The key difference in Death to Spies is that the player takes the role of a SMERSH (read: badass Russian counterintelligence agency) operative during World War II instead of a bald hired goon. As a SMERSH operative, the player is given numerous sneaking missions and stealth options like disguises that allow them to infiltrate and kill Nazi officials. This formula worked okay for the first game. Let's see how well it stacks up for the second.

What Is It?
Death to Spies 2: Moment of Truth follows main character Strogov's return to the agency from his previous missions and his new assignment to off more high-ranking Nazis and commit all kinds of espionage after infiltrating their bases.

What We Saw
I played an early mission that involved stealing a uniform, stealing a car and then going to three different points on a Nazi base located somewhere in the woods to obtain plans for some kind of Nazi attack.

How Far Along Is It?
The game is due out in late July.

What Needs Improvement?
Mission Should Auto-Fail If You Hose Yourself: Several times during this mission I would botch my first kill and be unable to steal a uniform. I found that it's impossible to complete the mission without that uniform and that there was no other way to obtain a uniform – but the level wouldn't fail me out unless I actually got shot or blown up. I asked if this was a bug and was told that it wasn't – so in other words, you could hose an entire mission in the first five minutes and not actually know it until you got shot or blown up. That's harsh.

Not A Lot Of Cues: I had infiltrated the base successfully and was looking for the kitchen to steal a chef's outfit. However, there was no map to tell me where the kitchen was. Also, there were no audio cues to alert me to the fact that I'd wandered into the wrong building – until after all the Nazis started screaming and shooting at me.

What Should Stay The Same?
Map Overlay Mode: The map the game provides players tells you where you are, where you target is and where all the enemies are looking. The map can be hidden, if you prefer the challenge – or you can move it from a mini corner view to a transparent overlay that covers the screen. It's very convenient and particularly helpful to navigating the massive levels.

Lots of Options: You can chloroform people, shoot them with myriad guns, garrote them or just plain shank them en route to your objective. You can also choose not to kill people if you're feeling magnanimous – a choice that not all spy games grant. Though obviously this goes out the window if you primary objective is an assassination.

Level of Detail In Disguises: When I managed to steal a uniform, I was impressed to find that Nazi soldiers would know I was an imposter simply by seeing my character carry the wrong gun. I was sort of sad to part with my shotgun, but if it's in the name of realism, I count it as a plus.

Final Thoughts
To really appreciate Death to Spies 2, I'd say you'd have to have played the first one. Most of the tweaks to the interface and general improvement in gameplay and graphics were made in response to requests from the Death to Spies community. Even so, however, there is a solid stealth game here that I think people will appreciate. People like me who got burned by Velvet Assassin.

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.

While that may be enough to sell you on the World War II era game, the publisher's proclamation that Velvet Assassin "excels in its ability to make players feel something more than just gameplay" might just send you into a tizzy.

Interestingly, nowhere in the press release announcing the game's imminent release—it ships to retailers on April 30th—is the word "stealth" mentioned. Sure, "clandestine acts" are mentioned, as is Violette's need to "sneak her way into heavily guarded Nazi strongholds" but one might think the S-word is passe!

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.

Drugs in video games don't often fly in Australia. For a while there, THQ — the Aussie distributor — had serious worries that Velvet Assassin would be banned, since they couldn't really take the morphine out, or make-believe it's something else like "magic awesome juice." Even worse, the way morphine affects Violette is far from historically accurate (see below).

"But, no," says Aubrey Norris, Velvet Assassin product manager. "We were surprised we didn't have any issues [with the ratings board]. They rated it like any other game." Norris said it was "a profound victory" for developer Replay Studios — they got away with something Fallout 3 couldn't. "We put something controversial out... and we stuck to our guns." Or rather, syringes.

The way morphine works in the World War II era is like bullet-time: the heroine, Violette Summer, can shoot up morphine to get by tense situations where she would otherwise be shot full of bullet holes. When this happens, she appears in her hospital nightgown, the Nazis move super-slow and Violette goes ninja on them with a knife while what looks like rose petals or droplets of blood drift by in a soft haze.

Oh yeah. Totally historically accurate.

EA head-honcho John Riccitiello announced that the game was going to be delayed at the beginning of the month saying that the game needed "a better launch window and more time for longer lead marketing."

He was also concerned that the game was initially set to launch into "a very cluttered, price reduced, excess inventory channel both in North America and Europe in a heavily competitive environment."

Now it looks like their main competition will be The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, Madworld and Velvet Assassin.

But what does the executive producer of the game think about all of this? He's so relaxed he oozes quotes about how wonderful his title is.

"The Godfather II is taking the open-world genre in an entirely new direction by combining the furious combat of acting like a mobster, with the strategic gameplay of thinking like a Don," says Hunter Smith, Executive Producer for The Godfather II. "As game makers, when we looked at what lies at the heart of the Godfather universe, we discovered a game focused around organized crime. The Corleones and all the other families schemed and fought to gain access and control of different territories, so that they could control the flow of money in those areas. This underlying battle cloaked secrecy is what The Godfather II and mafia life is all about, and we wanted players to be in control as a Don and make those strategic decisions to lead their families to success."

What Is it?
Velvet Assassin is a third-person heavily stealth focused PC and Xbox 360 game from Reply Studios. The story follows Violette Summer, a World War II spy who's actually in a coma in a hospital. You're sort of re-living her past events in her mind trying to piece her story back together.

What We Saw
The first two introductory levels for the Xbox 360 on the New York Comic-Con floor. The demo itself took between 15 and 20 minutes to complete.

How Far Along Is it?
The demo was from an alpha build. The game is coming out April 14th for the Xbox 360 and PC.

What Needs Improvement
Gunplay: Aiming and shooting can be a hassle. While I was told they're still making some tweaks for the final game, it seems like it should be an entire overhaul. Violette aims slower than a jar of molasses and it's very hard to aim specific areas of enemies.

Stealth Positions: For a stealth game, there sure aren't a whole lot of options. Violette can only crouch and crouch-run. You can't lie down fully, hug walls, or even crawl.

What Should Stay The Same?
Glow: Violette will have an outer blue-ish glow emit from her as she nears cover. This adds a nice visual touch and will help stop you from constantly thinking if you're in someone's detection line.

Realism: You will die. A lot. You only get a few hits before you drop and most close-range attacks kill you instantly. Don't expect to charge at the enemy and live.

Environments: The environments in this early demo were really full and lush looking. Lots of great color and dynamic lighting can be seen through each area.

Final Thoughts?
There aren't a ton of heavy stealth focus games made anymore. The Velvet Assassin levels I played weren't very complex and more pretty straightforward. Hopefully the final game sees more variety in the way you can approach sneaking around and taking out enemy guards rather than being forced down one path.

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.

SouthPeak is showing off a wide variety of titles at the NYCC this year, from the cute and cuddly Roogoo Twisted Towers! for the Wii and Roogoo Attack! for the DS, to more serious fare like the anime-inspired action adventure X-Blades and the futuristic military first-person shooter Section 8. There'll be public demos, a signing with Ninjatown creator Shawn Smith, and an X-Blades tournament where players can win a rare figurine of the game's main character, Ayumi.

While all of that is nice, the most popular attraction SouthPeak is bringing is most likely going to be Melinda Cohen, the model and in-game voice talent for their upcoming Nazi-shooter Velvet Assassin. You can keep your scantily-clad anime girls. A tough-as-nails special agent in bloody lingerie wins every time.

Replay Studios, making sure they don't sensationalize World War II, says their upcoming game will give gamers one of the first "true-to-life experiences" by casting strong, yet normal woman "Violette Summer" and her sensible, though leather-heavy, wardrobe.

From day one the developers at Replay Studios knew they didn’t want to simply sensationalize one of the most tragic wars in human history, but to give gamers one of the first true-to-life experiences. An integral part of that mission was to provide players with an intriguing view of the war by portraying a strong, yet normal woman, not only in physique - but also in the reality of her abilities. Violette is a woman who has lost everything dear to her and now has but one goal – to disrupt and destroy the Nazi regime. Completely alone behind enemy lines, Violette has to do whatever it takes to complete her missions with what she has on hand. Everything Violette has must have a meaning and a use, including her clothing. Depending on the mission, Violette has a few sets of clothing that she can use to her advantage.

Pilot Outfit - Violette’s mainstay is her standard brown leather jacket and blue canvas cargo pant set. While not exactly all the rage in Milan, this is a very likely outfit of the times; providing the wearer with the storage of cargo pockets, durability of canvas and toughness of the leather. This outfit gives Violette a solid set of threads to get by with. There isn’t too much to be said for these duds, but they get the job done.

Leather Sneaking Suit - The all-leather suit gives Violette a slight edge in darkness. For obvious reasons she’s able to blend in with the shadows much better in this suit. Made of supple leather, this is the ideal outfit for Violette, with the tough, yet soft feel of the leather offering her great flexibility in both combat and stealth.

Nazi Officer Uniform – As the old saying goes, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em! Isn’t it funny how they never seem to find the things right under their noses? With one quick wardrobe change, Violette takes on the Nazi Officer uniform and can easily infiltrate enemy ranks. The minute Violette dons the uniform, she takes on the persona of a Nazi officer, walking and saluting to keep the other soldiers completely fooled. As long as Violette doesn’t have any close face-to-face encounters and doesn’t behave suspiciously, she should be able to fool any soldiers she comes upon.

Night Dress – This outfit is completely unsuited to any of the exploits that Violette will undertake, but that’s the point. The entirety of Velvet Assassin is actually a flashback, with Violette remembering her efforts while in a coma. Whenever players get into a tight spot in the game, they can go into Morphine Mode which simulates Violette getting an injection of the drug from her nurse to calm her down as she lives out the horrific memories of war in her violent dreams. When this happens, the action slows down and the world around her becomes more of a dreamscape, and whatever Violette was wearing is temporarily exchanged with the nightie she’s garbed in at the hospital.

Naturally, you can’t get through the whole game injecting yourself with morphine – there are only so many syringes you can find in a level. The morphine bullet-time is mostly just a way to get you out of trouble when all else fails (and it is not so effective if more than one guy sees you). The developer has other interesting ways to kill people in mind for the player – such as the taint-stab (yes, taint-stab), the skull-shank, and the ever-popular “sneak up, pull pin on Nazi’s grenade, sneak away, boom!” attack.

You play Velvet Assassin as Violette Summer, who’s not really Violette Szabo from the real-life Allied spy corps, mostly because the daughter of the murdered spy didn’t sign off on the project. Developer Replay Studios did try to entice Tania Szabo into at least seeing the game, they say, but she just wasn’t interested.

Maybe it’s for the best – Violette Szabo died horribly; how fun can a game be if you know you’re going to end up raped and executed at the end? With Violette Summer, there’s some ambiguity as to what happens because she narrates the gameplay as a flashback from a hospital bed. She could be dying, she could be sick, she could be captured – we won’t know up until the very end when Violette finishes her story.

Thus, during the “flashbacks,” if Violette screws up and is about to be caught, the game allows you to shoot up morphine and run around in a hospital nightie – it’s not that she botched her mission, she’s just misremembering how it went and she needs a shot of the good stuff to recall exactly how it happened.

Gameplay is meant to be stealth, not action – so if you’re playing “the right way,” you ought not to be running and gunning. I’m not even sure you could get by in this game doing that because Violette dies after like three shots and there don’t seem to be that many ammo caches throughout the levels.

There are plenty of opportunities to increase your stealth, though. As you crouch, creep, or run (if you’re feeling bold) through levels, you’ll come across areas where you can affect the environment to up your chances of going undetected or of scoring an awesome stealth kill. For example, I crept into a hallway lined with floodlights. The blue tinge around Violette’s body faded, telling me I’d lost my stealth on account of being in the light. I could have risked it and run down the hallway because there wasn’t a Nazi in the way – but running creates noise, which can attract nearby Nazis and I could hear one whistling to himself somewhere nearby. So instead, I followed the cable running from the floodlight back behind me to a control panel. I pressed the action button, which shut off the light and then snuck down the hallway.

At the end, there was a door. I peeked through the keyhole and spotted another Nazi – but he wandered away into another room, leaving the radio (uh… gramophone? Whatever it was…) turned on. I snuck into the room and waited for him to come back so I could stab him without his buddies seeing (and hide his body – if the NPCs see bodies, they’re on to you), but he never reappeared. The PR rep gently suggested I try screwing with the radio and sure enough, an option appeared to let me shut it off. As soon as I did, the Nazi in the other room swore and started walking back into the room, swearing about the cheap thing being on the fritz. I took my chance and taint-stabbed him, dragging the body under a work table before creeping into the next room for my next kill.

After playing through that one level, my biggest beef was that if you dragged a body while crouching, you automatically stood up after letting go of the body. So you had to press another button to re-crouch; not very efficient. Other than that, obvious gripes about not having all the dialog recorded yet and Violette’s box-pushing animation being a little too sexy to be practical, I was actually pretty pleased with my experience.

But Velvet Assassin didn’t stop there for me. We went on to try the Warsaw ghetto level and I got a chance to examine the second thing that stuck with me: the visual style. Now, the build I saw was still early alpha, so textures weren’t all there and lighting wasn’t finished – but even with the kinks, I got a real sense of the “dynamic lighting” Replay Studios is so proud about. It was especially apparent when comparing the Warsaw level to the intro level in the French countryside.

Groups of levels are set in locales which look and feel distinct from one another and different from what you’d see in real life. The architecture is somewhat realistic (the developer got a hold of old aerial photos of Warsaw to recreate as much of the pre-bombed city as they could), but the lighting and coloring in each level creates a distinct sense of atmosphere. The French countryside had a lot of orange colors in it, creating a tense, cautious feeling. The later Warsaw level had more reds and blacks – evoking a sense of horror at the atrocities of war.

That was the biggest thing that struck me as I played Velvet Assassin: Replay Studios, a German developer, is not pulling any punches when it comes to representing the horrors of Nazi occupied territory. They’re not being over the top with the violence, or reducing the enemies to mindless hate-killers with bad dialog. Subtle scenes and story exposition hidden in levels (letters in drawers, NPC dialog, etc.) simply remind you that 1) you’re in one of the worst wars in recent history and 2) the bad stuff being done is being done by other people with families – people you’ve got to kill to succeed in your mission.

The Warsaw level was particularly hardcore. As I crept through the deserted streets strewn with furniture that had been thrown from windows as last-ditch attempts at barricade the roads, flashes in darkened windows and distant pops of gunfire and screams told me that the Nazis were still rooting through the town, looking for survivors and killing them. I turned a corner and came upon an execution ground – the blood still bright red on the brick walls, the bodies of women and children slumped against them with their hands tied behind their backs.

War is hell. William T. Sherman wasn’t kidding.

The moody feel to the levels adds a layer of emotional depth to Velvet Assassin that I wasn’t expecting to see in a Gamecock game. Not to diss on the publisher – but when I think of Gamecock, the last thing I think of is “serious war story.” But Gamecock says Velvet Assassin is very much a Gamecock game because of its uniqueness; and they’ll do what it takes to nurture out-of-left-field games like this, presumably even after being bought by SouthPeak Interactive.

That’s why we won’t be seeing a demo for Velvet Assassin, sadly. The developer wants to use that time to keep on polishing the game. And Velvet Assassin is going to need it, if some of the subtler stuff is going to get fixed.

At present, there are gameplay mechanics that don’t quite work or aren’t integrated well into the game. For example, there’s a sort of RPG element where you can find hidden items in a level, thus earning XP. You can spend the XP on buffing your stealth skills or your gun accuracy and stuff – but the developer says the buffs won’t make gameplay too different and they don’t require players to complete these “side quests.” So in other words, it’s a cool idea that doesn’t exactly have a place in the game yet – something you’d definitely want to fix or cut before release.

I’m cautiously optimistic about this game. It probably won’t be the prettiest game on the market and there really isn’t much to the game besides sneaking and stabbing – no code-cracking mini-games or super cool gadgets (definitely not a Splinter Cell clone). Honestly, Velvet Assassin feels like it has more stealth than action – so you’ll spend a lot of time waiting. The steep punishments for being impatient (attracting more than two Nazis, getting sniped from two buildings over because you weren’t crouching, missing little details like the floodlight control box) might also get on a lot of people’s nerves. But the game takes its subject matter seriously, it doesn’t over-sex the heroine, and stealth is a genre of gameplay that usually gets crammed into shooters or the odd RPG segment instead of taking center stage. Even Hitman, Thief or other stealth-action games sometimes give into the “peer-pressure” of shooter action games instead of going all out on stealth.

Velvet Assassin ships sometime in “early 2009.”

Replay has pushed back the game's European release to early 2009.

This is ostensibly to bring the launch in line with the US release but will of course have the handy side-effect of extending the development time by a couple of months and avoiding the Christmas rush.

Velvet Assassin slips into early 2009 [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.

The game includes a dozen levels and a variety of weapons and stealth gadgets.

"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."