Velvet Assassin
By Replay Studios and SouthPeak Games
Genre: Third-person sneaker
Rating: Mature for Blood, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Use of Drugs
Back during World War II, Violette Szabo was a British secret agent in charge of a French Resistance in Nazi-occupied France. She performed two covert ops missions before being captured, interrogated and executed in early 1945.
That’s what history says. What does this game say, and is fiction any more interesting than fact? The answer in brief is yes, it is, to an extent.
In this title released in 2009, you play Violette Summer, an obvious playable copy of Mrs. Szabo, right down to the hairstyle copied from old photographs. Her tale of sabotage amongst the Germans in France is much longer and more involved than her real-life counterpart’s was; recuperating in a hospital after being left comatose, she relives her past missions (more like twelve than two).
Most of your M.O. through your missions involves sneaking out of sight of the Nazis who patrol endlessly, sometimes talking with each other, sometimes taking a smoke break, but always ready to ventilate an intruder. If you can manage to sneak up behind one while he’s apart from his fellows, you can perform a rather gory stealth kill (the animation is somewhat obscured by a red filter that gets stronger as you come within stealth range). Other methods of killing Nazis involve shooting puddles of oil to immolate them, detonating explosive barrels to do the same, and electrocuting them in puddles of water.
Being her memories, she has the option to influence them a bit; when sneaking around and messily killing her enemies doesn’t get the job done, she can enter Morphine Mode, which will render you invisible to guards just long enough for you to kill one, even from the front. It’s also good to be able to sprint across an area without discovery.
And being discovered will happen, more often than you’d expect or like from a modern stealth game. Sure, you have a simple “hiding” mechanic that ‘darklights’ you in purple when you’re hidden, but this doesn’t always work; some guards can see right through cover, inexplicably. Also, unlike more modern games of this type, your health doesn’t regenerate; you have to find medkits to heal.
Fortunately, you can upgrade your skills using a rudimentary EXP system, which is boosted through completing secret objectives and finding collectibles. Getting 1000 EXP will grant you a star, with which you can extend the length of your morphine trips (which place our Violette in a sepia-toned paradise with her in a nightgown!); stealth-walk faster; and have more health.
Now, the things I had issues with, and they’re doozies for me: The levels look lovely and are full of detail, shadow work is superb; but glitches exist which can take me out of the gameplay! These include textures that are incorrectly joined to an adjacent one, resulting in an unsightly ‘seam’; and, sometimes the third-person camera, usually focused behind Violette, will jump behind a wall or ceiling, resulting in a temporary white-out; not too good if one’s eyes have been used to darkness.
The other major problem is that checkpoints are rather sparse in each level; sometimes you don’t hit one until you’ve passed a large area full of guards! And one mistake with them can lead to having to start long sections of the game over. Very frustrating.
That being said, the game is excellent, and I don’t think you should pass it up despite its problems. I say four out of five is sufficient. Try it out on Steam!