Please give a warm welcome to the man who makes Solid Snake look as stealthy as a tap-dancing rhinocerous and Number 47 louder than a disgruntled football fan with a megaphone… give it up for Sam Fisher! Mr. Fisher?

Mr. Fisher, where are you? AAAH! Don't sneak up on me like that - you scared me half to death!

Splinter Cell features the sneakiest, stealthiest most silent and cunning gameplay you could ever hope to find. It is possible, if you're very careful, to make it through an entire mission without anyone ever seeing you. This makes a very welcome change of pace from your usual shooter, but if your back's against a wall then you've still got the firepower needed to wipe out your foes.

Being a Tom Clancy game, we get an intelligent and intriguing plotline that does not disappoint. You are Sam Fisher and you work for the NSA, but as far as the American government is concerned, you don't exist. A one-man team, your sub-dermal communicators allow you to keep in contact with your commander back at HQ and your primary function is to protect the rights and freedom of the American people at any cost. Our story begins with suspicious activity of a self-elected Georgian president and information comes to light that could lead to war. As the plot unfolds, the scale of the terrorist threat against the free world becomes clear and the importance of your missions increases with every new piece of intelligence you gather.

The game sees you infiltrating various locations with such missions as gathering data and intelligence, meeting contacts, spying on individuals, destroying equipment, even kidnapping or assassination. This might sound like any other game of its type, but there are a great number of things that puts Splinter Cell way ahead of the competition.

Firstly, it looks incredible. When you first play it, the quality of the graphics is astonishing. They might not look that amazing from screenshots you've seen, but I can assure you that when you see it in action, you won't be able to think of any other game that looks as slick. The attention to detail in the environments is amazing, from the coke cans and other litter on the ground to the official Microsoft screensaver on someone's PC! Each place you visit feels like a real location, with great detail and variety to buildings, trees and plants, the sky, cars, furniture, people and anything else you can think of. However, what really completes the atmosphere (and forms an integral part of the gameplay) is the incredible use of lighting and shadows. Never have you seen such realistic and extensive use of these effects; they look completely real. Your shadow stretches as you get further from a light source, going crooked as it passes over objects ahead of you. Everywhere that there's a light, you'll see that it only illuminates a certain area until the borders of the light fade into blackness.

As if this wasn't enough, the animation on Sam Fisher is the best I've ever seen. He walks, sneaks and runs with total realism. When he reaches the top of a ladder he gracefully hoists himself onto the platform above; when he climbs down a ladder he slides most of the way. He can climb up and down poles too, not to mention swing himself along horizontal pipes, which can be done either hand over hand with his legs swaying below, or holding onto it with arms and legs for extra stealth. He can do a very nifty double jump, by launching himself off a wall, which in narrow spaces ends with him holding himself up by doing the splits and using his legs to lodge himself firmly between the two walls! From this vantage point he can drop silently down behind a hapless guard who's just passed beneath him and grab him. When you grab a guard from behind, if you're armed you hold your pistol to his head, if not you hold his head with both hands, ready to snap his neck if he makes a noise. You can quietly back into a secluded area and then whack the guard over the back of the head. An unconscious or dead guard must be hidden in a dark and out of the way corner to avoid him being found - as you watch Sam bend down to hoist the body over his shoulders, walk steadily along and then carefully and noiselessly place him back on the ground again, you will be astounded at just how great it looks. Try going into gun mode whilst you're carrying a body and the results are very amusing - Sam throws off the body, which falls to the ground with a bump that sounds pretty painful! Every animation for Sam's many actions is incredibly detailed, smooth, flawless and ultra-realistic.

The sound effects are also outstanding - every action sounds completely realistic, from your footsteps on the various materials you walk on, to the sound of gunfire, a body falling to the floor or a glass bottle smashing. You can pick up coke cans and glass bottles that are left as litter, lying in the streets, and then throw them to distract your enemy. The sound of the coke can bouncing on the floor in particular is brilliant. This is also another great example of the kind of detail and thought put into the game, which allows so many different approaches in each situation. The voice acting and dialogue is very good too, with Sam Fisher sounding as gruff and tough as good old Master Chief. The music, which is used sparingly to preserve the realism, only serves to add to the atmosphere - when a guard hears or sees something and is looking for an intruder, a tense tune plays until he gives up, but if he starts shooting some faster paced music kicks in.

Considering how much I've praised the graphics and sound, you'll probably be pretty excited when I tell you that the gameplay is just as great. The emphasis is on stealth, but many elements come into play, all of which are tremendous fun, very satisfying and often quite nerve-wracking. This is not a shooting game, so please don't buy it expecting Medal of Honor or Ghost Recon style action. To my mind the gameplay in this is far more enjoyable than running around shooting everyone.

Sam is dressed all in black, making him as invisible as possible (his night vision goggle lenses and a device on his back glow green though - don't ask me why the enemy never sees them!) There is a stealth meter on the screen with an indicator that moves back and forth. At one end of the spectrum you're harder to spot than the invisible man in the dead of night, at the other you're lit up better than a large, pink, flashing neon sign that says "Intruder here!" As you move from the shadows into lit areas and back, you'll see the indicator moving back and forth - keep an eye on it as it's vital for remaining hidden.

It's not just about being lit up though, as even in the light guards won't get a good look at you if they're at a distance. They can also hear you too, so when you get fairly near a guard, you must go into sneak mode. In this mode you are crouched down and sneaking along on tiptoe without making a sound, but you can't move as quickly. This element creates one of the tensest parts of the game - attempting to sneak up on a guard and knock him out. The AI for the guards is excellent, however they do patrol set routes (as a real guard would) so if you watch them for a few moments, you can figure out roughly where their route is. They generally pause for a few seconds looking one way before turning around and walking back the way they came. You can actually get very close to a guard and remain unseen if you're in pitch darkness - and for extra stealth you can put your back to the wall, making it even harder to be spotted. When you attempt to sneak up on a guard it's very tense as you're never quite sure exactly when they're going to turn around and it feels so frustratingly slow as you sneak, step by step, closer and closer. Once you reach the guard you can grab him. If the mission requires it, you can interrogate someone at gunpoint in this way, knocking him out when you're finished with him. Then as I mentioned you must pick up and hide the body so other guards don't find him and raise the security level.

However, if you don't get there in time, or you move too fast and the guard hears you, he'll whirl around and shoot you on sight. The game is quite kind and your stealth suit must be armoured in some way, because you can take a few bullets before you die. You can also find and use medical kits to restore your health. If a guard sees or hears you but doesn't get a proper look, he'll go into alert mode - some suspenseful music plays and he'll shout "Who's there?" or "Come out with your hands up!" If you are able to retreat and not get spotted again, in a minute or so he'll decide he must have imagined it and go back to his regular patrol. Even if a guard starts shooting, he'll give up in a couple of minutes if he can't find you. On one level, I was watching a guard from a ladder in a manhole and as soon as he moved away, I came out onto the road. Unfortunately I didn't realise that another guard was stood right behind me. He started shooting, but I ducked behind some building materials and then ran and crouched behind their police jeep. As they ran around the area attempting to find me, I stayed motionless, praying they wouldn't find me (as on this level, you weren't allowed to kill anyone for fear of creating an international incident). They gave up just before they found me and then stood on the other side of the jeep, looking the away from my hiding place. From here I was able to sneak up and take out the first guard without the other one noticing, then the second one swiftly followed. Yes, I was smug about that recovery!

It's this kind of action and variety that makes this game so much fun to play - a level is never the same twice, you can play the same one over and over but each time different things will happen at different times (due mostly to your strategies and actions being different each time). This adds high replay value to the level, with the ultimate challenge being to get through without letting a single person even think they saw something (which is very tough to do). I don't want to make it sound like Sam has a boring time though - he doesn't. In fact, he has the greatest collection of gadgets ever assembled in a game.

Standard items include the lock pick and optic fibre. Picking locks is brilliant, as you have to do it yourself by wiggling the thumbstick in certain directions until each part of the lock is picked - it's a great idea and you really feel like you're picking the lock. It also puts a lot of pressure on you when you're attempting to pick a lock and can hear an approaching guard that is bound to see you any moment. A wave of relief washes over you when you manage to get through the door just in time. Sometimes you can find disposable lock picks (that take only a second to work) for those high-pressure situations. The optic fibre is ingenious - it's a mini camera in a wire and you can slip it under pretty much any door and get a good look at who or what is on the other side. This is so handy and you see it in night-vision, so it's useful for looking into a dark room too. Speaking of night-vision, your goggles have two awesome modes - night-vision where you can clearly see everything in a pitch black room (with light sources glaringly bright) or thermal, which allows you to more easily pick out guards from their body heat. The graphical effect for both views is absolutely amazing.

You have a silenced pistol, which is great for shooting out lights. You can shoot out as many lights as you want to, for moving through an area in total darkness - although the guards will become frightened and suspicious as the lights go out. You can also hug a wall and then poke your head around and use the pistol to take out security cameras before they can see you - a very handy and stealthy manoeuvre (this works on guards just as well too). But it's your assault rifle with a scope and a number of gadget attachments that is the best item of all in your inventory. As well as being able to zoom in considerably and fire silenced, single bullets or standard rounds (this gun is quite capable of killing several people in a matter of seconds, should there be a need), you can fire an assortment of gadgets that prove invaluable in the field.

You can fire a sticky camera at a distant wall and then use it to see who or what is in the area - it is fully controllable for moving around and zooming in or out. There are also diversion cameras that you can use to create a smokescreen or make a whistling sound for distracting guards. You can fire ring aerofoils, designed to knock a target unconscious on impact (but it's only guaranteed to work with the first shot if you aim for the head). Best of all, though, are the sticky shockers that stun on impact every time by delivering a mild electric shock to your target - watching them shudder for a moment and hearing the noise both the shocker and you target makes before crumpling to the floor is highly amusing!

The levels are tremendously varied in their location, design and environments. You will sneak above and through dark streets, rush through a burning building, search an amazingly detailed apartment, infiltrate an oil rig, high security offices and warehouses and even break into the CIA headquarters, amongst many other places. Each level brings with it new challenges and areas to explore - you will often need to find alternative routes to get into places, such as climbing up wire fences or even wall-clinging ivy, hanging from ledges and guttering then moving yourself along them, climbing poles and lift shafts or using a pulley to slide across strong wires from one building to the next (this looks so cool and you can pan the camera around as you do it!) You can even connect a rope to the top of a building and lower yourself silently down it, until you find a window to break into below.

Throughout each level your mission will change as you come across new intelligence and report back to your commander, who is listening throughout the whole mission. Cut scenes in between each mission expand the plot very well with an intelligent and gripping storyline, as you would expect from Mr. Clancy. There are regular checkpoints too so you never have to do too much before your progress is saved. I think this is far better than being able to save anytime, which you would probably do every minute if you could and it would spoil the flow of the game.

There is only really one criticism I could level at this game - it's perhaps a tad short. With only nine missions to complete it won't take you ages to complete it - however don't be put off by the small number, each mission is very long, with a lot of terrain to cover, many objectives to complete and plenty of guards to evade. Even the first level should take you over an hour to get through and the others can take several as you gradually make your way through them. Plus there's that "I could have done better" factor that keeps you trying to improve your performance. I should also mention that there is a training section that is absolutely excellent and teaches you all the skills you need - so don't worry if it seems like this game is too complicated to play from what I've said; the controls are so cleverly worked out that you will be at home with them in no time.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell is the best game to hit the Xbox since Halo. Although featuring the most realistic and detailed graphics, lighting and animation you've ever seen with sound effects to match, it's still the gameplay that shines the most, combining a sublime mixture of stealth and combat with the most versatile range of moves, gadgets and tactics ever to feature in a stealth game. Delivering a truly unique and groundbreaking experience, this is the kind of game you bought your Xbox to play.

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).