Although the mountain of PC game, which are produced by seemingly every week, you believe otherwise, the Second World War was not entirely on massive battles between armies, Hitler's halt search occult objects or by sending a One-man Wrecking Crew win the war alone. It was a lot of secret agents, resistance fighters and soldiers, have contributed to lowering the Third Reich. Consider, for example, Violette Szabo, a British secret agent's decorated service during the war. Replay Studios and SouthPeak Games, inspired by her story, created Velvet Assassin is a stealth action title that places players deep behind enemy lines to cause havoc in the German army. Unfortunately, the weak story and a very inconsistent stealth elements seriously hamper the game.
Velvet Assassin : Not the way to win World War II.
Velvet Assassin is a story told from the perspective of retrospective and introduces players to Violette Summer, a British secret agent, which is often sent behind enemy lines. Unfortunately for her, the game begins with the tragic turn of events: Violette was seriously injured and is trying to restore the remote French hospital. As she lies in a coma, remembers many of his previous missions, which could be sent to the destruction of key facilities or assassinate German officers. For the most part, the story sequences are scruffy - briefings on the mission are shown through several photos, which explains how to animate, what must be done. But these are very short, lasting about thirty seconds each. There is very little information about why it's in the hospital, or why it believes it is necessary to explain or tell her adventure. It's only in the last mission will be completed on certain elements of the backstory, but this is too little too late. As a result, the story does not really make any sense, and that would be told, usually without flashbacks, moving from one mission to another. Even if the mechanic to change the morphine (which I will receive later), it would be much more meaningful than the crowded story, as it currently exists.
Story potholes Party, the main objective of this game is about a stealth attempt to infiltrate into the enemy bases and installations. To assist you in achieving this goal, colored silhouette is located at the bottom left of the screen. If the silhouette is shown in purple, Violet is completely obscured from view, which enables the movement quietly from place to place and prepare to strike with inconspicuous cover the attack of the shadow. As Violette sneaks for the intended target screen slowly turns red, giving you an indication of when is best time to strike. If you manage to pull off the move without you saw someone, and killing blow animation will play in response, so you can see the division of a neck, slicing a tendon or repeatedly plunging the blade into her enemies, including brutal strikes.
It is clear that leaving the body lying around will alert any guard that comes across his way, even if it can be used as a tactic to isolate and eliminate the other soldiers. Violette can also perform several other stealthy maneuvers to confusion, such as breaking fuse boxes on the part of the area, in the dark, or whistling to get someone's attention. You will have to be careful, of course, because the enemy will try their best to detect any of the ordinary, such as shattered glass on the corridor floor. They'll also search the groups and, consequently, the flashlights to peer into the shadows. Totally blow your cover, and you'll have to either fight or flee as the guards call for backup and shoot at each other. This often means disappear into the shadows and standing still hiding in lockers or cabinets, or leaving the area to record the position of the drops.
You will be expected with such a high focus on the hidden maneuvers that sneaking mechanics would be very strong. However, stealth is completely at odds with performance. When it works, it's nice, but when it fails, it fails on a large scale. This is reflected in many issues. The first is that the game often requires you to be exactly in a position to start the kill animation. Management down to the tiniest part of a soldier by the hair and you will not only fail attempt to get a burst of gunfire but for your efforts. A second question arises in that the shadows are not always conceal you. During one mission, I turned all the lights in the room and sat quietly in the corner and waiting to see who could walk before me. A guard, which was probably fifteen feet looked in the dark (no flashlight, mind you) and raised the alarm. I reloaded the control and magically, he worked in the shadows the way they were it. This was not an isolated incident, in fact, it happened more often than not and forced me to reload several times, as I worked in every mission. A third question, which might some consider a minor, is that the stealth action is very linear, which may reduce some of the exploration and creativity, how to get through each of these areas. Unlike other stealth games, where you can potentially penetrate the area for more ways that you have some flexibility in how you advance, there is only one route to Violet. Taking no-violent approach, or even sneaking past a guard without enemies is not really an option because you will often find that doors are locked and the key guard on their bodies, forcing you to give up on stealth killing guards. This can be somewhat frustrating, because at the beginning of each mission, Violet often leaving everything behind except the knife, forcing you to procure weapons on the ground. Instead of picking up weapons from fallen enemies, you can only get a pistol, rifle and shotgun from the box of weapons that are conservatively scattered throughout the map, which have limited ammo. Although it is not primarily armor-plated, many of these guards will take at least two or three bullets into the body, than go down, which can quickly exhaust your supply and get attributed to the serious danger in the firefights. Getting Headshot is crucial, but it's not nearly as simple as it seems, if you are close.
The only guaranteed way to eliminate rivals in the fight is on your morphine power, which provocatively places Violette her negligee, and she is running around while enemies are stunned, and slows down, allowing it to kill enemies before it regardless of the damage. In addition, clear admission on the supposed retrospective premise for the story, there is no explanation as to why Violette used morphine in addition to mild titillation, which is shaky at best. This is particularly true because after the killing starts in animatic shows Violette independently, is in "normal time" instead of the drug haze of morphine. In addition, there is a ton of morphine needles lying around the sections, so it is possible to run through the fields and slaughter of guards, then run away, to get more corrections, and do it again. Moreover, if there is a need game bullet time, it could have been carried out according to number of stealth kills Violette undertakes to place drugs she shoots you in the heart because it sticks like a sore thumb.
Another problem is that Violette is extremely slow in terms of its insidious. In many ways, this lifts the balancing system, which is a game that allows you to increase your statistics collection items that are scattered around, as well as the fulfillment of the secret objectives. Every thousand points, you will obtain permits to expand your statistics, which will increase the length of your shots of morphine, increase the amount of damage you take before dying, or increase your speed when you are sneaking around. However, even with the support of some significant speed Violette guards will just go faster than the creep, so some stealthy takedowns very difficult. At one point it was actually running better, regardless of the noise of the Violette, because I could close the distance between me and my aim, and pound on the kill button still the removal of guards. The success rate was about the same as before, and yet I could move much faster with this method.
Finally, how quickly a party, what is happening in fact destroys the purpose of disguising themselves? At various places in the game, players have the opportunity to dress as SS officer, which will allow you to pass between the guards without immediately attracts attention, or how to shoot. There are two problems with the mask, however. The first is that you are not able to sneak around because you wear shoes that noise. The second is that if you run into random near the cover, or do anything from your current cover is blown. After a while you begin to realize that it's sometimes easier to try to close the guard with your standard methods than walking between them, because at least this way you will be able to move quietly, if you need.
While Violette animates relatively well as she moves and sneaks around, not much to the fluidity of movement. In fact, most natural movement of the character model exhibits seems to be running in the cutscenes. Nazi soldiers that they also tend to move rather robotically. At least the PC version manages to inject some variety to face soldiers with at least four different faces of the soldiers to kill Violette. That certainly helps considering how anemic selection was for 360 version. Then again, that game does not feature fourteenth individual resolution settings, as well as four separate settings for the texture, shadow, anti-aliasing and shader quality. This will help you select a range of information that should not be seen, as well as possible to make some of your environment as a pop sneak through the levels. I will throw to include a warning if: Your mileage may vary as fine-tune these settings, and you may be somewhat surprised, you have to do to get a stable running environment. With an Intel Core 2 Quad processor running at 2.4GHz, 4 concerts RAM and Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX, turn everything on high or very high causing the game to stutter and browse only on every step that he took Violette. These specifications are recommended over multi-core settings, so that was surprising.
However, even fine-tune the settings, you are still running at more than a slowdown on the console, especially when you swing the camera around to check what's around you, as well as sequences during cutscenes. The screen tearing and some of that teleporting before it happened, is not nearly as widespread, but still you can see here and there as you travel the game. The same can be said of the soldiers get stuck to the environment. Violette also encounter some items, and the camera itself will have some difficulty tracking where you are. For example, there are times when the camera goes off Wednesday, if you have the secret objective, which is a little difficult to see where your target is in motion. At least the sound is good, and Violette, together with a German accent spoken in the game sounds pretty decent. Although the question of some words used by the Nazis to speak (the lad actually say or bum bum? This seems to be more British than German), it seems that just as there are good supply lines. Additional increases of music during the detection experiments and the key moments also works well.
Closing Comments
Velvet Assassin could be an interesting take on World War II, which focuses on the aspect of the conflict, it is rarely covered by the play. Although it into a secret agent angle, but also brings to the story, that's fine and completely unsupported. Worse, Assassin malfunction stealth action elements that can ruin the game when they go awry, and just point to the random nature of the drive, if you work well. If you need a stealth action experience, you may wish to look elsewhere.
© 2009-05-07, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved
