That's not a spoiler, though, because the game has only two things in common with Szabo's life: the setting and the first name of the main character, Violette Summers. Beyond that, the game swaps out "secret agent" for "assassin," and revolves entirely around Summers taking out various fictitious versions of real-life people – something that likely never would have happened in real life because the Feminist movement didn't kick in ‘til the 60s.

Despite these creative interpretations on actual history, however, German developer Replay Studios says that Velvet Assassin strives to provide a grittier, more realistic look at what Europe was like during WWII than you'd get in other games set on the front lines. The developer also makes it a point to emphasize the stealth gameplay over action, reminding you constantly that Summers isn't a burly soldier or a gadget-supported spy. She's just an average woman caught up in a bad war.

Loved
Moody Atmosphere: Velvet Assassin makes excellent use of dynamic lighting, edgy music, color contrast and dead bodies of civilians to create levels that put you on edge. The Warsaw Ghetto level in particular creates a sense of surreal horror as Violette creeps through empty streets in broad daylight, past ruined furniture dragged or thrown from houses during Nazi raids. The primary colors in this level are orange and gray, which lulls the eye so that when Violette does come upon a dead body – like a child sprawled beside a hole in where he had obviously crawled to escape – the bloody bullet holes are like a slap in the face.

Implicit Feminism in Character Design: Violette Summers might not be a real woman, but her character model could pass for one. In addition to her realistically proportioned hips and bust, she also has muscles in her upper back that a woman really would develop from stabbing things over and over again. And aside from the dominatrix look she gets from donning the SS uniform in some missions, Summers is relatively under-sexed by modern video game standards which makes it easier to take the game seriously.

Collectibles and Secret Mission Objectives: Velvet Assassin a linear game, but it has a role-playing game element plus side missions in each level that give you more to do and reward you with Achievements. The RPG element comes through collectibles – finding them in levels nets you experience points that you can put toward upgrading Summers' stealth, strength or morphine capacity. These stats can have a dramatic impact on gameplay, but it doesn't unbalance the difficulty. The best collectibles worth the most XP usually come from the secret missions you stumble over in levels. For example, in a prison level, the main objective is to deliver a cyanide pill to a captured spy. Careful exploration of the level gives the player the opportunity to not only silence the spy but also assassinate the prison warden for an Achievement and a collectible worth a lot of XP.

Stealth Challenge: When the game gets it right, the stealth gameplay in Velvet Assassin is really challenging and incredibly satisfying. Each room in every level is like a puzzle; the pieces are the lighting, the Nazis' position and the options for killing Nazis. The lighting is a major piece and the most realistic because if any light is touching any part of Summers' body, she's not "in cover" even when crouching behind a wall of crates. The second major piece is less realistic: the Nazis follow a set path that you can divert them from by whistling to lure them toward you. The least realistic but most awesome piece of the puzzle is the killing part: you can shoot puddles of oil Nazis happen to be standing in to set them on fire, pull the pin on a Nazi's grenade let him blow himself up or just sneak up behind him and press A when the option comes up to perform any one of Summers' stealth kills – including the rare and infamous taint-stab. Usually, there's more than a few ways to get the job done and it can be pretty fun to figure out which one is the most efficient or kills the fewest Nazis. When you pull off whatever you decide to do – and when the game doesn't sabotage you – it makes you feel like a ninja. A very small womanly ninja with a bad haircut.

Hated
It's Broken Eight Ways From Sunday: Velvet Assassin has a lot of bugs. Aside from the occasional hard lock, the game also has a severe saving problem where it can't keep track of your last checkpoint. It doesn't delete your progress, but you'll load up the game and choose "Resume Campaign" and it starts you at the beginning of the last level you were in instead of the last checkpoint halfway through that level that you reached. Or you'll be in a level, die and select the option to go back to the last checkpoint and the game will drop you at a checkpoint in a level you already beat. To resolve the issue, you have to quit out, select Load Game and go through the randomly sorted list of saves to find the right one (keep track of how many hours you've been playing – it's the only way to tell some of the saves apart). Other bugs include Nazis getting stuck in walls or the ceiling, which really sucks when the game teleports them behind you as it struggles to resolve the mapping issue. The camera will swing behind shrubbery or obstacles so you can't see where you're going. The subtitled German dialog is poorly localized so it doesn't read like natural English. And in one particularly frustrating bug, the guards on a lower level of a mess hall were somehow alerted to Summers' presence when she peeked into the room through a keyhole on the second story – but not when she opened the door and just walked into the room.

Deliberately Sabotaging Stealth: Several levels in the game devolve into shootouts by design. You can tell these sections apart from normal stealth sections because the game suddenly provides you with a shotgun, a sniper rifle and/or an assault rifle and enough ammo to get you through a zombie apocalypse. After all the time you spend sneaking in levels and putting experience points into the stealth stat—because it's supposed to be a stealth game—these sections make it feel like the game is spitting on you. With bullets.

Nazis With Flamethrowers: I can't tell if these enemies are buggy or just designed to be unfair – but they can see twice as far as in the dark than their regular Nazi counterparts despite wearing thick masks. They have a range that spans like half a city block and they can somehow still torch you even when their flamethrowers aren't pointed at you. Easily the most frustrating enemy of the game.

Maybe a Little TOO Moody for Some: The dialog between NPCs and monologues contained in letters you can pick up throughout levels to fill in back story ranges from inane ("You stole my chocolate bar, you sheiskopf!") to overwrought ("My Dearest so-and-so; Do not mourn me, I am already dead inside…"). It appealed to me, but only because I found it funny and the over-long conversations between Nazis made for good sneaking opportunities. Likely, the macabre tone of some of the speeches combined with the increasing angst Summers expresses throughout the game will probably get on a lot of peoples' nerves – especially if they're not fond of assassins waxing philosophical about death on the battlefield.

The Ending: It is bad, it makes you feel bad and it doesn't make a lot of sense.

I liked this game. It's flawed and it's frustrating; but when the stealth gameplay worked, it pushed me outside my action/shooter comfort zone in a good way. There were a handful of times when I felt proud of myself for getting through a room or even a whole level without having to use the game's morphine mode to slow down time for an instant kill; and it was fun to unlock new Achievements like "Gotta Light?" for shooting 10 Nazis with a flare gun. Plus, I'm a woman so I identified with Summers more easily than with burly male characters in other war games.

Sadly, though, I can't recommend Velvet Assassin. It's broken and it abandons stealth for shootouts far too often to maintain the realism claim that would set the game apart from average World War II games. To me, it's a fantasy where a woman character can be powerful and compelling without magic powers and huge tits. But that fantasy doesn't hold up against real life. In real life, spies run away, the actual Butcher of Paris survived WWII to be pardoned for his crimes, Violette Szabo died a horrible death and Velvet Assassin isn't worth the money.

Velvet Assassin was developed by Replay Studios and published by SouthPeak Games, released April 28 for the Xbox 360. Retails for $60. Completed campaign on normal difficulty, unlocked 30 out of 45 Achievements, maxed out the Stealth stat.

As she lay dying in a military hospital, British MI6 agent Violette Summer lives out a series of espionage missions through a series of flashbacks. Using stealth and disguise she infiltrates deep behind enemy lines, taking out enemy soldiers with a wide variety of killer moves as she strives to cripple Hitler's war machine and extract revenge for the death of her husband by enemy hands. The game features a rather interesting morphine mechanic, in which shots administered by a nurse in the hospital trigger a bullet-time effect within Violette's subconscious.

It's an intriguing concept, but we've seen plenty of World War II games and stealth titles come and go. Does Velvet Assassin rise above the rest, or is it lost in the crowd?

Xbox 360 Magazine
It's that time of the year when a cloud of faint disappointment hangs in the air, people. A time of year during which all the neat gaming ideas that haven't received enough fertiliser spring up, before withering away thanks to some unavoidable fatal flaw. With Eat Lead it was repetition that would rival the rail network. With this it's poor enemy behaviour that makes good level design pointless.

IGN
As she lies in a coma, (Violette) remembers many of her previous missions, where she would be dispatched to destroy key installations or assassinate German officers. For the most part, the story sequences are threadbare – briefings for her missions are displayed via a few photographs which animate as she explains what she needs to do. But these are extremely short, lasting around thirty seconds each. There are very few details on why she's in the hospital or why she feels the need to explain or recount her adventures. It's only within the last mission do you get filled in on certain elements of the backstory, but this is too little too late. As a result, the story doesn't really make any sense...

Gamervision
In order to memorize the best tactics, trial-and-error is usually the only way. Violette Summers is completely at home in the shadows, blending into the background, and emitting a calming purple glow when invisible. This, however, isn't a guarantee she won't be seen, and enemies in close proximity can still stumble upon Summers. The problem is the exact distance doesn't seem consistent, and enemies will oftentimes spot the hidden assassin when experience would dictate that she should, by all means, be invisible. This is an ongoing issue in the game, and takes away from the stealth mechanics immeasurably. Further, since Summer isn't a fighter, it can take several tries before a working strategy is discovered. This mixes poorly with the game's sparsely placed save points...

AtomicGamer
The whole game always skirts the edge of too much frustration to bother continuing. With forced checkpoints that are sometimes far apart and a need to sit and watch enemy patrol routes for a while - it's usually better to just revert to your last checkpoint if you get caught, because Violette can only take one or two hits before she dies - the whole game becomes an exercise in trial-and-error stealth that, unlike what we've seen with the best of the genre, winds up being something that has to be endured rather than enjoyed. It's not like other stealth games aren't like this, but the story and settings here are only barely compelling enough to keep the most patient of gamers going

GameSpot
The desolate atmosphere and empathetic look at your enemies make Velvet Assassin a powerful war game. It's bleak and grim, making the horrors of war come to life in disturbing fashion. The lousy gunplay and moronic AI dilute some of the intense realism on display here, but the game is able to stand out despite these problems. Creeping slowly through the shadows is tense and believable, and pulling off these seemingly impossible objectives is deeply satisfying. Velvet Assassin offers a brutal depiction of war, creating an experience that is horrific but still rewarding.

No Nazis were harmed in the creation of this Frankenreview.

This three-minute, 28-second extended version of the last Velvet Assassin trailer we saw skips the Winston Churchill-ish speech and focuses on the music — Hollywood Undead's "Young." I can't say that that does the game any good since the lyrics have even less to do with World War II spies than Michael Jackson's "Thriller."

Most of the footage is recycled, but you will see the fabled taint-stab, the frolicking morphine vision and probably more over-the-shoulder shooting scenes than you'll actually see in the game (Velvet Assassin is supposed to be a stealth game, not a shooter).

But what really bugs me about this trailer is that it feels like a me-too of the Gears of War trailer that used Gary Jules' cover of "Mad World," only crappy — like the Assassin's Creed me-too that uses "Lonely Soul" from Unkle.

Oh well, enjoy it anyway.

And if I seem a little snippy and a lot late on my usual posting time, I apologize — my house got burgled :(

Sir Winston Churchill's famous June 4th, 1940 speech, commonly referred to as "We will fight on the beaches", was one of the defining speeches of the World War II era in which Velvet Assassin takes place. I just can't help thinking they chose the wrong image to coincide with the end of the speech in this trailer. Now I'm going to have the image of a portly British statesman spilling out of vintage women's underwear for the rest of the day. Should make lunch entertaining.

Velvet Assassin is due out next month for the Xbox 360 and Windows PC.

The comic will be available as an exclusive bonus item for people who get the game at GameStop.

The events in the comic will cover the life of Velvet Assassin Violette Summer up to the point where she joined the war effort as an undercover agent. Summer's exploits in the video game are based loosely on the real-life efforts of Allied secret agent Violette Szabo. It's not clear if Chung's comic with follow suit or make up an original backstory for Summer.

Chung's character designs have always been solid — but after what he did to the life of Alexander the Great, I'm a little worried. I'll run screaming from the room at the first sign of a codpiece.

Velvet Assassin comes out on Xbox 360 and PC April 14. Check out my impressions from a few months back.

Replay Studios, in Hamburg, developed the game with the Viet Cong engine," he told Eurogamer. (That's the same studio currently working on Velvet Assassin, by the way.) "They based it on my movie, and we delivered our script, screenshots et cetera to them. They also used the same composer. "I controlled the production, and I'm happy with the game," he added.

Then again, Uwe Boll has been pleased with most of his films as well, and judging from the quality of his game adaptations Replay Studios might have just been showing him a couple of their employees playing with action figures. Not sure he'd know the difference. I am just hoping the whole thing is a big joke, culminating in Boll doing a movie adaptation of the game based on his movie which turns out completely different than the original film.

Uwe Boll "happy" with his new videogame [Eurogamer]

A war story influenced by real-world events that prioritizes stealth action? Sounds like a certain other title that I can't take my eyes and hands off of lately, so I was eager to get a look at Velvet Assassin today.

Violette's story is told through flashbacks and memories - in the opening of the game, she's in a hospital, remembering back on her career, and in the scene I saw, Violette was sneaking through the sewers and up into a Warsaw ghetto under patrol by Nazi soldiers. The PR rep told me that the team is prioritizing authenticity in creating the WWII environment, with the aim of recreating the grittiness of that war's horrors.

For example, a man would be seen hanged in the sewers, as the Nazis actually did back then to try to warn people off attempting to escape through there. During my demo, I watched soldiers taking turns shooting at the walls of buildings, as they often did to try and kill or scare out anyone who might be hiding.

If Violette keeps to the shadows, a purple aura covers her, letting the player know she can't be seen by enemies in the light. The shadows are sharp-edged, and the contrast between them and the sunbathed, forbidding landscape was very eerie, exactly the sort of spooky atmosphere you'd expect from a story about what goes on behind enemy lines in WWII.

I was told there are over 50 different kinds of stealth kills in the game that Violette can perform when she sneaks up behind an enemy quietly - I watched her seize a soldier around the neck and stab him in the back before he could alert his compatriots. Though I was watching a very early build, the rep told me that in the final game, players will be able to drag enemy bodies out of sight to keep the Nazis from catching on, similar to the way it's done in Metal Gear.

Also, Violette can enter "Morphine mode" in an emergency. The painkiller ties into the fact that we're playing through Violet's memories while she's hospitalized, and if you use morphine, you can kill a target in range quickly and directly - for example, if a soldier sees you, you can run right up and kill him, the screen a white, violet-blotted haze, before he has the opportunity to alert his mates.

Throughout the gameplay, Violette narrates her story, woven together with factual information about the progression of the WWII story. She has a lovely English accent, and the voice acting in conjunction with the imagery was lovely.

While it was too early for hands-on with this game, and some of the features, like the body-dragging, haven't been implemented yet, I definitely saw enough to pique my interest and let me know that this stealth war drama, featuring what looks to be a strong, compelling female protagonist, is worth keeping an ear attuned to.

"Rather than a trite, overused, and generic working title like 'Sabotage,' 'Velvet Assassin™' captures the heart of what we're trying to accomplish," said Sascha Jungnickel, Creative Director at Replay Studios. "From the start we've wanted a game with a strong female lead that stays true to the history of Violette Szabo while pulling players into a world of dark intrigue."

The "Velvet Assassin" Strikes Down Sabotage

REPLAY STUDIOS ANNOUNCES NEW NAME FOR THEIR WORLD WAR II STEALTH ACTION TITLE

Cockpit, Austin, TX - February 29, 2008 - Today developer Replay Studios, along with publisher Gamecock Media Group, have announced the official name change for 'Velvet Assassin™', their upcoming stealth-action title formerly known as 'Sabotage'. The new title creates a perfect marriage between the story of real life hero Violette Szabo and the clandestine art of sabotage she championed. From the incredibly innovative art style, storyline, and combat gameplay, Velvet Assassin™ is poised to revolutionize the stealth-action genre later this year.

"Rather than a trite, overused, and generic working title like 'Sabotage,' 'Velvet Assassin™' captures the heart of what we're trying to accomplish," said Sascha Jungnickel, Creative Director at Replay Studios. "From the start we've wanted a game with a strong female lead that stays true to the history of Violette Szabo while pulling players into a world of dark intrigue."

Inspired by the true story of British Agent Violette Szabo, players will take on the role of Violette Summer. Behind enemy lines in Nazi occupied Europe, Violette risks her life fighting to fell the Third Reich with anything she can get her hands on, including enemy soldiers. With no support or official backing from the British Government, Violette puts everything on the line to defeat the German war machine - one mission at a time. Velvet Assassin™ combines lush, surreal visuals, a ground-breaking stealth combat system and one of the most unique perspectives ever brought to gaming. Velvet Assassin™ is planned to release in Fall 2008 on PC and next-generation consoles.

"Most of the time a name change happens because it's not 'catchy' enough or because the marketing team didn't like it," said Tim Hesse, Executive Producer at Gamecock Media Group. "I have to say, the Replay crew have outdone themselves by making Violette into one of the best looking stealth-killers ever. This game has come so far since last year that Sabotage just didn't do the game justice - 'Velvet Assassin™' sums up every aspect that makes this game great."

"Tunnel Rats is a first-person shooter set during the Vietnam War that tells the story of a young G.I. who escapes from a POW camp and journeys through a heavily fortified valley in the Cu Chi province," said Marc Moehring Managing Director and Co-Founder, Replay Studios. "It not only depicts his actual physical path through the merciless jungle and claustrophobic, trap-ridden tunnels, but also his emotional and psychological journey as the horrors he witnesses—and participates in—slowly deprive him of his ideals, morals and sanity."

If the laws of irony are still firmly in place, it will end up being the best video game of all time. I sincerely hope not, however, especially considering the closing quote of Game Daily's article on the game.

"If this game does well then we'll keep going with other game ideas," said Boll, who's currently wrapping principal photography on Far Cry. In addition to the original Tunnel Rats film, Boll also completed Seed, a horror movie he wrote starring Pare.

Boll 'Tunnels' Into Game Business [GameDaily.BIZ]