Visually, Velvet Assassin is a work of art. The setting of the game is in the fevered mind of a beautiful and dangerous young secret agent, Violette Szabo, as she lies in a hospital bed, severely injured and working her mind around the very violent missions she's been in that got her to this point. Since the story that is unfolding is made of frail and uncertain memories, the visuals are not necessarily "realistic"; instead, they are often "surrealistic" - no less detailed, but perhaps with a haze here or with colors dropped almost to a monochromatic red or blue for effect.

When Violette uses a shot of morphine (she's actually in a hospital bed, remember?), there is an interesting change to the visuals; everything goes sort of reddish-sepia tone, and Violette finds herself not in fatigues, but in a hospital gown, with a white haze and cherry blossom petals falling all around. It's a beautiful visual effect and, while in this mode, Violette has essentially "stopped time." This allows Violette to make "adjustments" in her memory, to reposition herself, if you will. You, playing as Violette Szabo, will most often use this feature to get out of a sticky situation and behind an enemy, where you can make a quick kill while they're "frozen."

If the visuals are surreal, then the sound effects and music are simply realistic and submersive. In a way, the sound has to work doubly hard to make the game believable, so that players won't question some of the stranger visual effects in the game. The sound in Velvet Assassin pulls this off beautifully, however. From the sound of enemies humming as they do their patrols to the sound of you grunting in your gas mask when you're shot with it on, the sound effects sound realistic and help to plant you firmly in the game. The scores that you will notice the most will be those frenetic pieces that build tension when the enemies have spotted you and are on high alert, but the attention to the sound and music is a nice change from the ordinary.

The attention that was paid to the visual style and the sound effects was not mere window dressing; light and sound can be deadly in Velvet Assassin. If you accidentally turn on your flashlight when hiding in shadows, you will be seen. If you make a noise while hiding in shadows, you will be seen. And, with the number of hits you can take in Velvet Assassin and the amount of ammunition you're going to get, you'll spend a lot of time hiding in the shadows. A LOT.

Velvet Assassin is a stealth game, much like Metal Gear. However, Violette Szabo is not your average videogame heroine. If she takes, oh, say, about two shots from a gun, she's wasted. Gone. End of the line. The problem with that is, usually when someone is able to shoot you successfully once, they're most likely in a pretty good position to fire a second time.

On a given mission, you won't get much in the way of firepower. Most of what you have you'll have to pick up in the field. Furthermore, unlike most war games out there, you can't simply pick up guns off of your enemies. You'll need to get the out of lockers. Why? I don't know. This seemed counter-intuitive and really was an aggravation on multiple occasions, actually, about every time that I found myself with three rounds or less which, somehow, seemed like most of the game. This aspect of the game causes your available ammunition to be severely limited, forcing you to think creatively and make extensive use of "stealth kills."

Stealth kills are an interesting feature of Velvet Assassin. In order to execute a stealth kill, you must sneak up behind an enemy without them spotting you. Once you get within range, the screen will fade into a red monochromatic treatment and a prompt will pop up. The typical one is simply "Kill," which is done by pressing the "A" button. This will cause Violette to make short work of her enemy, typically with a couple of stabs, but occasionally with a pistol whip or even a gunshot to the head to finish him off. These moves are not selectable, but are, instead, simply animated sequences. It's also worth mentioning that the visuals of the animated sequence don't have an effect on the gameplay. For example, when Violette delivers a single shot to the head at the end of a death sequence, it doesn't actually deplete your ammunition at all. This is nice, especially when you're staring at your last three bullets. Another option that is very fun, but only occasionally available, is to pull the pin on a grenade on a patrolling enemy's belt. Do it correctly and they won't realize it and they'll continue on their way, blowing up seconds later - and, hopefully, taking a few friends with them at the same time.

If you step back and look at the gameplay in Velvet Assassin, it's greatly a puzzle game at its heart. You have to figure out how to position yourself to get past sentries or to take them down, but there's a lot of times that you'll be sneaking forward then tucking into an alcove, or simply watching from the shadows, trying to determine the exact timing of an enemy soldier on their rounds.

As you play, you will gain experience. Some of this experience will be from meeting objectives, while others will be from finding collectible items. For each multiple of 1000 experience points you gain, you will be awarded a star that can be used to upgrade your character. You have three things that can be upgraded, each of which start with zero stars and which can be upgraded up to five stars. The three factors are Morphine, which increases how long the morphine state will last when you use it, Stealth, which is actually used to increase your speed of movement when sneaking around (crouched), and Strength, which increases the amount of damage you can take before you die. The best choice is heavily dependant on your play style, so choose wisely.

Velvet Assassin is the kind of game you'll keep coming back to... mainly because you'll keep getting frustrated and throwing your controller across the room. However, when you cool off and think about the area, you'll start thinking about another approach at the situation and you might come back and try something new.

Velvet Assassin is a hard game. You have to sneak around with nearly no health and no ammunition, and hope that your enemies will stand still, facing away from you, so that you can get a shot to stealth kill them. Further more, if you don't drag the body off into the shadows, another enemy is likely to see it and alert others, and then everybody's on high alert and looking for you-know-who. Get sloppy and word gets around... sometimes it gets personal.

The thing to remember in Velvet Assassin is that, for the most part, there isn't a time limit. Take all the time you need to determine the best approach, the perfect spot to snipe an enemy or where to hide the body. Most of the time, the only time limit imposed is the threat of an approaching enemy patrolling an area, which leads me to tip two...

Clear out an area. Once you've properly cleared an area, those areas tend to stay cleared, at least for the most part. Enemies can come through doorways, so don't think that you've got an enemy trapped on the other side of a door. However, once you've killed all the enemies in an area, they typically don't get replaced with fresh faces. Well, typically, anyway. It can happen, at times.

The next important thing to remember is that Velvet Assassin is, in a very big way, a game of limited asset management. You have very little health, very little ammo, very few weapons. When you find a medikit, it's not going to fill your health a lot. If your health is full, you'll want to remember where it is and be able to return to it later, because you can't carry them with you. The same thing goes for morphine shots.

Finally, practice makes perfect. And, the cost of practice depends on how long ago you saved. Velvet Assassin automatically saves at certain important checkpoints in the game. If you just got past one of these points (the screen indicates that it's saving), then you can run around foolishly and waste a morphine shot just to see the area quickly. Then, get killed and start over as you were at your last save-point. If you've made a lot of progress but you haven't yet reached a new save point, you have to be careful. If you get killed, you're back at square one - which can be back before a good bit of progress. This is when you start sweating a bit and when a mistake that kills Violette is most likely to cause you to hurl your gamepad across the room. Spectators, consider yourself warned.

For the most part, Velvet Assassin is a work of art. Artistic visuals and sound, with innovative gameplay elements, such as the ability to peek through keyholes or pull grenade pins from the belt of a patrolling guard as he walks by, really make all the difference in the world. The morphine element that gives an explanation for what amounts to a version of "bullet time," is also a nice treatment. Velvet Assassin has the potential to be a really great game.

There are, sadly, a few things that hold Velvet Assassin back. The first (and most obvious) is the frustration level. This is actually a collection of factors. Violette's frailness is one of the larger causes of anguish; "bang, bang" and you're dead. Realistic, perhaps, but annoying when you keep dying. The scarce ammunition was probably completely intentional, as a way to force the player to focus on the stealth aspects of the game, but the fact that you can't pick up and utilize weaponry from fallen enemies and that you have to swap your handgun out if you find a new one is more than a little frustrating.

Another point of contention, however, seems like it could have been fixed easily. The distance between some of the save-points (as measured in actions, not necessarily distance) is frustratingly long, causing you to have to start a section over again when you get killed, adding insult to injury.

There are also a few bugs in Velvet Assassin. Not huge ones, and not necessarily more than would be in other games, but, again, this isn't like most other games; you don't have much to shoot with and you can't take many hits and still walk away. So, it should be understandable, then, how important the "hiding on the other side of a door and peeking through it" could be. It should also be readily obvious how detrimental it is to have a door appear to have shut, when the enemies see it as being wide open. This happened to me at one point, and as I went back to a door and peeked through it, the enemies saw me and walked through the door, shooting at me. That would be one of the deaths that made me turn the game off for a while.

Other minor issues occured on occasion, such as when I dragged a body into the shadows and then dropped it, only to have it fall flat, but hovering about three feet off the ground, at the height of a nearby crate. I had to grab the body, move slightly and drop the body again before the patrolling soldier came walking by. Talk about tense times!

For the most part, however, the game is fairly bug free, though frustrating. If you like artsy games and you're into stealth games or games about World War II, you should check out Velvet Assassin. It can be an acquired taste, but if you're into solving puzzling situations, Velvet Assassin can be fun, as well as frustrating.