A game so hard and frustrating you shouldn't go anywhere near it unless you like frustration and pain.
While the game runs fine and looks great, there is a long list of things wrong with it that should make you stay away. Enemies that see you unpredictably or shoot you through walls, with guns that feel underpowered or near broken are just a few reasons not to play this latest stealth game taking place in the 1940s. I'm sorry to report that, unlike most games, I didn't actually complete this one. Most games I review you can count on the fact that I've played them 100%, but here I simply could not endure the pain. Sorry, but it was too much of a torture, which I'll soon explain to you in plenty of detail. What I did endure I endured simply for the sake of this review. But anyone that can endure this torment long enough to make it to the end deserves some kind of reward or tag on their name.
You play some woman, can't remember her name because the game lacks almost any form of a story. I could go read it off the box, but it's not like anyone uses her name in the game anyway. While other games feature cutscenes in between missions or communication between characters, this game is basically an isolated simulation from start to finish, that feels like a simulation more than anything else. Reminds me of those Metal Gear Solid VR missions, but at least that game didn't pretend not to be a simulation like this one does. But anyway, you'll jump from end of one mission straight to start of the next, a cutscene only being there for your hero to talk to you with pictures and explain what it is your doing.
But since these enemies didn't exist beforehand and won't soon after, there's no real reason to care about any of the story or reasons behind what you are doing in each mission. I went through a mission with no idea what my goal was until end, and there was no real reason to nor anything to hint at it. When after a target, you never see or hear about him until it's time to kill him, which makes the game feel shallow and your missions meaningless. Also the fact that she's in a hospital is meaningless since you never spend any time there or even see it outside of the game menu options. It's like one big excuse not to make a progressing story or any characters. Why couldn't it be more like Assassin's Creed, with cutscenes and things in between the missions? It wouldn't have been hard to do with the hospital. Then at the end the hospital could have been attacked or something for a twist, any number of things could have been better than what these people did. With other games out for years that are so much better than this one, it's a wonder they messed up so badly on even the simple things.
But getting past the story and setup, because it's not really the bad issue for you or what bothered me much, you get to the gameplay, which is terrible beyond belief. As a stealth game, yes it's obvious you want to sneak around. The problem is that guards don't follow their own rules established by the game. Various times I would be seen through walls or cover while other times I would not. Sometimes guards will see me extremely far away in or out of shadows while other times you can practically bump into them. It makes no sense. One time I even sat idle for like 5 minutes while I was reading something, with a guard patrolling back and forth. Since he didn't see me, it's obviously safe. But on his 4th or so trip he magically saw me, despite not having done so on all the previous trips and me never having moved. It was really confusing and frustrating. This game is a huge matter of luck, randomness and trial and error. This randomness could have been accepted if getting detected wasn't such a harsh experience due to the other game flaws and insane difficulty. But getting seen so unpredictably is further hurt by the fact that once detected, you can't quickly knife kill an enemy up close. Instead of a 1-button swing attack, you instead have to pull out the knife like it's a gun and aim it. Why a knife is as slow as a gun is beyond me, but making things worse is the gunplay... which brings me to the next huge failure of this package...
Gunfighting in this game is a terrible experience, a huge failure. For one, you get next to no ammo. That would be ok, except that your bullets hit so softly. Often times you'll hit a Nazi twice in chest only to still have him standing strong and shooting at you. When you've got a 7 bullet clip(she never learns how to bring extra mags), having to shoot an enemy 2-3 times to kill them quickly eats it up. As a result, you are reduced to headshotting with your pistol to get full use out of it, and will spend most times with nothing but a knife. You better be good at head shots and knifing if you want to prevail, as once you are detected by one of the many flawed detection codes with enemy A.I., you'll be reduced to either shooting with next to no ammo, or trying to stab a guy that's shooting you.
It gets only worse and worse as game goes on. Soon it allows you to choose between 2 pistols. Why can't I carry both? Later it gives you a shotgun. Wait a second, I can carry a pistol and a shotgun, but not 2 pistols? How do 2 pistols take up more space or weight more than a shotgun AND a pistol? It's maddening, what they could have been thinking! If I can't carry both, could you at least give me the ammo? Resident Evil 5 is just one such good game that allows you to retain ammo from one gun to another. Although unrealistic, it's generous to a player. But no, each is specific on top of that. So as a result, I have to use my gun, then run back to a locker across level like a douche to switch pistols for more ammo because this chick can't carry both guns or use both ammo types for 1 gun. Retarded. It turns out you can have 1 gun in each category, but not 2, but if I can carry a machine gun and a shotgun and a pistol, why can't I carry more than 1 pistol? Even some older games did things right. Perfect Dark Zero had a slot system, where things took up a number of slots. Pistols were 1, machine guns were 2, and heavy things like Sniper Rifles were 3, and you had a max of 4 slots; it then left it up to you to play however you wanted and customize as you saw fit and liked. Why can't I do that here? Enemies took a beating in PDZ, but you had plenty of ammo and health so it was fine, it was also the future where armor was advanced, further making it understandable. Here you are extremely frail with next to no ammo and in the 1940s, so enemies shouldn't be tough like this, with hawk eyes and invisible plate armor.
I soon found myself wondering why I couldn't just get guns and ammo from all the guards I was killing? Wtf? Seriously... I know it's a stealth game and filling me up on ammo with each guard sounds wrong, but even if I had unlimited ammo I'd still have to stealth, as your hero is extremely weak and will die quickly if you tried to wildly gunfight your way through the game. It might be fine for a few shootouts, but you'll soon be left with no health and no or next to no healing, especially when guards are often together in packs of 2, 3, or even 4. So give me my guns and ammo for when you wrongfully detect me and let me be on my way instead of leaving me with just this knife to repeat a level15 times until I memorize each guard's unique vision and pathing.
It will piss you off, again and again, I kid you not... this game is insanely hard and unfair, as if the designers are just trying to torture you, and you will repeat every level around 10 times or more just to succeed unless you are extremely good at getting head shots and very lucky to avoid the A.I.'s buggy detection coding. Don't get me wrong, I'm great at stealth, and I spent plenty of time watching guards patrol, not just rushing in to backstab with no thought. But despite my best efforts at stealth, I still found it so frustrating that I found myself exploiting to proceed; by killing a guard in plain sight of his friends, then running away to previous part of level where they won't follow me. You'll repeat this process until no guards remain. Sound heroic or realistic? I thought not, but due to difficulty, it is often the best option. I also found it best to often just run past guards entirely, as they won't follow you into next area, especially if it involves climbing, dropping, or a ladder. Sound right to you? Sounds retarded to me. You could do such in the original Metal Gear Solids and other games, but those were very old games. This is 2009, NEW. Where's the reality? I expect a guard to chase me forever if he's seen me, although that would made this game even more absurd, it could have been fine with an easier game that wasn't so messed up.
In fact this games coding is so bugged one time in the game I set off a guards grenade while he was inches away from another guard and that guy didn't get hurt at all. He wasn't even knocked down, he just ran to me and started shooting at me as if nothing had happened except him seeing me. Trust me when I say, if a grenade goes off in your face, you're going to feel it. Another time I unloaded round after round of a shotgun at an enemy at ranged that had the same weapon, despite my dead center accuracy, I died first. If I'm not hitting him, how is he hitting me with same weapon at same range? Countless times I was shot through walls and whatever cover I tried to use, while wood may be naturally weak, solid concrete walls aren't going to get shot through by hand held 1940s guns. What's more confusing is how you can't shoot through anything in the game, while the enemy can shoot through practically anything. Let a guard see you, then try to use cover, see for yourself. You'll get hit through it plenty of times, it's absurd. The logic in this game with many things is down round confusing, and basically rigged to be as hard or frustrating as possible.
Making the game even worse is the low number of checkpoints. Let me elaborate, there are quite a few, and normally the number of them would be ok. But since the game is so hard and will often kill you at least once per room, why aren't there more of them? You'll repeat areas in groups just from dying, having to memorize how to take out a dozen guards perfectly before that next checkpoint. To promote a game so hard it should at least have a decent number of checkpoints, but you could go through as many as 3 or 4 large areas with dozen guards before getting to that next one. So yes, you will do many areas again and again... and again.
There isn't much to help your struggles except a Morphine ability that freezes time for about 5 seconds, allowing you to kill 1 enemy effortlessly with an assassinate from even the front. But balancing the game around this is that you only have 1 life savior unless you find another one. This game features health pickups, but they don't do much. The game also features an upgrade system, but it does next to nothing for your character. Even with 3 points in upgraded stealth, I didn't feel myself going any faster. I wanted to refund them and put them into health so I wouldn't die so easily, but you can't refund, even between levels, go figure. Screw me over in yet another way, thanks Velvet Assassin.
The fact that the upgrade system progresses so slowly seems to indicate how long it is, but since it does so little, why must it go so slow? Unless you scoured for collectables, you'll never get it very far, which brings me to my next point, hidden item pick ups are your experience? Why can't experience just be be set for 1 level point per level? Why this bull sh it? Again to reference Assassin's Creed, they had your gear progress on a set pace, with collactables just being for show or achievements. Here you have to hunt for hidden crap just to upgrade your character! It's nonsense!
It doesn't help that that collectables are needed to get your experience to train your stats, but in addition to that, they are extremely hard to see in your environment and often hidden. It's often a pixel hunt, much like Fable 2, to find stuff. If you're lucky, you might get a glow or sparkle, but you can't count on it and will often neglect to get stuff unless you rub your character across everything in the world to item hunt. Why don't I get experience for kills anyway? Why does my experience come from treasure hunting? Are they retarded? There are also quite a few of them, it's tedious to keep picking them all up again after each death. Why can't that have been kept through deaths, why force a player to hunt them all again after each death? It's just added tediousness. But I would have settled for a few great ones instead of a bunch of little ones, then it wouldn't have been as bad. Even Fable 2 got that wrong, flooding the game with worthless loot instead of having rare loot that was worthwhile, making me not bother to even pick most of it up. But here, it's worse due to the fact that it funds your experience, meaning you HAVE to pick up each and every tiny gem or jewel you can find, and after every single death since you don't keep them when you die. Sound fun? It's not.
The only real shining point for this game is the graphics and frame rate, which make up the entire bulk of my rating. It ran smoothly the entire time I played it except 1 time, but you could probably blame the rented disc for that area. It also looks great with fantastic environments. Too bad visuals aren't all there is to a game, if that's what they thought when they released this trash. I can say it's nice to see those stealth kills every time you get one, and the game has enough animations in them. I've previously complained with previous games about not having enough animations(even Assassin's Creed missed that one!). Numerous stealth kill animations is one of the few things this game got right.
You might ask why I didn't rate it lower despite hating it so badly, well it's because I think everything wrong with the game was the "easy" work that could have easily been fixed or changed for the players for the final release version; where as all the "hard" work, such as animations and environments, along with most of the coding, is fine. They basically released the game in its beta version, having done the bulk of the game but never tested or polished it before release, or at least that's what I'm led to believe. Most bad games are bad simply due to not being finished before being released, and this is a definite shelf-rusher. At least LotR Conquest had an easy campaign despite being shelf rushed, making it worth a rental for some hacking and slashing for a night or weekend. This game on other hand, is a pile of frustration.
This could have had great potential if the designers had taken the time to polish it and get half the features and game play right. Sadly it was released in the state it is now, making it a long repetitive, frustrating experience you'd simply be better off without. Definitely worst game I've endured to date, at least Braid was a 15$ downloadable that lasted maybe 5 hours, not a 60$ full game disc lasting 10 or so. If you must go anywhere near this, save yourself whatever price tag is being mistakenly put on it, and rent it, because you'll never touch it again after a day or two, assuming you can stomach the pain to actually finish it to begin with.
In the end this game is impossible to recommend, except for sadists looking to torture themselves. It's a terrible game you should avoid at all cost unless you're feeling brave and dangerous at movie gallery one boring day and every other game you want is out.(which is why I got it to begin with, I wanted Prototype but it was out. That game should be my next review unless it's out again. It was also out when I rented The Force Unleashed, maybe someday I'll actually get the thing) Even then there's a long list of other rip offs that aren't as high on the "trash" list as this one.
If you must go anywhere near this, save yourself whatever price tag is being mistakenly put on it it to scam you, and rent it; because you'll never touch it again after a day or two, assuming you can stomach the pain to actually finish it to begin with.
Single player:
(Experience) F (Fail)
Presentation:
(Video/Audio) B (Acceptable)
Performance: A (Good)