Velvet Assassin, and Time to Sexism
So an idea that fell out of my head recently given my constant unending criticism of gaming was the idea of Time to Sexism.
Sexism is the gaming industry is endlessly rampant, from gamers being bastions of misogyny to the studios themselves not respecting or admitting that women are present in the industry.
So now I want to approach talking about games under the idea of Time to Sexism, or how long before a games studio lost the ability to do anything but awful clichéd garbage. Some games do well on the Time to Sexism front, but most do not.
The game I want to cover is one that’s been sitting in my Steam queue for a while, Velvet Assassin, from 2009. Velvet Assassin is meant to be a stealth-em-up set in World War 2, inspired by a real-to-life secret agent.
The cover is a bit on the questionable side but I gave it a pass as I was missing the delight of Nazi-killing action, which this game promised in spades.
The first major warning signs were the intro video, where we were treated to a slow pan over the protagonist laying in bed in a nightgown. Okay, not the greatest, but … almost … topical. I guess.
Moving forward into the actual mission with Nazis sneaking and stabbing therein and delightful. As I was playing the first mission tutorial aspects were in abundance, up to the point where I was instructed to use morphine as a time-slowing agent, so I could run across a courtyard and kill a guard.
I had to pause and think about that. Morphine, to run faster and take down a guard. Okay. I guess, though I’m not comfortable here.
So I Pushed X To Slow Time and my avatar, instead of wearing tight leathers to run across this courtyard SUDDENLY she was running across the field in a night-gown.
Revealing and flapping, completely in the sense of “hey man-children, check this out.”
At that point I quit the game and uninstalled it. “Awful” did not begin to cover how disgusted I felt. But, this is pretty much par for the course, isn’t it?
Time to Sexism: 5 Minutes
Should you Play: By the gods, no.