<\/td><\/tr>I set up the controls. What is it with console ports? Do they just choose to omit a couple of keyboard keys at random? I always use numpad DEL for crouch \/ sneak, and to Velvet Assassin that key doesn’t exist. On the upside, I can use numpad enter, which most console ports manage to screw up. Still, DEL is the key I usually assign to STEALTH MODE, and I’m betting that is a thing I’ll be doing a lot in this game. Now I’ll have over a decade of muscle memory telling me to hit the wrong button when I want to sneak. Didn’t you guys have to USE a keyboard at some point during making this game? How do these basic details escape you?<\/p>\n
The opening cutscene is right out of lazy storytelling 101: Voice-over exposition with montage images. It makes no effort to tell me who the main character is or establish the stakes. Okay, it’s a given that we’re playing a WWII game and the player is going to be predisposed to wanting the Allies to win, but it seems that an opportunity was missed here to make things personal or to hook the player with a few interesting questions. Violette’s voice is well-delivered, but clinical and detached. This may be appropriate for the character, but it makes the introduction that much more sterile. This is supposed to the the opening hook, and it’s basically got the same level of emotional investment as the opening of Wolfenstein 3D. The only reason we care at all is because we’re against Nazis and Nazis are bad.<\/p>\n
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| France is very yellow this time of year!<\/td><\/tr><\/table>The Germans have built this base at the bottom of a very narrow box canyon. I understand that we need boundaries around the gameworld, but these cliff walls are really<\/em> tall and smothering. I realize the need to communicate to the player “you can’t go this way”, but does it need to be this much of a hack? This is particularly bad given the premise that we’re somewhere in the “French countryside”. Graphics have matured well past the point where we need sheer walls all around us to control draw distance. <\/p>\n Obligatory: The graphics are beautiful. <\/p>\n Our first victim is a drunk guard, who is staggering in place and mumbling to himself. Memories of the original Thief come flooding back, because our first kill in that game was also a drunk guard, facing the wrong way to detect intruders. I perform a stealth kill, and am astounded to discover this is not a quicktime event. Quicktime events are the new jumping puzzles of game design, and I am glad to see they left them out here.<\/p>\n I spot two guards in the distance. I stop to see what they’re up to. They don’t move. I wait. Still no movement. I wait longer. Finally I relent and inch in a bit closer. Suddenly they awake from their catatonic state and begin talking. They have a short conversation and then one of them stands with his back to me while the other one goes on a very mechanical patrol. In these positions, they are of course guarding the base facing INWARD, with their backs facing the outside world. Well, the non-base area of the box canyon, anyway. <\/p>\n The guy with his back to me is standing at one side of a bridge, and there is no other way around. It’s pretty clear what I have to do here. I slit his throat, drag his body into the weeds, and then hurry across the bridge. Guard #2 walks up, takes no notice of the fact that #1 has somehow mysteriously vanished, and turns around and heads back the other way. I try to sneak up on him but botch the timing. I really wanted to completely ghost this area, so I let him kill me and start again.<\/p>\n The next time through, I knife #1 and hurry across the bridge, leaving the dead body in the open. #2 is thick, but even he’s smart enough to notice this. However, instead of searching in the hiding places near the body he makes a beeline for me in the weeds – thirty meters away<\/em>. He dashes headlong into the darkness instead of searching his way in. He stops juuust short of me and begins searching. This would be a tense moment if his cheating weren’t so clumsy and blatant. He wanders around in the weeds somewhat randomly, while keeping his weapon perfectly aimed in my direction. After searching for all of ten seconds he shrugs and goes back on patrol. I knife him and move on.<\/p>\n |