19. The St. Petersberg Headshot - Hitman 2: Silent Assassin
Speaking of things that made you love games more than ever before, IO Interactive's Hitman series took the open-world formula attempted in the first game and expanded it across a huge variety of locales, ranging from Sicilian gangster hideouts to Japanese samurai-filled mountaintops. Silent Assassin was the best in series for a long time until Blood Money did it all again in 2006, and although you'll most likely have your own personal favourite mission, it's the St. Petersberg contract (where you must take out a high profile contact as he attends a meeting) that allowed for some of the best experimentation in the franchise. Everything from killing the right guard and donning the appropriate disguise to blagging your way into an opposing hotel and readying up the perfect headshot felt as viable and rewarding as anything else - but the fact it all took place in snow-caked Russia with crunchy powder breaking underfoot connoted just the right Cold War-style spy-thriller backdrop you'd always wanted to partake in.
