Velvet Assassin is the story of British Intelligence agent Violette Summer, a character "based" on real life Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent Violette Szabo. I use the term based lightly because, in reality, there is very little in common between the two people. The game tosses all those silly things we like to call "real events" and just runs with its own story. I can't say I blame Tania Szabo for being displeased with her mother's portrayal in Velvet Assassin.
The game picks up with Violette in a coma, recovering in a French hospital, after sustaining a grave sniper wound. So most of Velvet Assassin takes place in flashbacks of her past missions. These include sabotaging a fuel depot in the Maginot Line, the assassination of a ruthless colonel in Paris, stealing documents and marking a submarine pen for destruction in Operation Gomorrah (also known as the Battle of Hamburg), tracking down three compromised agents in Warsaw, and the assassination of a German military intelligence officer, which leads to her grievous wounding. The last few missions have Violette wake up from her coma, and her subsequent escape from the hospital and nearby village.
Velvet Assassin's gameplay follows the traditional stealth formula, in that you hide in the shadows, wait to get behind an enemy, and kindly stab him in the neck (or, based on quite a few executions in the game, the genitals...). All this is carried out fairly well, minus the fact that the Nazis can not, in any case, see past their own two feet. It's as if the Third Reich recruited all their soldiers on the basis that they were legally blind, but had super-powered hearing. So essentially, you can stand right in front of a guy, granted you're in a bit of shadow, but heaven forgive you if you happen to take a step too loudly from two rooms over, each with two foot thick stone walls. Forgiving that glaring AI flaw, there's mostly just nitpicking left to do.
In terms of your killing choices, you really don't have too many. Your only choice of melee is the knife you start out with, which comes with a nice selection of satisfying stealth executions, and when it comes to firearms, you come across two pistols, one silenced, one not, as well as short segments where you gain access to either a shotgun, a sniper rifle, or an assault rifle. All in all, while it may reflect the real environment, where you wouldn't always have access to an armory, it still leaves something to be desired in the gameplay.
The game is split across 12 missions, each growing progressively longer as you move along. Missions 1-10 are focused on stealth. Missions 11 and 12, on the other hand, move towards a focus on "shoot the living crap out of all that moves!" kind of gameplay, which seems to be a staple stealth-action cliche by now.
All in all, Velvet Assassin is a good game with a fair list of flaws, it just doesn't have much incentive to go back to. I'd say it makes a good buy if you can get it cheap, but otherwise, it's a very solid rental.
