I'm probably not the first to say it, but Violet definitely puts the
ASS in assassin.
Velvet Assassin is a decent but flawed stealth/action game whose strengths ultimately outweigh its weaknesses -- but only enough to earn a moderate recommendation instead of a strong one.
The Good
Velvet Assassin takes place during World War II. You take the role of Violette Summer -- a British agent specializing in infiltration, espionage, and assassination, which you'll do a lot of throughout the game. Violet excels at sneaking and backstabbing in particular, so most of the game is built around sticking to the shadows, sneaking up behind a guard, and left-clicking to assassinate them.
The assassinations are pretty much just gruesome eye candy, and you don't control exactly how Violet kills her targets. You can control which weapon she uses -- such as a silenced pistol or her dagger, for example -- but otherwise, as long as you sneak up behind your target undetected you'll kill them automatically. I witness all kinds of stabbing, including a wince-inducing crotch-stab followed by a stab to the torso. Ouch.
Violet's special 'power' if you will is the use of Morphine. Because the entire game is actually supposed to be Violet's recollection of past missions from her hospital bed, using morphine basically acts as 'bullet time' and allows you kill an enemy instantly -- whether you're undetected or not. (I tended to use it when I screwed up an assassination.)
In addition to the typical array of sneaking and stabbing, Violet can also don the clothes of an SS helper and walk amongst the enemy, as long as she doesn't do anything suspicious or get to close to an enemy. She can also hide dead bodies, knock out fuse boxes to douse the lights, and other things fairly typical for stealth-focused games.
In some ways, Velvet Assassin plays much like one of my favorite game franchises of all time -- the Thief series by Eidos. However, Velvet Assassin is much more linear, and doesn't give you much freedom to explore and approach your objectives in different ways. You can occasionally venture off the beaten path to find hidden items and 'collectibles', which act as experience points for improving your Stealth, Morphine, and Strength (health) characteristics -- but otherwise you have to largely follow the rails that the game sets before you.
Violet is always at her best sticking to the shadows.
At first I didn't like the very linear style of play. But in time, I came to appreciate it. It's almost more of a focused, puzzle-style game than a more typical action-stealth game, and this often works in the game's favor, making for an addictive game fueled by generally satisfying stealth-action-assassination mechanics. You also get to enjoy some occasional 'kick-in-the-door' action to help break things up.
The Bad
Mess up by even smallest margin, however, and your enemies will turn and -- in most cases -- kill you very quickly. This often results in sending you a loooong ways back to a check-point save.
And here begins my laundry-list of problems with Velvet Assassin -- the first of which is that It's a quick and sloppy console port that doesn't leverage any of the PC's advantages over consoles. Here's the 'gist of the list':
No mouse-driven user interface/menu system
You have to use arrow keys and the Enter button on the keyboard to navigate menus. Not a big deal, but it's usually a surefire indicator that the PC version of the game was treated like a red-headed stepchild to the console version.
Less-than-generous check-point save game system
It's far too easy to make a single mistake after 10-15 minutes (or more) of play, only to die and have to replay that last 10-15 minutes again...and again... and maybe again. This would be more forgivable in an open-ended game where replaying a scenario with different tactics is usually fun -- but you don't enjoy as much freedom in Velvet Assassin, and endless replays quickly become tedious. This is also another area where the PC version could have been improved greatly by simply allowing you to save whenever you want to.
Dumb Artificial Intelligence
If you screw up an assassination, you can quickly exit a door and run into another room to escape (assuming you don't get waxed in the process). Enemies won't give chase beyond their designated 'zones' of the game world, and each piece of the game feels like a microcosm. Guards basically just have 'alert' mode, where they look for you for a while -- and if you hide well enough, all you have to do is wait them out until they 'reset'.
Overall
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Velvet Assassin is generally well-executed. The voice acting is good, the graphics and animation are respectable, and the dialog and general production values for the game are all good to great. But I don't take kindly to games that don't even bother to bring a mouse-driven user interface to the table, and check-point save systems are generally, at best, merely acceptable when they're implemented well -- and virtually always inferior to a 'save anytime' system typical for most PC games.
The game play is almost helped as much as it is hurt by its simplified, linear puzzle-game play style. One the one hand, it can be pretty addictive and fun to figure out. On the other hand, it can be frustrating, and it loses the immersive, intriguing, and organic quality that more open-ended action/stealth games like Thief or Crysis create.
Regardless, I still generally enjoyed the experience, but it was marred by nearly equal parts frustration and disappointment when the 'holes' in the immersion (the linearity and limited AI for example) showed through -- which they do more and more as you get deeper into the game. However, even despite its flaws, I'm still playing and, for the most part, enjoying the game.
Visit the Velvet Assassin home page for more info
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