Atmospheric and tense 3rd person World War II film noir espionage stealth game, rich in detail and with a sepia tone.
Surprisingly despite Velvet Assassin (VA) being a store purchased game having a physical disk, manual and key-code VA is a Steam game and installs, verifies and updates via Steam, though it does NOT say that anywhere on the box. Fortunately once installed you can play VA offline, rather than remain linked to Steam via the internet.
I played VA concurrently with the Splinter Cell (SC) which is also a 3rd person stealth game however set in the modern high tech era of covert wars. There are many similarities in gameplay and setting, in the sense of dark isolated locales and roaming guards. Both games are linear in one sense but there are a number of pathways your characters can take to progress from A to B to C in both as long as pre-determined checkpoints are reached. More on VA and SC in my 28 May 2010 blog.
Violette Summer, the game's heroine, does not have all the gadgets and smooth moves, fancy jumps, ablity to abseil and hang inverted off pipes like Sam Fisher, the hero of SC. VA however certainly makes up for the lack of all the bells and whistles gameplay in SC with its atmosphere and intriguing narrative. Violette, unlike Sam, usually only has a dagger, a silenced pistol with limited ammo and her wits to take on the Third Reich. Graphically VA is on par with the more recent graphics intensive titles ... there is certainly a lot of eye candy in VA, not just Violette herself.
If you like a good spy-noir story, like those written by Alan Furst (highly recommended), you'll really enjoy this trip into the murky world of WWII espionage. The bad guys are really bad, but then Violette is no shrinking violet. The takedown cut scenes are quite graphic and some other themes explored make this a definate MA 15+ title. As noted the narrative flow of each mission is scripted, or linear, but there is scope to work out your own approaches to sneak and kill or to sneak and avoid enemy guards. Some will argue that VA's "morphine mode" is unrealistic, well true enough, but it's no less unrealistic than Max Payne's "bullet time". It simply gives Violette an edge when the more usual sneak-up-in-the-shadows knife takedown will not work.
There is an excellent variety of behind the lines missions in German occupied Europe. Without disclosing the storyline, the first 10 missions are in retrospect as Violette recalls through a morphine induced haze the missions that lead to her being in hospital, while the last two missions occur after she awakens. Missions take place in France, inside the Maginot Line (Missions 1-2), Paris (3-4), Hamburg (5-6), Warsaw (7-9), and rural France (10-12). Arguably, as some have said, the missions are somewhat repetitive. True in one sense, all missions involve sneaking around in the shadows and evading or killing the guards to reach the various objectives. Also it is fair to say most shooter and stealth games are repetitive but it is the dramatic narrative of VA that keeps you interested.
Certainly the game takes a very dark turn in the Third Man missions (7-9), set in the Warsaw Ghetto, which depict the harrowing scenes of the aftermath of several summary executions of men, women and children. You can understand what may have motivated a number of emigres and others to volunteer to join the SOE. The final mission is set amidst a German anti-partisan reprisal action, which evoke real world events like Lidice and Oradour, and Violette by then is very much seeking vengeance against the Germans regardless of her original mission.
1. The Lost - Valley
2. The Lost - Fuel Storage
3. Death Of The Butcher - Cathedral
4. Death Of The Butcher - Crypt
5. Leave A Light On - Docks
6. Leave a Light On - Storage
7. The Third Man - Sewers
8. The Third Man - Ghetto
9. The Third Man - Prison
10. Le Boeuf
11. Fade To Grey - Hospital
12. Fade to Grey - Village
Each mission has a number of key objectives to achieve and along the way are collectable items that earn your character points that can be used to purchased enhanced skills in the areas of stealth, strength and morphine mode usage. To be honest I did not really notice any gameplay changes by enhancing the skills (my Violette certainly did not move faster with 4 stealth stars). You can choose to play the game stealthily (though this is less possible in missions 11 and 12) or pull out your gun(s) and start shooting. It should be noted that the guns in VA, except the Luger and G43 sniper rifle, are reasonably inaccurate, however if you reduce your mouse sensitivity to very low this will reduce the inaccuracy and doing this does not impact the rest of the game, which is focussed on slow sneaking. At various stages you can (or need to) change into a German uniform and blend in with your enemies to proceed although this is optional in mission 10.
The game save system is one of automatic checkpoints and these sometimes seem to be far apart, although my observation was that you generally get a checkpoint after two or three rooms or maps are passed. At the end of each mission you will earn a status level based primarily on silent kills: Rookie, Soldier, Agent and Assassin, unfortunately at the end of the game no summary of mission results is provided, however my own results were either Soldier or Agent which was pleasing enough for a first play through of what is a difficult game.
While at times VA seems unreasonably difficult I really did enjoy the experience. Each new area Violette enters is a puzzle to be solved. You really do need to search the environment well to find hidden passages, collectable items and switches as these are not always obvious. The progressive checkpoint save system is less forgiving than the unlimited saves in SC. Sometimes you will wish to replay a mission segment in case you missed picking up collectibles, health or morphine or just to retry another silent kill approach.
Melinda Cohen provides the voice of Violette and also narrates the inter-mission cut-scenes. Her diction is pitch perfect and captures the mood of the story beautifully. As noted the game also uses "collectibles" and indeed hidden objectives to gain points to lift Violette's capabilities, some are less obvious than others and a useful walkthough to find these can be found here: www.candiedskull.com/velvet/
Negatives? Well the only problem with VA, for me, was, I suspect, a function of those glorious 3D effects. You may notice, now and then, what appears to be a slow down or lag in the effects intensive parts of some missions (eg. during fire, smoke, mist, smoke, floating debris or leaves effects). This occurs infrequently and if it occurs it may be resolved, as suggested by SouthPeak Games by un-installing and then re-installing the (latest) PhysX driver, or the usual tweaking via your graphics card control panel, (eg. forcing v-synch "off", selecting performance over quality, or adjusting the game's graphics settings down towards the low (default) level). This problem should be, as in my case be negligible, for those with higher end graphics cards that are above the recommended game specs.
VA does have some strange (or even silly) moments that seem more driven by narrative than common sens. For example Violette desperately needs to get her hands on a gun in mission 11, however despite taking down multiple fully armed guards along the way she does not actually "find" a weapon until it's time for the climactic ending of that mission.
It is worth mentioning that VA is the product of a German games design house and it is both surprising and creditable that they took the bold step to depict some of the most negative aspects of its forces during WWII. War is never truly black and white and VA has its shades of grey and in the final missions both the Germans and Violette are motivated by vengeance and revenge. VA is a warts and all depiction of WWII behind the lines and looking back over the events depicted in the game it is sobering to know that civilian casualties in occupied France and Poland, for example, amounted to over 40% of all war losses.
Finally, unlike many others I think the ending of the game is completely in the spirit of the narrative structure and indeed keeps it open as to whether or not there will be a sequal, although I'm sure as an SOE operative Violette can fly that Stuka to safety! Given that Replay Studios is now out of business, another company would need to pick up and run with a new VA game, and it would have to work hard to equal the original.
OVERALL: Velvet Assassin is similar to Splinter Cell but the setting is WWII-noir espionage style with a sepia tone. Stealth games, perhaps more so than FPS, seem to me better suited to the single player experience. It really is YOU against the enemy AI and/or game-system and when you complete a mission without the need for a submachine gun you do feel a sense of accomplishment, no less than when you are fighting those bigger battles in say a Call of Duty or a Medal of Honor FPS. Violette Summer is one of the few plausible leading female characters in gaming and more than a match for her male antagonists.
Like SC, and even IGI2, VA is a thinking persons' game, you will seldom succeed going in guns blazing (plus until the last few missions you usually don't even get a gun, just a dagger). Unlike SC and IGI2, however, VA has a strong narrative structure and tells a story that needs to be told.
You can find Velvet Assassin nowadays for around A$20 if you shop around ... it's well worth it.