You should never grocery shop when you're hungry or review a game when you've just rage quit after dying at the same spot twenty times in a row. Well, I just ate a sandwich, but I'm not going shopping. I also just boiled away most of my affection for Velvet Assassin in a frustration infused prolonged session of being shot again and again and again by Nazis while wearing a nightie. And for the first time in the game, there wasn't any morphine to take the edge off.
OK, let's back up. Velvet Assassin is a third-person stealth-based action game. Set during World War 2, you play a sexy British assassin named Violette who infiltrates German-occupied territory to kill Nazi jerks and blow people up. It's actually based on a real British secret operative, Violette Szabo, which is pretty cool.
This is a hard-core stealth game, which means that if you get spotted by the fascists, they're probably going to kill you within seconds. Luckily for you, the world of Velvet Assassin is filled with shadows and dark corners, giving you plenty of places to creep along and get right up behind someone for that silent, bloody close-in dagger work. Drag the body into the shadows before the others notice, and you can keep your cover. You get guns too – mostly a silenced pistol, but later shotguns, sniper rifles, and a sub-machine gun at the end. These of course attract a lot of attention, and while it's easy to gun down enemies, it's easy for them to return the favor, so it's vital to make good use of cover.
The story is told as a series of flashbacks while Violette sprawls in a stupor on a hospital bed in a flimsy little night gown. She's remembering events, sifting her memories through a morphine haze. In game turns, you can find and use shots of morphine as a sort of emergency escape – hitting the horse send the screen into fuzzy red slow-motion with rose petals falling and Violette in her nightie. You can then knife guys in the chest without them getting a chance to shoot you first. It's actually a really clever little mechanic, and helps make up for some of the game's more challenging moments. When to use morphine and conserving your very limited supply of bullets determines how you progress through the level. A silenced pistol shot can make a tough stealth section easy, but maybe you want to save those bullets for a tougher section to come.
I feel obligated to point out that most reviewers I've read or listened to totally hate this game. Some even quit it without finishing it because they were so frustrated (something I've done before and totally condone as a valid review choice). For whatever reason, I didn't have the problems these other reviewers have. There's no radar and no way to tell which way the guards are looking beyond judging from the way they're facing. I found all of this to be quite intuitive. It took me a level or so to get used to it, but for the vast majority of the game, I had no problems with figuring out when I was likely to get caught or not. Sure, I died a fair amount, but almost always it was when I was taking a risk or trying to push the limits. The game is definitely stingy with save points, particularly in the first levels and at the end, but for the middle 9 levels or so, I really enjoyed Velvet Assassin. I found it tense, satisfying, even thrilling occasionally. It looks really good, has a solid story, and great sound track. I wasn't having the problems other people were and didn't understand all the hate.
Now I do. The last two levels of the game are ridiculous. First of all, they take away your morphine power as the story moves into the hospital and Violette wakes up, so that safety net (which I'd spent skill points boosting) was no longer available. This makes story sense, but sucks as a player. Then the final level is basically one long gun fight. There's sneaking still, but a whole lot more gun fighting, including a huge, two stage (surprise!) one at the end. Velvet Assassin is not a fun shooter. I repeated this fight over and over and over again until I hated the experience. A lot of reviewers felt this way much earlier in the game than I did, but now I know what they were talking about.
I'm still glad I played most of Velvet Assassin. It was a fun week and a crappy last day of playing. Can a bad, frustrating ending ruin a game? A lot of good games have bad endings. For me, I think the game's still worth checking out. I'm glad I got to murder U-Boat Captains in their beds and deliver cyanide pills to captured Polish spies. There's a lot that's cool and pretty dark in this game. But maybe rent it first – see if you're someone who has a tough time with the basic mechanic and has to repeat sections over and over again. If you are (like many), you'll hate this game. If you're like me, you'll have a lot of fun, right up until it gets sucky for you too.
This article appears in May 6-12, 2009.