Appearances can be deceptive. Just because something looks good does not mean that it’s fun to play with. An experience learned quite often in the past after a Saturday night on the town.

Cold War is the video game equivalent. At its heart it’s a stealth action adventure – similar in style to Splinter Cell. It features you as Matt Carter who has travelled to Moscow to uncover a conspiracy of international proportions. You see, Matt is an investigative reporter and the year is 1986. The game opens with you at the entrance to Lenin’s Mausoleum, your task to get inside.

This is a stealth game and as such you need get the obligatory movement speeds – it’s here that the first problem strikes. The slowest movement would be fine if the next speed actually felt faster. You go from a slow crawl, to walk, to “run like your dad” and the animation here is laughable. None of them feel really any faster and when you want to cover ground at speed you can’t help but feel like you are running in treacle.

The only “feature” the game pulls off with any grace is the X-Ray camera that you acquire early on. Using it you can look through walls and other solid objects and see what is on the other side – the graphical touches here are great. Pipes and wires in walls become visible and living creatures appear as skeletons. The X-Ray camera can also be used as a weapon or a tool. High bursts of radiation from it can set off explosives, destroy cameras or render people unconscious.