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It's the arcade adventure of the decade! If you fancy helping out George "watch my lips" Bush and a very embarrassed American military then join Andrew "the stealth" Hutchinson. Someone's knaffed off with 3.2 billion dollars worth of plane and the CIA have offered to pay your bus fare if you find it for them!

In the beginning there were arcade games and adventure games. Arcade games involved waggling your joystick and repeatedly pressing the Fire button; adventure games involving typing things like GO WEST, CLIMB DRAGON and MOUNT DAMSEL.

Over the years the boundary between these two genres has become increasingly blurred and now, with the full adventure of the graphic adventure game, they have met squarely in the middle. The arcade adventure format was used by Sierra in the Space Quest series, but those games look positively limited when compared to Operation Stealth.

The opening screens explain in a movie-like sequence that someone has nicked a Stealth bomber from the Americans. Obviously the United States Air Force find this situation highly embarrassing and so ask the CIA to track down the stealthy robber.

The star of the game is a spy called John Glames whom you control via the graphics and pull-down, pop-up menus. Your task is to help him find the missing plane and solve problems along the way.

The location switches to CIA headquarters where your boss is sat behind his desk with his Mickey Mouse telephone. He briefs you on the sitation and gives you a special briefcase a la James Bond which contains all sorts of special gadgets and a couple of tasty 80% polyester shirts.

Your boss tells you the South American country of San Paragua is a good place to start looking for the plane, so you hop on the next 747 and before you can say "Hey amigos how much for your children?" you're in San Paragua where the adventure starts.

The first scene is set in the airport arrival lounge. You walk off the plane and have problems getting past the Gringo-hating customs officials. From here on in you require a good deal of ingenuity to complete the game.

Glames is controlled entirely by the mouse. To move him you point to a position on the screen and he makes his way there. You have to point where his feet (rather than his head) are going to end up or he strolls off in the wrong direction. If he stops in front of a door, pointing at it makes him open it and stroll inside.

All other actions are carried out via a pop-up menu, activated by pressing the right mouse button brings up a crosshair cursor enabing you to interact with things on the screen. If you press the right mouse button you caninteract with anything that's in your possession. For example, if you press the left mouse button on Examine in the first screen in the arrival lounge you can check out everything from the potted plant to the customs official. If you click the right mouse button on Examine then the option to check out your airline ticket or your briefcase is available.

The other options from the main menu are self-explanatory. The most useful of these other commands are Use and Operate. These can be used in the most unlikely of situations, so you can for example find yourself asking to "Operate ground".

Speaking to people leads to some interesting interchanges and is essential to your progression; in other works, speak to every wino, florist and dog you encounter and you won't go far wrong.

There's a good deal of problem-solving involved; sometimes there are fairly simple hassles such as changing your money into another currency and sometimes they're life-threatening hassles which require several attempts to crack. They key is to save as often as you can and this is carried out by pressing both mouse buttons at once. Options in this menu include load, save and restart.

Delphine have really gone to town on the graphics! Right from the brilliant initial cinematic loading sequence you can tell that a tremendous amount of effort has gone into making Operation Stealth look superb.

The layered backgrounds that Glames manoeuvres through are detailed and attractively drawn and a lot of thought has gone into working out how to convey the maximum amount of information without words.

If you examine certain objects than a large blow-up appears which you can manipulate. For example, at the beginning of the game you need to use your briefcase. When you examine this, a blow-up appears and you can take items out or manipulate anything you find in it.

John Glames moves so smoothly around the screen that he sometimes appears to be moonwalking. The other characters you encounter in the game remain fairly static, but they are all well-drawn.

Sound consists of a series of internally generated tunes that reflect and enhance the location Glames is in at the time.

Operation Stealth is excellent! It sets the standard which other software houses should aim to match. The entire game is well-designed and a joy to play.

It has that addictive one-more-go feel, so once a problem is surmounted there's always the urge to see what the next screen looks like. These problems require an equal mix of intelligence and skill with the mouse. All the problems can be solved with a degree of application - which is more than can be said of some games.

Operation Stealth looks good, sounds good, and is seductively exciting. None of this namby-pamby Ye Olde Worlde adventure stuff that demands a huge suspension of disbelief, Operation Stealth is full-bloodied, cloak and dagger, international intrigue. And this is one reviewer who hopes that Operation Stealth is just the first adventure to start the enignmatic John Glames. Now, has anyone seen a bloody great Stealth bomber skulking around here...?