As you can probably guess, I don't count myself amongst the slavering hordes of people clamouring for a quiet taste of the latest stealth based "action" title that is dumped onto our doorsteps by lazy developers and cackling publishers, now I'll tell you why.

Stealth games go against the principle of everything I hold dear in games, games should be all about breathtaking action sequences reminiscent of adrenaline-pumping films like "Aliens". I want to fight heroically against overwhelming odds with a shamelessly massive minigun in my hands. I want to drive a tank though seething hordes of Nazis/Aliens/Alien Nazis pumping out massive shells from my giant cannon.

I don't want to pussyfoot around on tiptoes wearing a black lycra suit armed only with a little knife and a pair of night-vision goggles. It never ceases to baffle me the amount of people who love to crawl around in games making as little noise as possible and surprising guards with a well-placed "inverted neck-break". Such games chill my warrior blood and irritate my already itchy trigger finger. But let's not forget that there are people out there who really love stealth based games, so for all five of you, I'll make a few concessions.

Stealth can be very rewarding: tense moments tick by as you watch from the shadows carefully marking the precise walking patterns of the guards and slip by just as one of them turns round. Stealth can be a lot of fun: bouncing a smoke grenade off a wall into the path of slumbering soldiers sets off a ruckus of coughing and scrambling as you slide quietly into a convenient air duct to continue your mission of death and destruction.

Those are just two examples of how great stealth sections can be in games. But stealth games themselves? How dull.

Stealth games themselves are essentially a lame duck, they're always over far too quickly and they rarely come with any extras �and if they do, they're more of the Metroid Prime 2 bolt-on variety than a real enhancement or addition to the package as a whole. Stealth games, you see, are a one-trick pony.

You can add all the new special features you want: dangling from the ceiling and using razor wire to kill; hiding under the floor and listening into people's conversations; using guards as hostages and then administering a karate chop to the back of their neck after they enter the master system password. These are all great ideas in themselves, but when stretched out into a much longer game, they become dull, repetitive and limited. It's no coincidence that most stealth games can be finished in a matter of days: the developers ran out of ideas and went home.

On the other hand, a brief stealth section interspersed with puzzle solving and the gun-toting action I love so dearly: now that's something completely different. Great games like Beyond Good and Evil know the limits of stealth as a gameplay device and employ them to the limit and no further. Playing as Jade in the game meant that you were not as powerful as the Alpha Section soldiers and occasionally required you to distract their attention while you snuck past, or dodge from crate to crate while they performed their patrols. These sections were well done as a whole, because they were not overdone. Had the whole game been about silent and stealthy killing it would have deserved the undeserved commercial failure that it became despite its best efforts.

It now seems that many games are featuring stealth as a main selling point, just like their "20 hours of Gameplay!" (see FF#6) and some of these games are even good. But stealth itself is an old concept; sometimes the odds are against you and it's better to be quiet than violent, but the appeal is only limited before we return to the more familiar killing fields we've become used to.

The lesson here is that stealth itself is not a bad concept, nor a bad gameplay tool �despite my dislike for it, I have to admit that it can be fun. However, making an entire game out of it ultimately dooms the game to cult status with those Metal Gear Solid fans or the Tom Clancy lovers and their fervent demand for more American-style conspiracy games. The truth is that stealth is limited in its appeal to gamers and limited to its application in games. Look in the preowned bins in your local game stores: you'll see more copies of the Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid games there than any others.

This all said, I can't recommend that anyone takes anything less than a stealthy approach to those darned Ganados � they'll have you every time if you're not quiet�

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