Xbox 360 Review: Velvet Assassin

When it comes to the historical fiction genre, there are only a handful of games that ever leave a lasting impression. Sure, you’ve got your Call of Duty titles that dominate the FPS front. But, in the Action-Adventure business, most games fall by the wayside and are forgotten by the next year. Velvet Assassin from SouthPeak Games is one of those titles that tries desperately to break through into the memorable category, but ends up joining its predecessors in being forgotten.

Velvet Assassin puts you back in time during Hitler’s reign in Germany. You begin the game as Violette Summer (loosely based on the real-life WWII agent Violette Szabo), a British assassin who has been seriously injured and is now in the hospital. The story unfolds as you journey back in time through a series of flashback missions. Telling a story through flashbacks has always been a difficult feat to accomplish – especially if you want to do it well. The question always arises: Why tell an entire story in flashback at all? In Velvet Assassin, we get a piecemeal tale of the events in Violette’s past. Each piece of the tale is no more than a snippet and may have you wondering why you should be invested in Violette’s story at all.

However, Velvet Assassin creates a story that is more about the world Violette lives in, than the person Violette is. Through misplaced letters and conversations you overhear while getting ready to assassinate a guard, you will uncover a world that is not only dark and horrifying, but also very sad as well. From the Nazi soldiers to their prisoners, you’ll hear stories of torture, read letters of abuse, and also discover passionate tales of people who are emotionally destitute. It all adds up to paint a World War II picture that is extremely dark, grim and personal. Stick with the story long enough, and you will eventually also uncover the truth about Violette. It just takes forever to get there, which will upset most gamers.

Velvet Assassin focuses on stealth based gameplay to complete missions. As you sneak up behind your enemy, the screen will turn red and prompt you to press a button to trigger a stealth-based assassination. Depending on your proximity and orientation to one of the Nazis, you may either stab the Nazi in the groin or slit their throat – amongst other deadly kills. My problem here is that the Nazis never scream when they are killed. There are only a few quicktime animations where Violette will actually cover the soldier’s mouth on a kill. The rest of the time, she may just stab him in the neck and he’ll go down quietly.

The stealth mechanics are off in more ways than one. Sometimes the game will give you the option to dress as an enemy soldier, so that you can move undetected through the enemy camp. Unfortunately, this doesn’t actually work. The first-time you try to do this, the guard will immediately recognize you and you’ll fall victim to a slew of bullets. Once you’re in the other outfit, you can’t even perform your standard stealth kills anymore, because your heels make a horse like clopping sound. Because of this, you will not be able to pull off any stealth kills. Get within two feet of an enemy, and your heels will immediately signal a hail of gunfire. After I finally made it through the first dress change in the game, I put on my standard assassin garb and backtracked to kill my enemies. I could have let them live, but I was just that angry.

Methinks I’ll castrate another Nazi. Let me just take off my heels first.

Most of the time I wish I were able to use a gun. Alas, no matter what board you pop up on, Violette will always start with only a knife in her hand. Plus, you can’t take the gun from assassinated enemies. This is probably a good thing, because getting her to fire on target is an arduous task at best.

As the game progresses, you’ll earn points for collecting war artifacts. For every thousand points you obtain, you can level up your stealth meter. This allows you to move faster while in stealth mode. In the end, I actually ended up running on foot most of the time, and only crouching when I was within a two yards of my target.

Velvet Assassin suffers from a problem that faces most stealth games: poor enemy AI. Most of the time, you’ll encounter soldiers in mid conversation. After the conversation is over, the soldiers will break off to walk in predefined patterns. If you kill one of the enemy troops, their comrades will never his fellow soldier is dead. I found this laughable since they were just having a full conversation about another drunken comrade.

Velvet Assassin employs a pseudo-bullet-time feature. Throughout the game, you use morphine to enter a dream like state where you can’t be harmed. Morphine vials are so prevalent in the game that if an area gets too difficult, you can always fall back on your drug crutch. There is an Achievement for completing a mission without using the morphine that serious gamers may try to pull off. I still don’t know why they decided to use morphine here. There are no negative repercussions for using it, so it feels like an advertisement for morphine use.

The VO in Velvet Assassin is superb. I really enjoyed listening to Violette’s accent and the dialogue of the enemy soldiers. The sound design also does a great job of painting the picture of World War II. There’s a moment where you push a box with a gas mask on in Level II: the Lost Fuel Storage. You’ll actually feel like you’re living the moment with Violette.

The graphics of the settings and locations all vividly depict the WWII era. However, both Violette and the enemy soldiers tend to have boxy movements. Also, you’ll see some of infamous texture pop problems and collision detection faults prominent in stealth games.

Overall, Velvet Assassin is an entertaining game, but the core stealth play is severely flawed. However, the engaging WWII backdrop maintained my attention and I was able to suffer through the gameplay quirks. Some gamers will be upset by the flashback story layout, but there is a deeper story of WWII lifestyle that is worth paying attention to.