Originally published on the Square Go website on 1st June 2009 and published in the June issue of the physical magazine.—————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Games set during World War II tend to follow the same formula: a company of soldiers as they fight their way to victory against the Nazi threat. These men have access to devastating weapons, which are handy for cutting through the enemy hordes they’ll inevitably encounter. Throw in the occasional vehicular section and you have the perfect description of your average war game.
Which is why Velvet Assassin makes a refreshing change to all those games. You play the flashbacks of Violette Summer, a British spy tasked with highly dangerous and highly unofficial missions deep behind enemy lines, who currently lies comatose in a French hospital for reasons that are explained over the course of the story. Using a combination of stealth, shadows and cunning, it’s Violette’s job to carry out her objectives, ranging from sabotage to assassination.
The game itself is set up spectacularly, with an exceptionally moody menu screen showing her lying bleakly on a hospital bed, with monochrome tableaus depicting doctors agonising over whether to keep her alive or euthanise her to save her from the invading SS officers, and said officers’ murder attempt as she rests. The sombre mood is emphasised by the doleful music and visceral imagery included in the opening sequence, with hanging bodies, eye stabbings and burning corpses flashing by in quick succession in a beautiful, indulgent sepia.
The haunting visual styling and brutality carry on over to the gameplay. Being a spy, your only allies in this game are the shadows, which there are plenty of since light itself seems to be a luxury. And whilst hidden, Nazis won’t see Violette, but neither will you; things are so dark here, a visit to the video options menu might be in order.
If you can get used to this, you’ll realise soon enough that you need to be stealthy; absorb only a couple of rounds and you’re down for good. This wouldn’t be so bad if there was a decent checkpoint system in place, but they’re few and far between, usually filled with guard chatter that has to finish before you can move on. This leads to unnecessary waiting for a chance to progress, and epic frustration when you have to restart an age away from your point of death for the umpteenth time. This can occasionally be remedied using firearms and slo-mo Morphine injections, but these items are scarce, so expect to endure numerous infuriating restarts over the course of the adventure.
The only viable path to steady progression is to take out enemies silently. Sneaking up on one with the knife equipped opens up the opportunity for a remorseless stealth kill, powerfully emphasised by rising chords and blood red filters permeating the screen before turning a brilliant rufescent rouge as you near the dispatch. The ability to peek through keyholes is another nice feature, but others don’t work so well. The vibration of the controller acting as a heartbeat when low on health is both cliché and annoying, and disguises are simply useless: get too close to an enemy while wearing one and your cover is blown. What’s the point?
Velvet Assassin is an intriguing idea largely carried off well. The presentation is superb, it’s refreshing to see individual Nazi opponents as significant individual threats, and the gameplay is exhilarating when it works. It’s no Metal Gear Solid or Splinter Cell, and its linearity and lack of story may put some off, but there’s a large amount of sneaky fun to be had with this title, especially for gamers new to the genre. However, they’ll just need a strong resolve and the patience of a saint to overcome its checkpoint problems.
3/5
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