned the projector on behind the scenes then you’ll get a noise rating at the end of the mission which lowers your overall ranking.

I believe there is a way to kill the man in red before the duel: he acts as a bartender and he drinks from a glass located on a shelf nearby, I haven’t tried it, but I would think poisoning that glass would cut out the dueling section, but would leave his body in a ridiculously open area. You can’t get into the “Torture Chamber” until he unlocks it, at which point the cut scene starts so there’s no possibility of bomb planting within the confines of that room. Don’t worry about making noise, like he says, the room is soundproofed and no one else goes in there.

The CIA agent is very easy to take out as he exposes himself within the lifts among other places so there should be no problem there. Eve is a pain because she fights back with a stiletto if she catches you sneaking about but she’s exposed when she walks into her “private” office. There is a way of getting up onto the rigging for the stage lights so the possibility of sniping her from there is present, but escaping may be a little tricky.

The escape is a bit complex because you need to nab the video tape from the guard station which requires some very simple sneaking, and then retrieval of the suit and running to the van. You’ll notice in my playthrough as I sprint for the van my attention meter shoots up because a security guard spots me, but at that point I’m home-free so ignore it and carry on.

Next mission

Mission eleven: Amendment XXV, is giving me some trouble with regards to getting silent assassin ranking on it. The criteria the game uses is very bizarre, and I’ve done a clean run through of it (no bodies found, no noise made, no covers blown) and it still only gave me a professional ranking. Also, Bioshock is coming out this week and I was hoping to get this run through finished before I started on a fresh game, so if I can’t find a way to get SA ranking, it will probably be a while before I try again and get the last mission narrated and written up. ¶

Hitman Blood Money is classified as “18” in the UK and “Mature” in the US which means that it is unsuitable for minors; fairly warned be thee.

Notes

Ironically, this is one of the best narrations I feel I’ve done, with very few “so“s, “but“s and “actually“s, but for one of my least favourite missions. I think the quality of the narration has something to do with my vitriol but also to do with the length of the video, with so much waiting about I could cut out large swathes, reducing the video down to just over eight minutes, the shortest yet. I make a slight blunder towards the end of the narration where I mention putting bombs in briefcases (how very Stauffenberg of me) and mention putting one in the DNA briefcase and taking out the Sheikh and Heinrich when I meant placing one in the diamond briefcase; I imply the DNA one has already killed the scientist.

Details

Play time: 14:03
Rating: Silent Assassin
Retrieved suit: Yes
Accidents: 0
Close Combat Kills: 2
Bullets fired: 1

This is probably the one mission I put the most thought into, and eventually came to the realisation that without the rifle, this level is near impossible to achieve silent assassin on. The problem stems from the way the targets interact and no amount of suit changing will solve the problem: once the Sheikh enters the casino, neither he nor his bodyguards will leave; the only way you get the Sheikh on his own (and by virtue make sure his body isn’t found) is the call from the scientist. Obviously you can wait for the transaction to proceed as normal and shoot the Sheikh, but that means you’ve waited 10+ minutes without killing either of the two targets. As the seller you get close to Sheikh, but once he disappears out the back, you have to play with the guards before you can sneak out which is less than fool proof and they more-often-than-not, find you out and start shooting you. I could keep the bell-boy outfit and get into the casino area that way, but the amount of freedom you have is limited. If you call the Sheikh from the scientist’s room and then sprint for the casino (and I mean sprint) you don’t get there in time to kill the Sheikh outside, and the best you can hope for is a lot of pissed off guards and catching the Sheikh on the stairs.

I mention that I’ve tried bombs, the problem being that bombs aren’t accidents which mean when their bodies are found the mission ranking plummets. The long and the short of it is that the Sheikh isn’t able to be killed by accidental or close-combat means, so bullets are the only recourse. There goes my potential no-bullet run. ¶

Hitman Blood Money is classified as “18” in the UK and “Mature” in the US which means that it is unsuitable for minors; fairly warned be thee.

Notes

An “actually” heavy narration (11 times), dwarfed by how many times I say “but” (25 times). I also muddle up my words towards the end of the narration and mention switching back into the gang-member’s disguise when I mean going to that point and switching back into the starting suit, I imply I’m already walking around in the gang member’s suit so this makes no sense. The narration overran the first time I did it, but instead of redoing it entirely I sliced out a bit of silence towards the end and everything synched up. I also say “a invitation” which is terrible grammar, however I was planning on saying “a party invitation” but my brain discarded “party” en-route to my mouth. I’m also overly cynical when describing the comments levelled at you by the guards, they are amusing the first time you hear them, but repeated cries meant I got tired of them very quickly.

Details

Play time: 13:27
Rating: Silent Assassin
Retrieved suit: Yes
Accidents: 2
Close Combat Kills: 0
Bullets fired: 0

This mission and the next one are all about patience rather than skill. Discovering how to take out the targets is easy enough and there is a wide variety of ways to do it, some of which I cover others include poisoning the wedding cake or setting bombs in cunning positions. I inferred during my walk through that I tried to speed things up mainly through sniping the groom before, during, or just after the wedding ceremony which works but always results in his body being discovered by someone which drops the rating down.

Pappy LeBlanc is the easiest to take out and if I was playing for speed then I could have sniped him as well rather than spending a couple of minutes going and pushing him into the grave. If you read into the story surrounding the mission then it’s implied that Pappy LeBlanc’s family has something to do with cloning as there is a mention of “cloning labs” in the newspaper article once you’ve completed the mission.

You can talk to the bride if you’re in the Hitman suit or a party guest disguise and find out where Pappy LeBlanc is but I cut the conversation short just to demonstrate you can talk to her but there is no good reason to. After this mission she goes on to win a lot of money in Vegas after gaining the inheritance of her father and/or deceased husband. ¶

Hitman Blood Money is classified as “18” in the UK and “Mature” in the US which means that it is unsuitable for minors; fairly warned be thee.

Notes

A “but” and “so” heavy narration (17 and 12 times respectively), but “actually” I utter only 7 times which is still too many but getting better. I make an error when describing one of the Gator gang deaths, I say it’s the “second of our targets” when it’s in fact the third; I somehow forget how to count when playing Hitman as I a number of playthroughs I forgot how many targets I’d taken out. I also use “unerring” which is incorrect in the context I used it and “annoying” or “unnerving” would have probably been better choices.

Details

Play time: 10:32
Rating: Silent Assassin
Retrieved suit: Yes
Accidents: 0
Close Combat Kills: 7
Bullets fired: 0

The number of targets on this mission make it very difficult to achieve on Pro, primarily because you can’t save and there’s no chance of breaking down the targets into nice blocks. The first target is the only one I use any kind of trick on by stalling them, and I did that through trial and error to find the best way to eliminate him quickly and efficiently. The rest of the targets are taken out through positioning and knowledge of where the other targets are at a given point which comes from just playing the level. As I mention, adapting your strategy on the fly is essential to getting through this level as seven close combat kills is not easy to achieve.

I know the route I take back to the escape isn’t the best, but it’s the one I know and it does the job. You notice I hardly go anywhere within the bowels of the ship and stick mostly to the outer areas, this is just because I found while in any disguise, wandering about the cabins pushed the attention meter up too high and caused too many problems which is my reasoning behind not taking that route to reach the exit.

I mention in the narration that the photo retrieval mission objective is a bit pointless as by the time you’ve killed Skip, you’ve got full access to his quarters which makes getting the photos trivial. The only problem would be if you did Skip first, as one of the gang members cycles in and out of his quarters as well which means you could potentially get caught or the body be found if you don’t kill the gang members first. ¶

Hitman Blood Money is classified as “18” in the UK and “Mature” in the US which means that it is unsuitable for minors; fairly warned be thee.

Notes

The reason I keep referring to Lorne de Havilland as the “Porn King” is primarily because I couldn’t remember his name and also because his name isn’t the quickest or easiest to say, so Porn King he shall remain. I also alternately refer to the bikini-clad women of the level as strippers or models, I have no idea which they are and I’m making an assumption based upon the “Porn King” status of one of the targets. Words which sound the same during the narration: “abhor” and “adore”, I abhor animal cruelty and adore the level, not the other way around.

Details

Play time: 11:10
Rating: Silent Assassin
Retrieved suit: Yes
Accidents: 5
Close Combat Kills: 0
Bullets fired: 1

The reason I’ve always stipulated that this run through of Blood Money is to use “as few bullets as possible” is because I always try and find a bullet-less method of doing the game and I’ve managed to do that in Contracts and I’ve also done it on Hitman Two except where it stipulates “use the sniper rifle” on a couple of levels; I tried for ages to try and do Blood Money without using bullets but one level in particular (“A House of Cards”) pretty much forces you to use the rifle to obtain silent assassin. So with that in mind, this became a “minimum” bullet run through rather than a no bullet run through. I don’t need to use the rifle on this level but it speeds things up and makes for a more interesting video than sitting about waiting for Chad to get his mojo working.

As I mention, this is my favourite level of Hitman Blood Money due to the snow and the mission itself: there are a lot of different ways of getting Silent Assassin here from using your rifle exclusively to sedating a photographer and heading to the photo-shoot and more. This is one of the levels where each target can be taken out in isolation of the other, so unlike “Curtains Down” (the opera level) where one target’s death triggers the other, you can take out Lorne de Havilland one way then take out Chad Bingham a completely different way. ¶

Hitman Blood Money is classified as “18” in the UK and “Mature” in the US which means that it is unsuitable for minors; fairly warned be thee.

Notes

I couldn’t settle on a volume for the narration of this one, the level oscillates between the white noise of the crowd sections to the near total silence of other areas and the thumping music of the clubs; I clicked up the volume of the narration and nudged the background noises down but it’s never going to be perfect. At the beginning when I’m describing the difference between class one and two clones, I have no evidence that the class two’s disintegrate, Indian Jones style; I correct myself and say “degrade” which is a little more believable.

Details

Play time: 10:34
Rating: Silent Assassin
Retrieved suit: Yes
Accidents: 0
Close Combat Kills: 3
Bullets fired: 0

As I mention in the narration, I’ve never let this level get into the end-game where the senator is in any real danger and I believe that happens once the diamond hand off is complete. There is no form of crowd camouflage, so you can’t do something naughty and then just slink into the crowd, being a 6 foot plus bald killing machine makes you stand out somewhat. There are no cameras on this level that I’m aware of so don’t go looking for a security office; if there are cameras they certainly aren’t intrusive.

The most difficult part of this level is timing the policemen correctly, because two of them walk through that central area it’s all too easy to be caught when you’re killing the female target or sedating one of the other policemen. Sometimes the policemen stall their circuits which can cause havoc. I mention the third target, the sniper, moving between three buildings, I fail to mention that he is assigned a building when you start the level and he stays in that building for the remainder of the mission; he doesn’t switch buildings mid-mission which my ambiguous statement could infer.

I briefly mention the possibility of getting the diamonds towards the end of my narration: this is possible by going back to the room where you killed Mark Purayah and sedating or killing the red bird (he is a ne’er-do-well so fibre wiring him is within the realms of possibility) and then escaping with the case that he has near him. The red bird will stay in that room once he gets there, waiting for the person who is stashed peacefully in the freezer. ¶

Hitman Blood Money is classified as “18” in the UK and “Mature” in the US which means that it is unsuitable for minors; fairly warned be thee.

Notes

I went through three different types of narration for this level: describing the level, describing the process and describing some general tips. I settled on a combination of the first two and, as I mention, it’s a difficult level to describe because it’s very dense with possibilities. I used the phrase “very very” 4 times in this run through, obviously because using only one “very” didn’t provide enough emphasis; I’ve reduced my reliance on “actually” (once) and “so” (9 times) but switched to using “but” (17 times), probably because this was recorded late at night versus early evening.

Details

Play time: 8:37
Rating: Silent Assassin
Retrieved suit: Yes
Accidents: 1
Close Combat Kills: 1
Bullets fired: 0

I can’t decide whether I like this mission or not, on the one hand it is one of the most interesting “non-linear” levels, yet on the other it has a lot of niggling annoyances. My reliance on the sedation syringe for removing guards and getting uniforms is my undoing in this level, and had I but a single extra dose I would have been able to omit killing the wife; she may be a philandering wench but no reason to be burninated. To codify how completed the level:

Go to the catering van and put anaesthetic on the doughnuts, take the doughnuts to the surveillance van and sedate the FBI agents inside. Meanwhile, wait for the hedge-cutting woman to drop her head down and sneak into the house with a veterinary practice and swipe a bottle of ether. Go into the surveillance van and take an FBI uniform then head into the house and upstairs. Put the ether onto a pair of panties in a pink bedroom, then head downstairs and outside to a utility shed, pick the lock (after waiting for the pool boy to pass by) and pick up a bottle of lighter fluid. Put the lighter fluid on the barbecue (“rigging” it) then head back inside. The wife will immolate herself which will allow you to pluck the microfilm from her charred remains then head back inside and upstairs. Wait until the target comes upstairs and into a room, sedate his shadow then head into the room and kill the target. Escape, grabbing the suit along the way.

There are no special tricks to this level, so no guard cycling or clever timing tricks, just plain old sneak and kill; the real skill comes from not getting suspected by the rampantly paranoid FBI agents. ¶

Hitman Blood Money is classified as “18” in the UK and “Mature” in the US which means that it is unsuitable for minors; fairly warned be thee.

Notes

Made-up word of the day: “unimpinged”, a strange amalgam of “unhindered” and “impinged” (for some reason). Nothing noteworthy about the narration. I slice out part of the video (I mention when I do that) mainly for time, part of the section that I chopped out you have control of 47 but it’s only used to inject the agent which launches another cut-scene. Obviously the final time on the mission report takes into account the minute or so I cut.

Details

Play time: 9:54
Rating: Silent Assassin
Retrieved suit: Yes
Accidents: 2
Close Combat Kills: 0
Bullets fired: 0

The run through this level is one which I haven’t refined all that much, primarily because the mission isn’t difficult and the way that I use, while not optimal, is robust and works most of the time. I mention a few other ways of getting into and navigating the rehab centre, but about the only part of this mission I’m still hazy on is the last kill for the three targets, the pink robed drinker. I tried numerous ways of eliminating him but never managed a sure-fire way of either hiding his body or causing an accident kill like the other two. I didn’t engineer the run-through to omit that specific target, the gym guy just happened to be the one which came up. ¶

Hitman Blood Money is classified as “18” in the UK and “Mature” in the US which means that it is unsuitable for minors; fairly warned be thee.

Notes

I’m a lot happier with the narration of this mission than I was with the one before, I make a couple of errors while speaking: when I say that the guard is protecting the co–star’s dressing room, he is actually guarding the main star’s dressing room; when I say “length” then correct myself and say “distance” for the bomb detonator, I’m referring to the radius that your bomb detonator works within, the upgrade I mention increases the range from which you can detonate the bomb from. I also invent a word: “incorrections” which is a portmanteau of “inconsistencies” and “corrections” to create some kind of mutant, nonsensical word. I only used “so” 15 times and “actually” twice in this narration which is an order of magnitude better than last time, I do seem to hesitate a bit more and stumble over my words in places.

Details

Play time: 14:23
Rating: Silent Assassin
Retrieved suit: Yes
Accidents: 3
Close Combat Kills: 0
Bullets fired: 0

Unlike a lot of other missions, this is the only sure-fire way of getting silent assassin that I know, as long as you don’t get caught doing anything deviant or stupid that is. I’m sure there are other circumstantial ways like sniping the targets from the gods and not getting seen or carefully placing bombs, but they would be very messy and from what I found, hard to replicate. One of the things I forgot to mention in my walk through is about the “top” level guards who rally around the second target and protect the star’s dressing room. I’ve found no way of getting a suit from them (either sitting about or sedating one of them) without their body being found or cover being blow and even when you have one, there are two guards in the second target’s box who don’t move. Another off-the-cuff remark I wanted to put into the narration but didn’t find the time is about the prop pistol: if you don’t concentrate on the menus when you’re trying to put the real pistol down, you can inadvertently put the prop one back down which nullifies camping out inside the dressing room.

Process

For those who are interested, I make the videos using almost entirely free software. To capture the videos I use Fraps which I bought a copy of (I’m not sure if the free version allows for videos but it’s an awesome program for the money), I then join the huge videos together in VirtualDub and make a version that I watch while recording the narration. For that I use Audacity which I’m sure has a lot more features than I make use of but for just bashing out a recording it’s great. Once I’m happy with the narration I mux out the audio from the original video files using either ffmpeg or VirtualDubMod and import it into Audacity where I then use the “Quickmix” facility to mix the tracks and then export them as a WAV file. I then use VirtualDub to do a 2-pass encoding in VP62 — which I’ve mentioned in a previous post — which can take upward of 2 hours (for a ~10 minute video clip). I then use ffmpeg to mux together the audio and video into an FLV file and voila, all done. I do the transcripts the old fashioned way (listening and typing) while the high-quality version is a quick 2-pass encode using XviD and a VBR MP3 (I use Nandub to plex it into the AVI file).

The entire process is fairly quick and the longest part is waiting for the VP62 video to encode which seems to take an inordinate amount of time. I usually run through a couple of iterations of the narration to get what I want to say out and fit it in time with the video but as I’ve mentioned before, this isn’t meant to be a polished operation, just colloquial and informative. ¶

Hitman Blood Money is classified as “18” in the UK and “Mature” in the US which means that it is unsuitable for minors; fairly warned be thee.

Notes

First off, I am not an amazing orator; my narration is colloquial and nowhere near as verbose as my writing (although I did manage to fit “untoward” into a sentence) and I use a lot of little idioms that annoy even me: I used “actually” 16 times and “so” 26 times. These are points I’m aware of and will try to avoid in future but this isn’t supposed to be a highly polished, David Attenborough narration.

I sometimes use one word for multiple meanings within the game: “guard” refers to any goon within a level who gets in your way and also refers to an actual guard (as opposed to a turnip farmer for instance); “disguise” and “suit” are synonymous.

Details

Play time: 10:18
Rating: Silent Assassin
Retrieved suit: Yes
Accidents: 3
Close Combat Kills: 1
Bullets fired: 0

I did a few playthroughs of the first level and about my best time was 9:33 which is a full minute quicker but Fraps didn’t record the game audio on that one for some reason so I redid it and this run only had one glitch which was at the end. Nothing noteworthy about the run, I explain guard cycling and disguise levels both of which will be important in later levels. ¶