To me it was a deception.
Well nothing of this happens with Velvet assassin. Nothing at all. To begin with your skill point system is lame. How in the world collecting medals, silver materials can give you skill in stealth, strenght (non existant) or morphine ? In thief series you gained money by stealing gold, silver and other things. Ok i can understand that. Because you would sell the goodies to get more arrows, poisons and so on. But you dont have this kind of logical step here. How items that are scattered across the map can give you skills ?
Morphine is another illogical skill here. From all that i know morphine is not an accelerator drug. It is used to relieve pain and bring peace to those injured, not to give them a killing freenzie. In the game is a free kill. If an enemy spot you just press F and you have a free kill using morphine. Lame.
The maps could have been worked better, the path is ultra linear. You CANT use your knife if you have been spoted. If you dont have any bullets is likely your end. (and or if you dont have any morphine)
The "heroine" is a person with serious mental issues. If the developers tried to get emphaty with the protagonist they failed. My personal feeling for her is fear. I feared her.
The only thing that saves this game are the graphics. And even so you play the game by her memories, so no normal skie. Just a dreamingly golden sky.
So this game was a good promissing one, but after half an hour i was in a dismay shock. So it let me to think that you can believe in the 7.5 grade given by gamespot. They usualy put a correct grade for every game, but in this one it did not happened.
Good money in the sink. I wont even store this game. Trash can right away.
My advice, stay away from it.