Velvet Assassin Review (SINNER)
Stabby-stab-stab WW2 assassin
Velvet Assassin plays a track when you plant explosives at two points in the game, very similar to the tracks from the Silent Hill games that play when you're in the other world. It's also the combat track from the last level, which is very painful. I like this, it got me quite anxious, if I wasn't frustrated.
At the end of the last level, you reach a place, kill the soldiers you find there, and in 15-20 seconds, soldiers spawn at the threshold of the church gates, 3 meters away from you, three of them. You get turned to swiss cheese, like the Führer in Inglorious Basterds. Good look retrying! When you survive these newly spawned soldiers, you will die again, at the hands of the new wave of 3 soldiers. You will have to repeat this for 5 times, or so. This is the last encounter, and you will finish the game, with a very bitter taste left after finishing Velvet Assassin.
The game has very good lighting, and atmosphere in most levels. But the stealth mechanics are janky, and every stealth encounter was probably thought of as a kind of a puzzle, specifically, you may get detected if you're behind cover, in shadows, and a guard passes by you, it's very unpredictable and hard to test how the AI behaves.
The save system is strictly auto-saving, so no quicksave, in order to test sneaking routes and AI behavior. You fail and you will go back at least one encounter. This was by far the most frustrating thing about Velvet Assassin, having to repeat the same encounters 5-10 times to reach the next checkpoint.
I can say that Replay Studios tried to make a good game here, it's too bad they failed. I have replayed this game 4 times in many years, trying to get a no death run on the agent(hard) difficulty, but the least deaths I got was probably around 100.
Again, this game would have greatly benefited from a PC-specific saving system, manual, and quicksave and quickload. And a stage replay option. The unpredictable and janky AI can be argued for, as a means to simulate how unpredictable guards are in real life.
Recommended if you are starved for stealth-games, and like jank. It will test your patience.