VELVET ASSASSIN

The story of Velvet Assassin is told from a flashback perspective, and introduces players to Violette Summer, a British secret agent who is frequently sent behind enemy lines. Unfortunately for her, the game starts out with a tragic turn of events: Violette has been badly injured and is trying to recover in a remote French hospital. As she lies in a coma, she 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, and it could have been told normally without the flashbacks, moving from one mission to the next. While this would change the morphine mechanic (which I'll get to later), it would make much more sense than the cluttered tale as it currently exists.