Velvet Assassin [X360]

Although the mountain of games that are produced seemingly on a weekly basis would have you believe otherwise, World War II wasn't entirely about massive battles between armies, stopping Hitler's search for occult items or sending a one-man wrecking crew to win the war by himself. There were plenty of secret agents, resistance fighters and other soldiers that contributed to bringing down the Third Reich. Take, for example, Violette Szabo, a British secret agent decorated for her service during the war. Replay Studios and SouthPeak Games, inspired by her story, created Velvet Assassin, a stealth action title that places players deep behind enemy lines to wreak havoc on the German army. Unfortunately, a weak story and very inconsistent stealth elements severely hinders the gameplay.

The story of Velvet Assassin is told from a flashback perspective, and introduces players to Violette Summer, a British secret agent who is frequently sent behind enemy lines. Unfortunately for her, the game starts out with a tragic turn of events: Violette has been badly injured and is trying to recover in a remote French hospital. As she lies in a coma, she remembers many of her previous missions, where she would be dispatched to destroy key installations or assassinate German officers. For the most part, the story sequences are threadbare – briefings for her missions are displayed via a few photographs which animate as she explains what she needs to do. But these are extremely short, lasting around thirty seconds each. There are very few details on why she's in the hospital or why she feels the need to explain or recount her adventures. It's only within the last mission do you get filled in on certain elements of the backstory, but this is too little too late. As a result, the story doesn't really make any sense, and it could have been told normally without the flashbacks, moving from one mission to the next. While this would change the morphine mechanic (which I'll get to later), it would make much more sense than the cluttered tale as it currently exists.

Story potholes aside, the primary focus of the gameplay is around stealth as you attempt to infiltrate enemy installations and bases. To aid you in this goal, a colored silhouette is placed at the bottom left of the screen. If the silhouette is outlined in purple, Violette is completely obscured from view, allowing her to move silently from place to place and prepare to strike a guard with a stealthy attack from the shadows. As Violette creeps up behind her intended target the screen slowly turns red, giving you an indication of when the best time is to strike. If you manage to pull off the move without anyone seeing you, a killing blow animation will play in response, so you'll see her slitting a throat, slicing tendons or repeatedly plunging her blade into enemies, amongst other brutal strikes.

Clearly, leaving a body lying around will alert any guard that comes across its path, although this can be used as a tactic to isolate and eliminate other soldiers. Violette can also perform a few other stealthy maneuvers to create confusion, such as breaking fuse boxes to cast areas into darkness or whistling to get someone's attention. You'll have to be careful, of course, because the enemy will try their best to detect anything out of the ordinary, such as shattered glass on hallway floors. They'll also search in groups and even turn on flashlights to peer into shadows. Completely blow your cover, and you'll need to either fight or run away as the guards call for backup and shoot at you. This frequently means disappearing into shadows and standing still, hiding in lockers or cabinets, or leaving an area until the alert status drops.

You'd expect with such a high focus on covert maneuvers that the sneaking mechanics would be extremely solid. Unfortunately, the stealth is completely inconsistent in execution. When it works, it's enjoyable, but when it fails, it fails in a big way. This is demonstrated with numerous issues. The first is that the game frequently requires you to be exactly in a specific position to trigger the kill animation. Manage to be off to the side of a soldier by the tiniest hair and you'll not only fail the attempt but will get a burst of gunfire for your effort. A second issue arises in the fact that the shadows don't always conceal you. During one mission, I turned all of the lights out in a room and sat silently in a corner, waiting to see who might walk in front of me. A guard that was probably fifteen feet looked into the darkness (without a flashlight, mind you) and raised the alarm. I reloaded the checkpoint, and magically, the shadows worked the way they were supposed to. This wasn't an isolated incident; in fact, it happened more often than not and forced me to reload multiple times as I worked through each mission.