Review by:Tony Mitera

Velvet Assassin has a pretty good premise, featuring a slender secret agent sneaking her way around deep behind enemy lines in World War 2 and completing key sabotage and assassinations for the war effort. The gameplay is slow and tense, and though you often have a good amount of time to plot your moves you are also incredibly vulnerable if spotted. However, many aspects suffer from a lack of polish, which comes at the detriment of not only the gameplay but also the immersion that the game so obviously wants to achieve.

The story is told from the hospital bed of Violette Summers as her body is wracked with fever. During her career she had carried out a variety of missions, which invariably meant staying as stealthy as possible and nearly completely unarmed. Much of the game follows these two traits, rewarding the player who is keen to judge flickering lighting to make their move as they stay in the shadows.

You often have a small selection of ranged weaponry such as a silenced pistols or a shotgun, but they come with very limited ammo. Enemy weapons cannot be picked up, which makes the use of a firearm a very rare occurrence. Most of Violette’s kills come from the blade of her trusty knife, which she uses to brutally and quickly take her target down.

However, once Violette gets spotted the game quickly falls apart. Once one enemy has spotted you every enemy nearby suddenly knows your exact location, and even if you silently sneak around a blind corner enemies will still magically know where you are for a period of time.