Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (Xbox)

The name of this game really is stealth, and therein lies the strategy behind the game.

If you are only into 1st person shooters like Quake, HalfLife, Unreal etc - blasting around with as many weapons as posible and blowing the hell out of everything then you may find this a bit slow.

Personally. I love this game.

The first thing that struck me was the graphics, they are extremely good. Not only are the textures / colours rendered very well but this game makes excellent use of ambient lighting techniques.

The things that struck me next were, fluidity of movement and type of movement / gameplay. This has to be the best game on the market for any platform for this.

You can walk, run, creep, climb, jump, jump against a wall and kick off to get over a higher obctacle than normal, jump up between two close walls and wait there while an enamy walks underneath you, hand over hand horizontally along ledges, shimmy along poles, rappel down wires, creep up behind enemies and either force them to tell you things or bop 'em over the head. Drag bodies out of the way so they will not be seen. Shoot weapons, pick locks and more.

All of these motions etc are covered in the tutorial and are pretty easy to pick up. I have not really noticed any problems with the camera angles, it swings round nice and automatically without getting stuck or needing nudging into the right position.

One of the main factors in the game is the environment itself. You have a light meter which shows you how much you are illuminated, thus allowing you to stick to the shadows where you are less likely to be seen. You can also pick up objects and throw them into another area to make enemies go and look there.

Sound is also very important:

1 - you can tell when enemies are nearby and where they are by listening carefully

2 - if you make too much noise - someone will hear you and come after you, this sometimes means avoiding walking on particular surfaces as different surfaces have different properties.

My one problem with the game is that occasionally the AI isn't too smart. Generally it is pretty good and your enemies come after you and don't stop.

However, sometimes it is just too easy to wait and they lose interest and forget about you.

You also have different aids, such as night vision goggles, IR etc. Using these at the right time is invaluable.

In short, the game itself is completely immersive and compelling, but, you do have to concentrate and plan your srategy. The gameplay is mission based and some of the missions are ridiculously difficult until you figure out how to get through (this can get a little frustrating at times).