When peace and joy are threatened, you defend your nation with the best male and female agents you can find.  What do you do if one of your agents is an angered female who is out for revenge?  You let her take the lead and see where she goes.  Revenge is an inherent fuel that drives us all.  Nikki Connors, the star of Kemco's highly anticipated spy/espionage game, Rogue Ops, has only one reason to go on living: to make her family's killers pay.  An evil terrorist group called Omega 19 killed Nikki's husband, as well as her daughter.  Intriguing, but is this only the tip of the iceberg?

Despite having a lot in common with Splinter Cell, Rogue Ops does not follow the stealth/action rules.  The game controls like a third-person shooter; the left analog stick handles the forward, backward and strafe movement only.  Pressing down on the stick causes Nikki to move back very slowly.  To run in the opposite direction you'll have to turn the character around by pressing the right analog stick, which controls the camera movement.  That aspect should be pretty easy for any Splinter Cell fan to handle, but the strafe movement is a little weird.  You may have noticed that Nikki is always wearing glasses.  She needs them to be able to zoom in and out of targets, increasing her aim whenever necessary.  This is cool because you can zoom in and out even when no weapon is equipped.  To zoom in, all you have to do is hold the L1 button and press the left analog stick up.  To zoom back out you press the stick down.

More and more of the games developed each year require more than the eight buttons given to Xbox and PS2 by their respective creators.  Thus developers look to the D-pad for additional actions.  In Rogue Ops you'll switch weapons (up/down) and various devices (left/right) with the D-pad, making me wonder if the next generation of consoles will include controllers that have 10+ action buttons.  If it weren't for fighting games the days of the D-pad would be numbered.

One of Nikki's coolest devices is her Fly Cam.  Like the name implies, the Fly Cam can fly wherever necessary.  Nikki can use it to sneak into areas that have yet to be explored, giving her the edge in deciding what to do next.  The Fly Cam's controls are virtually the same as Nikki's, the only differences being its flight mechanisms, which are similar to that of a plane (pull back to ascend, push forward to descend, etc.).

Rogue Ops also includes a grappling hook to scale heights, and an interesting shadow hiding system in which your character is hidden from all enemies after a certain period of time.  When Nikki enters a shadow hiding area, you'll notice that a new graphic bar appears on the screen.  Once the bar is full, Nikki will be hidden from all spy-cams and non-playable characters (enemy threats).

Hiding bodies is nothing new, but it must be said that Nikki's way of disposing them is a bit cooler (and more realistic) than Solid Snake's.  Snake will take a body, stand it up and carefully insert it into a locker.  Nice and neat for a spy who doesn't want to make mistakes.  Nikki, however, just drops the body in and shuts the door!  No procrastination included.

Like Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Rogue Ops includes the three main forms of being sneaky in a game: crouching, leaning up against walls, and sensitive analog control for delicate movement that doesn't alert the enemy.  In Metal Gear Solid you could lean up against walls just by touching one.  Seamless and innovative at the same time.  In Splinter Cell you had to press a button to do it – not-so-seamless, but still good.  Here you press the left stick up whenever Nikki is standing near a wall or object that can be hidden behind.  Nikki cannot do this with all walls.  If there is a door nearby she may only be able to lean on a small portion of the wall, if at all.  This doesn't prevent any important game actions from taking place, but it does take away a little something from the whole spy/espionage experience.  I like being able to do what I want, when I want, regardless of whether or not it has a purpose.  Few games offer that.

At the end of this stealthy trail is a game that, while worth experiencing, is not the Splinter Cell-killer I was hoping for.  It's a good game, but it's more of an expansion and a variation of the other, more innovative spy games that are out there.  With MGS 3 and Splinter Cell 2 not due out until next year, Rogue Ops is free to shine at retail.  And there's no reason why it shouldn't.  You'll enjoy the game as long as your expectations aren't ridiculously high.

Gameplay: 7.9
I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that spy fans will like this game.  If you love hiding in the shadows, crouching behind walls, hiding dead bodies in lockers, and trying out new gadgets, Rogue Ops should be on your “To Do” list.

Graphics: 8
Nikki looks terrific!  Most of the characters do.  But the backgrounds and explosion effects are a little dated.  They lack the polish that PlayStation 2 game should have.  As a whole it's a great-looking game, but those dated effects make it less fun to look at.

Sound: 8
Good, stealthy music from the composer.  It sounds like something you'd hear in a spy flick, but is not at all a rip-off of Splinter Cell or Metal Gear Solid.

Difficulty: Medium
Rogue Ops can get tough at times, but you won't be pulling your hair out over it.

Concept: 7.2
Rogue Ops is a good game, but it doesn't play like the type of game that could have been made if its competitors didn't exist first.  While it has some unique qualities, it doesn't really have anything that makes it really stand out from the crowd.  Well, it does have one thing – an attractive star.  Solid Snake is cool, but I'd rather look at Nikki Connors.  Wouldn't you?

Overall: 7.9
Not a Splinter Cell-killer, but still a good game.  Rogue Ops's most impressive features are the ones you don't see too often in other spy games, like the Fly Cam.  Aside from maybe Perfect Dark, I can't think of any game that has used a similar a device like that.

The third-person shooter-style controls seem out of place for a game like this.  But I think the logic behind it has to do with your goals.  The developers wanted the focus to be on whatever was in front of you, albeit an enemy or something.  So when you press down on the analog stick and expect to move backwards, you don't.  The other control aspects are good, and you'll become comfortable with less appealing aspects in an hour or two.

This isn't a run-out-and-buy-it-now kind of game, but it is a good, stealthy game that fans of the genre should at least rent.  If it's your favorite genre, there aren't any better games out there that you haven't already played, leaving Rogue Ops as your best option.