God, I remember following this title for quite some time. It's interesting that after being filled with an old volatile gas called “hype” someone 9 times out of 10 comes along with the Pin of Disappointment to deflate your sorry self back down to the nominal plane of reality where reliable titles are allowed to roam free and graze to contentment. This is of course made worse by the fact I love stealth titles. Hitman, Splinter Cell, Metal Gear Solid, to name a few, were great examples of how a player interacts with their environment and the obstacles in their way. OK, so maybe MGS had its tongue firmly planted in cheek, but it was 'solid' in doing so.

This has nothing to do with what budget the games given as I can certainly understand putting all your focus into a few elements of gameplay as the foundation and then resting the rest of the game on top – albeit precariously at times. The film industry in general is a massive culprit for making things look pretty now, without actually having much else to make a film with. A few special effects here, some hotty totty getting her top... ee... off and we walk out of the cinema with our eyes stinging but our minds wondering if the movie has started and is there any more popcorn thanks very much.

Velvet Assassin is a 3rd-person stealth-based linear do-what-you're-told type of game where you play some broad lying on a hospital bed, reminiscing about how she got there through a series of unfortunate events. Like killing people, and being shot at to name 2. She's an assassin, and for once the 2 lots of “ass” in that word gave someone a rabid excuse to spend the entire development time moulding hers into whichever costume she's wearing. Seeing as you have to follow her around for the most part, I can't say this is a bad thing, but quite possibly the main good thing about the game. In which case we should've just stopped with “3rd-person” when describing this game.

You see, others have done it better. Not only better, but they got their game out the door when the milkman was still eyeing up this games mother. If I were to start describing this game by first saying “remember Hitman?” and then proceeding to take every facet of that game and make it lamer, we'd probably have a good head start on what's fundamental wrong with this game. Let's do the walk through...

I start a level and I see someone I have to kill. I creep through the shadows to where he's standing. He turns, but I think “there's no chance he can draw his weapon in time with me inches from putting my trusty knife in his eye”, so I run out. He shoots me dead. I'm not allowed to attack from the front.

I start the level and I see someone I have to kill. I creep through the shadows to where he's standing. He turns. I wait. He turns back. I creep up and kill-move his ass (not the donkey). Picking up the body I see a river, I move over to it to dump the body, I can't. It won't go into the river it keeps hitting invisible collision. His mate comes around the corner, sees me standing their like a right lemon and opens fire. I die.

I start the level and I see someone I have to kill. I shoot him in the head. His mate comes around the corner, I shoot him too. I forget the sodding bodies and get onto the next bit.

In short, this is what happened for the first couple of levels. You find yourself wanting to do things that have already been done in previous titles. You can't seriously say that a British assassin would only go into battle with one clip of ammo? Give the player lots of ammo, lots of weapons and let them choose how they use them – penalising them if they start walking around as if they were on the set of Scarface. If I'm using a disguise as a ruse, I want multiple disguises and I want to be able to use all my skills – not to have the game turn into some sort of “avoiding people's what this is all about” type of mode. If I want to hide a freakin' body, I should be able to dump it just about anywhere, not just tuck it around the corner and hope for the best.

The worst part is that the game actually looks pretty in places, and the general audio and subtitled German dialogue is pretty good – although the script was written by an American teenager. I very much doubt a Nazi would've ever said “Aww maaaan”. I say the “worst part” because it lulls you into a false sense of security and proceeds to roger you with a lack of gameplay dynamics, which is a shame.

It really had potential, but I'd say on the whole, grab yourself a copy of Hitman – any of them, and you'll have a better time.