Game Review: Velvet Assassin

Velvet Assassin is a stealth game loosely based on actual events that took place during WWII. Replay Studios, the game’s developer, aimed to create a realistic, gritty depiction of WWII that hasn’t ever been seen in a game before. Since their depiction of WWII involves a chick who’s tight leather outfit magically transforms into a slinky nightie every time she shoots up morphine, I’m pretty sure these guys are consuming a good deal of shrooms.

AWESOME
Stealth Action: The stealth in this game is super-fun. Each room is set up as its own challenge where you have to figure out how to sneak past ze Germans. You’re basically invisible as long as you stay in the shadows and aren’t too close to the bad guys. If you run past a light and cast a shadow across the room, you’re toast, but sometimes you can shut down spotlights and sneak your way to victory. There’s usually different approaches you can take to clear each room and once cleared, you feel pretty awesome. Plus, the ways that you can kill people in this game are nuts! You can go for the typical stealth kills where you go up behind a baddie and slice his throat or stab him in the side of the temple or some other random kill sequence, or you can get real close and pull the pins on their grenades so that when they walk over to their buddies, KABOOM! There are also the more subtle kills like luring dudes to walk over puddles with live wires in them, then flipping a switch and watching them fry, you can shoot puddles of oil to set guys on fire, and even shoot barrels of toxic gas and watch your enemies suffocate to death as they walk into the fumes.

Graphics: The overall look and mood of the game is pitch-perfect for what the developers were going for. Underground levels and dark, foggy, and tinted with green while outside levels range from towering cathedrals to villages littered with dead bodies. Since the stealth element of the game focuses heavily on the light around you, the lighting in this game is gorgeous. When you find yourself in an underground storage facility filled with smokey, green gas fumes, being patrolled by guards in realistically lit and textured gas masks, you’ll definitely want to put the controller down for a few seconds just to admire how real everything looks.

Main Character Design: One thing that Replay Studios really wanted to get across is the fact that Violet Summers, the game’s main heroine, isn’t a super spy like Solid Snake or Sam Fisher. She’s a real girl stuck in a real war. She’s not some overexposed sexpot and her outfits remain conservative for the most part, despite some missions which involve really tight latex, but you won’t mind watching her climb over fences in it. There are also missions where you have to dress as a female guard and while in uniform, she walks in a very militaristic manner with her back straight, head up, arms behind her back, and one foot in front of the other. It’s actually really cute to watch.

NOT AWESOME
You’re Gonna’ Need Some RAID Because This Game Is Full Of Bugs!: There’s two main types of bugs in this game: the kind that randomly make your character walk through walls and ceilings or make the entire background disappear for a few seconds, or the kind that render the game completely broken like when enemies can suddenly see and shoot through walls. There are also absurdly super-human guys with flamethrowers who can see you and shoot you with flames from across huge rooms. You’ll find yourself frustrated by this more than once.

Morphine: Morphine in this game is used in a weird way. For some reason, it’s just laying around everywhere and when Violet shoots up, everything turns into a weird bullet time where she’s suddenly in her peejay’s and there’s rose petals floating around. It’s a pretty effect, but it seems like a cop-out in terms of game design. You really only need to use it when there’s absolutely no way to sneak past someone, but it makes you wonder why the developers couldn’t have just made that part of the game sneakable, or at least let the morphine effects last until the meter wears out instead of only lasting until you kill a guy, regardless of how full the meter is.

The RPG Elements Don’t Work: There are hidden collectibles scattered throughout the game and when you find enough, you unlock “upgrade stars” which can be used to enhance your sneaking speed, health bar, or morphine duration. The only problem is that even when you fully max out one of your stats, the game doesn’t play all that different. I actually played through the game without boosting my morphine stats at all. You’d think you’d be rewarded for putting in the hard work to beef your stats, but it seems like the game tries too hard to keep you as underpowered as possible so that you have no choice but to sneak around instead of running and gunning.

The End Of The Game: For a game that’s all about sneaking around, you can’t help but feel cheated when you’re forced to run and gun through the last few missions. From the very beginning, you’re taught to take the stealthiest approach possible, but near the end, when you try to be stealthy and get spotted, you’ll probably think that you’re taking the wrong stealth approach and keep getting killed over and over until you decide to give up and blast everything away with whatever heavy artillery you come across, which is pretty much your only clue not to sneak. Pro-tip: if you find a shotgun or an AK, DO NOT SNEAK! Just run and gun your ass off and hope that you beefed up your stamina gauge enough in the beginning of the game.

Despite its flaws, I personally had a lot of fun with this game up until the unnecessarily frustrating end. Although it doesn’t reinvent the stealth genre, its fun, plain and simple. One of the biggest innovations is the ability to move objects in front of light to create shadows that you can hide in. The only problem is you can only do this once in the entire game, despite the “tip” that comes up during loading screens that misleads you into thinking it’s something you’ll be doing a lot throughout the game. And if you’re looking to go all “Sam Fisher” and shoot out light bulbs with your silencer pistol, think again; light bulbs during WWII were impervious to bullets. Oh, and if you’re looking for an epic story a-la MGS, look again. I don’t really remember what the story was about, and I don’t really care. Just know that the game starts in the middle of a story that’s played from the past and then catches up to the present for a lackluster finish storywise and gameplay wise. The final battle actually just randomly generates bad guys and it takes you a few tries to figure out where they’re spawning from and where to hide, but the earlier levels are the right kind of challenging and hugely satisfying to complete. Sadly, a $60 price tag just can’t be justified. If you’re looking to get your stealth fix on with a game  that isn’t Splinter Cell, MGS, or Tenchu, you might wanna’ wait until the price goes down on this one. Way down.

Platform: PS3 and Xbox 360
Price: $60
Launch Date: April 28, 2009
ESRB: M (Everyone) – Blood, Strong Language, Intense Violence, Use of Drugs
Game Type: Stealth Action
Players: 1
Developer: Replay Studios
Played the 360 version to completion on normal difficulty.