When a revolutionary game starts a particular genre, you're going to run into your good and bad examples. The good examples exist with years of concentration put into them, providing a new experience that gamers can relate to. The bad are merely slapped together for the sake of picking up a quick buck, without that much depth to really give people their money's worth. When Konami's Metal Gear Solid arrived years ago, it ushered in the world of stealth like no title before it, and led to many copycats. Since that time, Ubisoft's revitalized the genre with their stellar Splinter Cell games, the good in this category. And now we come upon another example of the bad- Hip Interactive's Stolen.

It's ironic that the title of the game actually is Stolen, because despite the cat burglar theme that the title provides, it really contains many elements lifted from other games and tries to combine them together into a unique experience. But the lack of attention in several details take the sexiness out of the game's appeal, leaving behind a flat product that's worth maybe a couple of hours play, and nothing more.

The game puts you in the shoes of master thief named Anya Romanov, who's stealing several expensive items in order to help expense a partner in crime, her tech-savvy buddy, with new equipment for even bigger jobs. As each job proceeds, Anya must work her way through a number of traps and devices in order to get that much closer to the goods. Along the way, she'll also encounter guards that are standing in her way, and she must dispatch of them in a non-lethal manner.

Now that's a first bum-out right there- putting limitations on a formula. I can understand if someone wants to be conscious about decisions they make during something like a heist, but a novel touch during the gameplay development would have been to allow the gamer to choose the thief's conscience.

But I could forgive a little quandary like that if there were anything else to really appeal in the game itself. And, I admit, there are a couple of slight things worth mentioning. First of all, Anya uses some pretty decent tools to complete her gig, and also encounters some slick little challenges, like skillfully avoiding lasers. Also, the game contains a surprisingly dramatic musical score that keeps up with the stealth action.

But I'm afraid that's it. The rest of the game falls apart like a deck of cards. The sound department comes up short in every other category, with the kind of laughable dialogue that seems ripped straight from a bad espionage film, and the sound effects barely range anywhere out of the ordinary, which is kind of a bummer considering the tools at hand. Worse yet, the story never evolves into any kind of memorable caper tale.

Then we come to the graphics. Aside from some slight level design quirks, the whole game appearance comes across as drab and uninspired. There's nary that much use of colors at all, and the frame rate is jumpy at best, when it simply should have been smooth. The camera also provides an annoyance factor, not really working with you at all. This kind of shifts the perspective badly, sometimes leading you to tripping a trap when you didn't mean to. Ugh.

The controls and computer intelligence are no better. The game feels loose overall, with no real handling over Anya to give you the kind of flexibility she deserves. Whenever she interacts with a guard, she can take him out several different ways, like sneaking up on him or engaging in a fight, but it never escalates into something stylish. Worse yet, the guard AI lacks the intelligence needed to make the game a hearty challenge. They run into the typical "chase after them for awhile, then forget they existed" theory, instead of alerting other guards or continuing the chase. Stupid.

I could see potential buyers finding some appeal in the sexiness of Anya or eager to give thievery a try for a couple of hours, so they may want to give Stolen a rent. Everyone else, however, isn't missing anything. The game's shortcomings seal its fate and leave it miles behind the likes of Sam Fisher and Solid Snake, whose latest endeavors are far more worth your investment.