As its name implies,
The Diaries of Agent Silent Death largely focuses on stealth above all else. Jessica is an assassin, not the type to go in guns-blazing. To keep her lithe mobility to a maximum, she largely goes without body armor, choosing instead to eliminate her targets systematically, one-by-one. Apparently years of this kind of stuff have bestowed upon her the effects of the Constructor Harness, the ridiculous contraption that allowed Blazko to compress and flatten his body to the point where he could slip through enclosures and vents like human Silly Putty. But considering the exploitation angle that
The Freedom Chronicles is clearly going for, it’s easily hand-waved.
While I mostly enjoyed The Diaries of Agent Silent Death over its short runtime, it makes a couple of pretty serious missteps: one thematically and the other mechanically.
Considering the revenge plot that drives the stealth action, you’d think that each of these three missions would wrap up with over-the-top catharsis. These despicable men deserve creative deaths; it would increase the impact and elevate the natural emotional payoff that the story clearly attempts to cultivate. Nope. They all go down like the rest of them. How unsatisfying.
I’m not a fan of the final mission. This is partly due to its linear, restrictive level design, but it’s more due to the fact that it completely undermines itself. Most of The Diaries of Agent Silent Death can be completed in total stealth, but its final moments force Wolfenstein II’s run-and-gun playstyle. Compound the fact that I personally feel the gunplay is inferior to The New Order’s due to its poor balancing and punishing, arbitrary difficulty with the fact that Jessica can’t equip more than 40 armor at any given time, and it’s easy to understand why I believe this is a sour note to end on.