Velvet Assassin

Velvet Assassin is a game about murdering Nazis, a noble career path. You play as Violette Summer, a British agent inspired by Violette Szabo, who is quite enthusiastic about her job. Velvet Assassin does a good job of showcasing horrors and struggles from World War 2 without overindulging or glorifying. Given the multitude of games that do otherwise, that would seem to be a hard needle to thread, even though it doesn't sound like it should be. I would even go so far as to say the story was respectful of the history it fictionally portrays. The story isn't necessarily the smoothest, but what is there is good, right down to resistance fighters accidentally shooting Violette and then debating if they should turn her over or not. The somewhat disjointed narrative is fine when you realize that it is just the telling of one person's experiences in a war where they can go on disparate missions. Those missions won't realistically all feed into some conspiracy or interconnected story. They will instead showcase particular moments that might not otherwise be told. You interact with the story via rather linear stealth gameplay that is focused on finding the right approach to quietly killing people so you can progress. Where I'm not a huge fan of the linearity, it doesn't detract too much. The stealth itself is straight forward. If you move fast, you can be heard, which you can sometimes use to your advantage. If you stay in shadows, cover, and out of eyeline, you won't be seen, but if you fail at any of those, the baddies will immediately attempt to vivisection via bullets. This is stealth gaming on hard mode, and, yes, dappled sunlight is a cruel mistress. Your secret weapon in all of this is whistling to lure folks into shadows for a little murder. Seriously, when in doubt, whistle. There are several moments when the gameplay shifts. Things get loud. This can happen because you were noticed and decide to just shoot it out instead, but there are several story beats where you have no option but to go loud with a shotgun in close quarters or an automatic rifle in a church yard. This is also where we encounter the second most annoying aspect of the game: baddies don't drop their weapons. Where this forces you to stealth through the game and play it as intended, once the stealth has shifted to a hot pursuit or open combat, ammunition can potentially become scarce. To best conserve ammunition, always aim for the head. Be aware that there are no manual saves. Instead there are checkpoint saves with an option to reload to the last checkpoint or restart the mission chapter. This is the most annoying aspect of Velvet Assassin, as it is possible to hit a save point when you are in a sorry state and find yourself needing to restart the mission or potentially the game. The checkpoints are also sufficiently spread out that you can, more realistically, find yourself repeatedly killing one batch of baddies just so you can spend time figuring out the best approach for the second batch. The strangest part of Velvet Assassin, and it is strange to even have this conversation, is that the game can't make up its mind whether its trying to deliver fan service or not. The cover image is pure ass, and later missions (as well as morphine trips) have Violette running around in her nighty. However, there's nothing sexy about it or the presentation. It could have done without the not really fan service entirely. Besides, there were plenty of opportunities to grab pants in those final stages. Though, Violette does have great hair. Before you buy, know that Velvet Assassin won't run on modern computers out of the box. This is par for course with games that are 15+ years old and that aren't sold through GoG. Check out the game's Steam forums for links to software that will get it running. It is also worth mentioning that even with that software, you can face CTDs, which most often happened when loading a game state.