The basic storyline of Velvet Assassin is that of Violette Summer, who is based on a real-life spy for the British in World War II, Violette Szabo. You follow her adventures which she is remembering from a hospital bed in a series of flashbacks. The problem is that the game is no-where near historically accurate, Violette was captured on one of her missions and was interrogated by the Germans. She really died in a concentration camp, through execution.

 

 

As I said the game plays out from Violette’s hospital bed, from which you play out her missions. The majority of the missions take place in quite dull environments. For the 5 or 6 hours it takes to complete the game (yes, it is that short and even has an achievement for completing the game in less than five hours) you spend most of your time sneaking through dark streets or gray military bases. The odd time that you are confronted with something more brightly coloured still takes from the duller end of the scale as it is all muddy browns and rusty reds. I wish there was more colour in these types of games at times.

 

The gameplay works quite well, as you can guess you have to sneak around in the dark completing set objectives which normally consist of two or three quests a mission. Working in the dark does work well, you have an indicator at the bottom of the screen that shows how hidden you are from enemy sight. It changes from grey to purple to show your in the shadows and back to grey if you can be seen. For the most part of the game you will be moving as silently as possible taking down guards in the same manner to reach your objectives. It is just unfortunate for the game that this mechanic had to be used so much as stealth kills do feel satisfying, there isn’t enough points in the game where you can use a pistol or a weapon other than your knife to kill. That said there is interesting weaponry in use here, including the afformentioned knife, a Colt pistol and a flare gun, however whereas Metal Gear Solid managed to get the right balance between gunning and stealthy stuff, Velvet Assassin just fails to get a balance at all.

 

There are some interesting moments in the game such as when you have the option to use morphine, this has an unusual affect on Violette in which she will change from her normal play state to the state she is in, in hospital. This rather strange gameplay state means that she can move much quicker than normal and thus take down enemies that would normally see her as they don’t turn around. These moments are just plain strange, sure it breaks up the stealth based action but I was just not sure why it’s in there.

 

 

There is also a level up system in place, which allows you to upgrade Violette’s abilities but it takes too long for you to start to get the upgrades in my opinion and they really don’t seem to do much to the gameplay. You collect exp from gathering the collectables that are dotted around each of the maps and from completing the levels.

 

One thing that can be said about the game is that the characters look like they have been designed well. Of course the enemies are all ident-kit models with two or three variations thrown into the mix. But as I stated earlier the actual environments graphics are nothing to write home about at all. Moreover the voice acting can be slate, Violette’s lines seem like they have been phoned in from somewhere and it seems that the actress wasn’t really that interested in the part.

 

The premise of Velvet Assassin would have been good if a little more work was put into creating the idea with a different person as its base concept. Also it would have been nice to see other things than dull grey bases and dark street corners. But if you forget the concept being flawed and look at the game as a light strategy title then you might find a bit more fun out of it than if you’re looking for a story driven game.