Mission one: Escape from the Asylum. Set immediately after the events in the first Hitman game; 47 has just killed his creator, Dr Ortmeyer, and needs to egress from the asylum which is the base of operations for the creation of clones. SWAT teams make the escape all the more difficult and the primary objective is to escape.
Hitman Contracts contains mature content and is wholly unsuitable for minors, some of these videos also contain flashing lights; fairly warned be thee.
Download the higher quality version (22MB, XviD video, VBR MP3 audio)
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.