So what do you get if you stick Solid Snake, Sam Fisher, Lara Croft and Joanna Dark in a room and they got all err… ummm… mixed up? Rogue Ops, that's what. But wait, don't run away, Rogue Ops is different - yes it's a third person shooting and stealth adventure, but it has a wiggly-bottomed blonde heroine, and that clearly makes it stand out from the others…

But wait - I may have sounded dismissive, but RO ain't bad at all - nice, tidy graphics and well-drawn, if cartoony in-game characters. The plot sees our beleaguered heroine, poor Nikki Connors loses her secret agent husband and child to murderous terrorist organisation Omega 19 - but naturally she doesn't lie down and take it, she joins her hubby's unit and goes looking for revenge.

   

The missions are broken up into levels and stealth is nearly always to the fore - only much later in the game do Nikki's "gloves come off" and do you get to kick some arse (well, shoot it anyway). You'll be required to complete missions with no witnesses, or hide bodies wherever possible; the game has a similar "alert" sequence to MGS but the guards seem a lot more persistent and less inclined to just wander off - sometimes a mission will degrade into a state that's impossible to retrieve, and combined with the viciously accurate enemy guards you will be replaying a lot of sequences over and over (and Over) again. Which is RO's first problem; you can't save just anywhere - and some of the restart points seem a long way apart, divided by extremely tricky passages of play that you really don't want to have to repeat too many times.

Nikki's life as a special agent starts off easy as pie with a nice simple tutorial level that teaches you the basic controls and actions. Whenever you can interact with an object or scenery, an icon will appear as you look at it, and if you press 'A' Nikki will perform the relevant action - simple. The trouble with this system is that if you're used to Tomb Raider, MGS2 or Splinter Cell then you're used to finding out what you can do for yourself, and Nikki's icons feel excessively helpful - like you're being led by the hand. The other problem is that, despite this system, sometimes it seems tricky to get her to activate an icon. The required positioning is stupidly fussy at times and you will get Nikki killed while you're fiddling her into the right place to press a switch or open a door. It's intensely annoying and I suspect exactly what the icon system was trying to avoid. Naturally you use the R trigger to shoot/throw weapon, and L trigger look/aim. Weapon and gadget selection is done with the D-Pad or you can use the Xbox headset to change weapons and gadgets with voice commands - a nice touch that works well, but you have to press the white button while you speak, and we found ourselves using the normal method simply because it's quicker.

   

Nikki has a typical selection of secret agent gear to play with; her weapons include her faithful silenced pistol, a crossbow and a sniper rifle with an awful scope that has a good zoom but appears to be made out of beer bottle glass. Gadgets like a thermal vision visor, grappling hook, adrenaline boost, remote fly cam, active camouflage and various others have all been done before but seldom better used. The lighting effects are particularly good too, although the shadows aren't rendered in real time and don't seem to be an integral part of the gameplay à la MGS2 and Splinter Cell.

The disappointments come when you find that the grappling hook can only be used at certain obvious points that twinkle at you like stars, and the adrenaline boosts and active camouflage last only fleeting seconds on a battery charge - you don't really get time to enjoy them. On the other hand, the fly cam is well-implemented, fun to use and vital to the completion of some tasks.

   

Nikki has close combat skills and can sneak up on an unaware enemy and pick his pocket or kill him with a lethal blow. This death move is performed by quickly following an on-screen direction press combo within a tight time limit, and can be tough to accomplish at first. Fail and the enemy will turn and beat her to the floor, which is where another oddity pops up - although Nikki can deal out a lethal blow when the enemy is unaware, she has no spin kick or punch, and the only thing you can do is draw a weapon quickly or simply leg it.

RO looks good, plays well, and has some complex levels and genuinely clever, brainteaser type puzzles (although many levels are of the relatively straightforward sneak 'n' shoot kind). Combined with the wicked enemy AI this is a game that you won't be finishing too quickly (the end boss is a real stinker to beat). Rogue Ops is possibly just the thing to keep you on your toes until MGS3 and/or Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow. Be warned that the tough difficulty level may frustrate though - neither Lara, Snake nor Sam ever had it this tough.