Missed opportunity.
The game's main protagonist is quite unique and original, although hervoice reminds me too much of Lara Croft's voice actor. The setting itself is quite clever, and well done. WW2 stealth game? Hell yeah. But how does it really turns out?
The graphics of the game are passable. Some sceneries are quite nice, but the framerate is so oddly unstable and jerkish that it brings everything down. Oh! There's Paris' Tour Effel in the background! Don't look at it, you will lag. Same with the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral, they're framerate hogs. The animations are a mixed bag. Some are good, some are quite bad. Also, the lead character has a weapon holster on her back, yet you never see the pistol in it. Bad design choice.
The sound is good, uses proper voice acting ( german and english ) and the music are well-fiting.
The gameplay is a huge leap backwards in the past. It's comparable to Splinter Cell. The first one, mind you. You can't defend yourself in close combat if discovered ( except that morphine mode that i'll come back to ) wich makes it a huge trial and error game. There's no alternate routes either, wich means it's a linear experience. The gunplay is extremely weak and wonky and the enemies dies a second later that the bullet hit them, it's not game breaking, but very noticeable.
At some point, you'll be able to get an enemy outfit to slip behind enemy lines. But there's a catch. Your character gets high heels, making stealth and melee kills impossible. You HAVE to move around the enemies, because you see, if you get too close, they shoot you in the face. Would you kill ahot lady, in civilian or friendly clothes,walking to you without even asking her what she's doing there? I mean, we're talking of a bunch of soldiers there, and your heroine can't even like, charm enemies with an eye wink to plunge a knife in their heart. There's just stone cold killers. Wich is a missed opportunity of what could have been a nice gameplay element.
The morphine mode, as mentioned earlier, is hilarious. Violet, the main character, transforms into a '' undies '' mode of herself, wearing a sexy night outfit, while the enemies are frozen and brain dead. Then you can roam freely, in slow-mo, with rose petals, until you get next to them for a finishing blow. It's bad, really. It's laughably bad.
The game also has weird issues. There's a severe lack of animations ( opening doors, pushing switch or pulling levers ) and your character is far from being nimble as she can't do anything else but shoot people and stab them. At some point, you'll be able to climb a ladder, and when you press the action button, she'll climb the first bars and then she'll teleport up the ladder.
Same with some doors. Some can be opened, some others will teleport you on the other side without warning, you don't even know wich ones you can actually open, and wich one zone you out of the actual level part you're in.
Velvet Assassin is clearly missing something. I don't know what happened and who said that this game was a final and retail product, because there's so many issues and gameplay quirks that shouldn't even be a problem by today's standards. It's not a game that i'd recommend to any stealth afficionado ( as I am, I even loved Tenchu Z ) since most stealth games today are way more refined.