I ask you people, is there anything sexier than a female killer wearing tight leather? The answer is no. There’s not. In fact, it can be a little distraction having a booty that nice right in front of you when you’re playing a first-person shooter. So I decided that instead of writing a review of the actual game, I would instead write about the main character’s arse. I’ve compiled video of it in many scenarios and under many different lighting situations. You will agree, I’m sure, that it is a work of art that could rival even the rump of Lara Croft. That’s saying a lot. So without further ado…
Just kidding. While her butt does seem to play a very prominent role in this game, as it is all over the screen seemingly all the time, the real story is decoding the past of Violette Summer. Velvet Assassin, originally titled Sabatoge, begins with a view of Violette from above as she lies in a hospital bed surrounded by syringes of morphine which are inducing flashbacks to past missions and “killing sprees”, during which you take control of the action.
Behind enemy lines, deep within German territory – one woman stands between the Third Reich and complete world domination. Dubbed the “Velvet Assassin,” Violette Summer is tasked with a multitude of duties to disrupt and bring down the German war machine from the inside. First introduced to Violette as she fades in and out of consciousness in a hospital, players are asked to play through missions via Violette’s memory. As they work their way through the steps that led her to this hospital, players will assassinate high level targets, destroy German supply depots and deliver cyanide to fellow agents in captivity. Join Violette as she makes her way through war-torn backdrops of WWII to help bring an end to the horror that has been unleashed.
- Brutal Assassinations and Sabotage Missions: Bring your enemies to a violent end that they’ll never see coming.
- Stylized Environments: Explore hyper-realistic, dreamlike settings that are modeled after actual WWII locations.
- Morphine Mode: As Violette experiences fever dreams, nurses administer morphine creating a time freeze effect, allowing Violette to “adjust” her memories during gameplay.
- Unique and Realistic Gameplay Perspective: Experience the unimaginable horrors of stealthy, off-battlefield warfare, and discover letters and treasures left behind by German soldiers.
- Realistic 1940’s Weapons: Use a variety of weapons and items that are true to WWII fighting.
- 12 Breath-taking levels: Go on assassination missions, try to survive Violette’s nightmares, and complete a rescue mission that is anything but life saving.
- Adjustable Skills: By locating collectibles throughout the game, Violette will be able to upgrade her skills to play more to your style, whether it be stealth or strength.
- Based on Historic Figure: Violette Szabo – real life secret agent whom went behind enemy lines to sabotage the German war effort.
Here’s what we know from the plot outline:
Born in Devon, England, Violette Summer grew up in a happy family and had a great and active childhood. Initially, she started her working life in a beauty salon before the outbreak of war inspired her to move to London and join the weapon industry. It didn’t take too long for her to be noticed by the Secret Services; she was after all beautiful, athletic and had great attention to detail. It was only a formality that she was recruited into MI6 during Britain’s darkest hours. Violette had lost an aunt during one of the first Luftwaffe bombing attacks and to further compound her heartache she later lost her RAF husband in battle.
However, Violette was strong willed and used these painful experiences to inspire her to succeed as a spy for the MI6. Violette managed to carry out several missions successfully before being gravely wounded by a German sniper on a mission to kill Kamm, a German military intelligence officer. Comatose in a hospital in France, Violette relives key moments in a series of flashbacks.
Hence the bulk of gameplay will take place during these flashbacks.
The missions include blowing up a fuel depot on the Maginot Line, assassination of a colonel in a cathedral in Paris, stealing documents and marking a sub pen for bombers in Hamburg during Operation Gomorrah, and finding three secret agents in Warsaw. In the Warsaw sewers, she finds one agent seriously wounded (and silences him) and another dead by cyanide poisoning. But the third agent was captured. Moving through the Warsaw Ghetto, where the residents were either rounded up or executed, Violette makes her way through to the Gestapo prison to give the last agent cyanide.
Through her memories, scenes from the hospital can be seen with two men arguing whether to keep Violette alive, give her up to the SS, or kill her to save her the torture if captured by the Nazis. Her location betrayed, Violette wakes from her coma to find Nazi soldier storming the hospital. Escaping the hospital, Violette finds the villagers being murdered or rounded up by the Dirlewanger Brigade, a brutal SS unit of convicts, and taken to the church. Locking the villagers in, the soldiers set fire to the church. Violette is unsuccessful at trying to free the villagers, and due to emotional and physical exhaustion, collapses. The leader of the German unit is shown to be Kamm, whose face was burned by Violette’s assassination attempt. In the end credits, Violette is shown in her hospital gown standing on a cliff overlooking a German plane.
By now you should know that you are playing a heartbroken killer spy with a body designed by Heaven and the skills to kill anyone, anywhere, with a simple knife. Yeah, that’s all you get at the beginning of the game. A damned knife. Personally, I like starting out with at least a flare gun, but it’s better than nothing I suppose. Getting into the gameplay, the actions are similar to Hitman in many aspects. There’s a lot of sneaking up on SS soldiers and plunging knives deep into their chests, necks, and backs. Seriously, this chick is really hardcore.
While the complete story is fairly good and seems to be complete, you basically begin with nothing. There is not much to go on except that you are some random chick in leather sneaking up on soldiers on a lonely back road. I think it could have been more exciting with a little prelude to get the ball rolling. There’s not much of a learning curve either. Once you kill your first couple of soldiers, you basically are on your own. The game drops subtle hints as to what you should do next, but other than that you have to figure it out. At least with Hitman we got competent guidance. Imagine that you are supposed to be playing a killer spy who is the best at what she does, but the only skills you as the player know are Duck, Sneak, and Stab.
Once through the first portion of gameplay, things really start to pick up in a hurry. Before you know it you are in a Nazi bunker slinking in the shadows and looking for devices to set off tons of dynamite and send the SS camp sky-high. Picking up on how she moves and what she can do is fairly easy, it’s figuring out what to do with them that can be trying and sometimes testing on the nerves. At one point in the game, you have to kill a soldier who is standing down a hallway. The game tells you “Whistle to get soldiers to come to you” or something of that nature. That’s all you get. I hid in different places, knocked out the power, and tried shooting this bastard six ways to Sunday, and he still killed me every time. All I’m saying is, a little more guidance to get us going, please?
After you figure out the basics of how to achieve your goals, actually doing it is fairy straight-forward. I managed to complete my main mission and destroy the bunker in very little time after I figured out that as long as I stay in the shadows and do a lot of sneaking I could get by just about anyone and kill them with little difficulty. Now staying alive when time is running short and you have to run, that is another matter. I died several times before figuring out how to get out of the bunker before it exploded.
All in all, the game can be very addicting and completely engrossing. I played for hours before the significant other yelled at me to get off the computer and come eat dinner. The detail in the game is stunning, with leaves falling and blowing in the wind while outside, and dust floating through the air when inside the bunker. It is really easy to get lost in the gameplay and forget that you don’t live in 1940’s Germany and are stalking SS soldiers.
While the storyline could have used a little more beefing up and the guidance at the beginning could have been a little more thorough, I found this game very exciting to play. I plan on stepping it up to the next level of difficulty and going through the entire thing again to see how hard it will be next time around. I don’t doubt that if you are any sort of history buff or if you simply enjoy war games, then you are going to enjoy Velvet Assassin. At the very least, you can stop somewhere away from enemies and stare at her ass.
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