Velvet Assassin
Encyclopedia
Velvet Assassin is a stealth action video game for Xbox 360
and Microsoft Windows
, released in North America
on April 28, 2009. Velvet Assassin's working title was Sabotage.
Players take control of Violette Summer, a World War II
-era British
female spy
operating deep behind enemy lines, attempting to help thwart the Nazi war effort. The game's story was inspired by a real life secret agent
/saboteur
Violette Szabo
.
and join the weapon industry. It didn’t take too long for her to be noticed by the secret services, as she was beautiful, athletic and had great attention to detail, and so she was soon recruited into Secret Intelligence Service
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, Summer was strong willed and used these painful experiences to inspire her to succeed as a spy for the SIS.
Summer managed to carry out several missions successfully before being gravely wounded by a sniper on a mission to kill Kamm, a Nazi 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 flashback
s. 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
. Moving through the city's sewer system, 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
's Pawiak prison
to give cyanide to the last agent.
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 the enemy troops entering the hospital. Escaping them, Violette finds the villagers being murdered or rounded up by a force from 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 enemy leader 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.
syringes scattered across her bed, and the influx of drugs in her system creates a series of dreams that let her recount her past missions. Players have to hide in the shadows in order to avoid being detected. As a stealth-based game, lighting plays an important role. The HUD provides players with a silhouette of Violette which can be in one of three states. Purple means she is hidden in the shadows and invisible to enemies. White means she is exposed in light, but not yet detected. Red means she has been spotted and enemies are seeking out her position. If she is detected, she will either have to fight off the guard or escape.
The game employs a special lifeline if detected called "Morphine Mode". When triggered, Violette is shown in her hospital gown with blood drops appearing all over the screen. For a limited amount of time, Violette will be able to execute any alerted guards or escape. Players have a limited use of the morphine lifeline. The game also occasionally makes use of "Blend Stealth". If Violette acquires a female SS uniform, she can change her attire at predefined points in the game. When Violette wears the SS uniform, guards will not identify her as a threat unless she moves too close to them, or she performs a suspicious action, such as aiming a gun.
Violette's ability as an agent can be upgraded by finding a range of collectibles scattered throughout her environment. Once the player reaches 1,000 experience points, her skills can be upgraded in one of three ways: either Improved Stealth (sneaking), Morphine or Strength. The player can upgrade her skills based on individual gameplay style.
to produce a limited edition digital graphic novel
based on the game. Chung is best known for his creation of the character of Æon Flux
, as well as his work in The Animatrix
. The novel was exclusively distributed to gamers who preordered the game from GameStop
.
Violette's Dream was an interactive experience produced to promote Velvet Assassin. Created by Yomi Ayeni and produced by Expanding Universe, a UK based production company, the ARG mobilised thousands of participants on a real-life adventure as they searched for hidden treasure and gold bars. Using websites, forums, blogs, video, audio, mobile and telephone messaging, as well as performance and real-life events, the immersive and interactive story engaged players as they interacted with a variety of characters and organisations. One gold bar was found in a lock-up in Fredericksburg, Texas
, the other at London Victoria station.
average score is 61/100 for the PC version and 56/100 for the Xbox 360 version.
IGN
gave Velvet Assassin a 5/10, citing inconsistent stealth mechanics and a weak story. GameSpot
review however disagreed (criticizing instead the game's poor AI and "lousy gunplay") and called it "a powerful, unnerving look at one of history's darkest periods", awarding it a score of 7.5/10. GameZone
praised the style and story of the game but disliked the predictability of the enemies, rating the game 7.7/10.
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
and Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, released in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
on April 28, 2009. Velvet Assassin's working title was Sabotage.
Players take control of Violette Summer, a World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
-era British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
female spy
Spycraft
Spycraft is a d20 and OGL-based role-playing game dealing with superspies and modern action. Originally published by the Alderac Entertainment Group, it is currently published under licence by Crafty Games.-History:...
operating deep behind enemy lines, attempting to help thwart the Nazi war effort. The game's story was inspired by a real life secret agent
Secret Agent
Secret Agent is a British film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, loosely based on two stories in Ashenden: Or the British Agent by W. Somerset Maugham. The film starred John Gielgud, Peter Lorre, Madeleine Carroll, and Robert Young...
/saboteur
Sabotage
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is...
Violette Szabo
Violette Szabo
Violette Reine Elizabeth Bushell Szabo, GC, was a Second World War French-British secret agent.-Early life and marriage:...
.
Plot
Born in Dorset, Violette Summer (voiced by Melinda Y. Cohen) 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 LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and join the weapon industry. It didn’t take too long for her to be noticed by the secret services, as she was beautiful, athletic and had great attention to detail, and so she was soon recruited into Secret Intelligence Service
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
during Britain’s darkest hours. Violette had lost an aunt during one of the first Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....
bombing attacks and to further compound her heartache she later lost her RAF
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
husband in battle. However, Summer was strong willed and used these painful experiences to inspire her to succeed as a spy for the SIS.
Summer managed to carry out several missions successfully before being gravely wounded by a sniper on a mission to kill Kamm, a Nazi military intelligence
Military intelligence
Military intelligence is a military discipline that exploits a number of information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to commanders in support of their decisions....
officer. Comatose in a hospital in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Violette relives key moments in a series of flashbacks. Hence the bulk of gameplay will take place during these flashback
Flashback (narrative)
Flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory...
s. The missions include blowing up a fuel depot on the Maginot Line
Maginot Line
The Maginot Line , named after the French Minister of War André Maginot, was a line of concrete fortifications, tank obstacles, artillery casemates, machine gun posts, and other defences, which France constructed along its borders with Germany and Italy, in light of its experience in World War I,...
, assassination of a colonel in a cathedral in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, stealing documents and marking a sub pen for bombers in Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
during Operation Gomorrah, and finding three secret agents in Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
. Moving through the city's sewer system, she finds one agent seriously wounded (and silences him) and another dead by cyanide poisoning
Cyanide poisoning
Cyanide poisoning occurs when a living organism is exposed to a compound that produces cyanide ions when dissolved in water. Common poisonous cyanide compounds include hydrogen cyanide gas and the crystalline solids potassium cyanide and sodium cyanide...
, but the third agent was captured; moving through the Warsaw Ghetto
Warsaw Ghetto
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of all Jewish Ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. It was established in the Polish capital between October and November 15, 1940, in the territory of General Government of the German-occupied Poland, with over 400,000 Jews from the vicinity...
, where the residents were either rounded up or executed, Violette makes her way through to the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
's Pawiak prison
Pawiak
Pawiak was a prison built in 1835 in Warsaw, Poland.During the January 1863 Uprising, it served as a transfer camp for Poles sentenced by Imperial Russia to deportation to Siberia....
to give cyanide to the last agent.
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
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
, or kill her to save her the torture if captured by the Nazis. Her location betrayed, Violette wakes from her coma to find the enemy troops entering the hospital. Escaping them, Violette finds the villagers being murdered or rounded up by a force from 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 enemy leader 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.
Gameplay
When the game begins, Violette is seen from above, lying in a hospital bed. There are morphineMorphine
Morphine is a potent opiate analgesic medication and is considered to be the prototypical opioid. It was first isolated in 1804 by Friedrich Sertürner, first distributed by same in 1817, and first commercially sold by Merck in 1827, which at the time was a single small chemists' shop. It was more...
syringes scattered across her bed, and the influx of drugs in her system creates a series of dreams that let her recount her past missions. Players have to hide in the shadows in order to avoid being detected. As a stealth-based game, lighting plays an important role. The HUD provides players with a silhouette of Violette which can be in one of three states. Purple means she is hidden in the shadows and invisible to enemies. White means she is exposed in light, but not yet detected. Red means she has been spotted and enemies are seeking out her position. If she is detected, she will either have to fight off the guard or escape.
The game employs a special lifeline if detected called "Morphine Mode". When triggered, Violette is shown in her hospital gown with blood drops appearing all over the screen. For a limited amount of time, Violette will be able to execute any alerted guards or escape. Players have a limited use of the morphine lifeline. The game also occasionally makes use of "Blend Stealth". If Violette acquires a female SS uniform, she can change her attire at predefined points in the game. When Violette wears the SS uniform, guards will not identify her as a threat unless she moves too close to them, or she performs a suspicious action, such as aiming a gun.
Violette's ability as an agent can be upgraded by finding a range of collectibles scattered throughout her environment. Once the player reaches 1,000 experience points, her skills can be upgraded in one of three ways: either Improved Stealth (sneaking), Morphine or Strength. The player can upgrade her skills based on individual gameplay style.
Promotion
SouthPeak Games have teamed up with Peter ChungPeter Chung
Peter Kunshik Chung Peter Kunshik Chung Peter Kunshik Chung (born April 19, 1961 in Seoul, South Korea, as 정건식 (Chung Geun-sik, or alternative spelling Jeong Geun-Sik) is a Korean American animator...
to produce a limited edition digital graphic novel
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...
based on the game. Chung is best known for his creation of the character of Æon Flux
Æon Flux
Æon Flux was originally an avant-garde science fiction animated television series that aired on MTV in various forms throughout the 1990s, with film, comic book, and video game adaptations following thereafter. It premiered in 1991 on MTV's Liquid Television experimental animation show as a...
, as well as his work in The Animatrix
The Animatrix
is a 2003 direct-to-video anthology film based on The Matrix trilogy. The film is a compilation of nine animated short films.-Production:Development of the Animatrix project began when the film series' writers and directors, the Wachowski brothers, were in Japan promoting the first Matrix film...
. The novel was exclusively distributed to gamers who preordered the game from GameStop
GameStop
GameStop Corporation is an American video game and entertainment software retailer. The company, whose headquarters is in Grapevine, Texas, United States, operates 6,500 retail stores throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New...
.
Violette's Dream was an interactive experience produced to promote Velvet Assassin. Created by Yomi Ayeni and produced by Expanding Universe, a UK based production company, the ARG mobilised thousands of participants on a real-life adventure as they searched for hidden treasure and gold bars. Using websites, forums, blogs, video, audio, mobile and telephone messaging, as well as performance and real-life events, the immersive and interactive story engaged players as they interacted with a variety of characters and organisations. One gold bar was found in a lock-up in Fredericksburg, Texas
Fredericksburg, Texas
Fredericksburg is the seat of Gillespie County, in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2010 Census estimate, the city had a population of 10, 530...
, the other at London Victoria station.
Reception
Velvet Assassin has received generally mixed reviews from the gaming press. The MetacriticMetacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
average score is 61/100 for the PC version and 56/100 for the Xbox 360 version.
IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
gave Velvet Assassin a 5/10, citing inconsistent stealth mechanics and a weak story. GameSpot
GameSpot
GameSpot is a video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information. The site was launched in May 1, 1996 by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. It was purchased by ZDNet, a brand which was later purchased by CNET Networks. CBS Interactive, which...
review however disagreed (criticizing instead the game's poor AI and "lousy gunplay") and called it "a powerful, unnerving look at one of history's darkest periods", awarding it a score of 7.5/10. GameZone
GameZone
GameZone is an American multiplatform video game website. GameZone's daily coverage includes reviews, previews, news, hints & cheats, and editorials. Additionally, GameZone offers downloads, a child-targeted website and in association with GameStop, hosts GZGameShop, an online retailer...
praised the style and story of the game but disliked the predictability of the enemies, rating the game 7.7/10.