And Sharon the day after that... if she's lucky

Stealth is everywhere, but what does that say about us? That we like our fights unfair, taking the ultimate revenge on a world that doesn't even see us? Or that we just like tight rubber suits? Hmm, it's a philosophical conundrum alright.

So we tiptoe through the shadows, inches from patrolling maniacs, silently toiling to rid the world of evil madmen. Again. This is, after all, a sequel, despite the lack of a '2' in the title. We find ourselves back in the super-sneaky shoes of Sam Fisher, a mumbling and surprisingly old secret agent who'd probably get on quite well with Solid Snake, especially as Sam appears to have got a few years younger and gone up a few neck sizes. Odd.. a shadowy conspiracy, perhaps? Okay, that's an overreaction, though there are certainly some strange coincidences.

Take this example from one of the Jerusalem levels a little way into the game, for example. From the darkness of a courtyard's archway entrance, you watch a policeman pass two men talking on a bench and stroll towards you. You slouch through the shadows behind the men and officer Dibble's none the wiser, so you wait in the dark at the far end of the courtyard for a good chance to run under the street lamp - it's between you and the next alley. Dibble strolls back. As soon as he heads off past the men again, you'll move on. But mysteriously, he walks straight into the inky corner you've chosen as a perfect hiding place - because it's practically signposted as being just that - and effectively ends the mission. Time to reload.

Scoot backwards in time a bit. You enter a lecture hall, lit by a single lamp on the podium. Halfway across you hear the voices of an enemy team about to search that very room - you scurry to the depths of darkness to access the situation. And the situation is this: you're screwed. There's no way to quietly, cleverly single out a man and remove him, no way to get out without a shootout. No cunning exit befitting a legendary stealth operative so laden with gadgets he must stink, absolutely reek of the gallons of WD40 needed to stop them squeaking. Eventually you realise the only way to pass silently is to leg it across the room as soon as you enter, right through the light, so you can slip behind them once they come in. Obviously you can't know this without getting trapped and failing. Which, I think you'll agree, is stupid. Time to reload.

These are far from the only instances of each problem, but it's the times you can't be stealthy without prior knowledge that grate the most. Even more annoying, however, is when you're forced into a certain way of playing, like having to fight. How? Lights become armoured, enemies pool together and tend to notice if their mate suddenly dies in front of them - an improvement on many games, it has to be said. Though there's nothing wrong with the fighting (you're slow and vulnerable, but you should be in a game about staying invisible and silent), being forced into it with no sneaky, special agent-y option is irritating. It's also frustrating to be forbidden to kill anyone (it made our school days hell) as it stretches everything out, forcing you to learn every opponent's routine before moving, and therefore leaving you to way out if it goes wrong. Yet this is exactly how the game starts.

From all this, you might assume Pandora Tomorrow is the worst game in the world, but it's not. The worst game in the world is bridge. But it's questionable as to whether it's better than its predecessor, despite attempts to open it up. The original suffered taunts about its linearity; the feeling that you were being funnelled all-too obviously down a single path. You occasionally have choices, but they're rarely of any consequence - and much as we love GTA and its like, if a game can't truly do it better we'd rather be guided through one set of stunning areas then left to amble like abandoned children through meaningless labyrinths. Splinter Cell was linear, and despite the type, Pandora Tomorrow essentially is too - and there's no shame in that. You see some fantastic sights, though a few more teetering rooftop sequences wouldn't have gone amiss.

Hmm, this still isnt' coming out flattering. Time to reload. At times, as is increasingly becoming the norm, you have choices - shoot an unarmed woman dead, for instance, or leave her standing - and your decisions have effects further down the line. And the further you travel down that line, the more entertaining it becomes, particularly as you leave behind interiors for the streets and roofs, and even more so as you reach the jungle. The latter looks beautiful, as much as Pandora Tomorrow does, and provides a truly welcome break from all those damn doors, rooms and corridors.

When the crooked game design straightens up and lets you flow - lets you solve problems without dying and reloading - Pandora Tomorrow is a great place to spend time. It's strangely relaxing, your quiet progress leaving the world untouched even as it's fleshed out by overheard conversations, stolen memory sticks and unexpected vistas. The best bits are more like a puzzle game - how do I get there? Who's going to stop me? How do I avoid them? - than anything else. Although it's a puzzle game with fatal headshots... should kids really be doing that kind of thing? Absolutely. That way they'll all be far too pale and sickly to join the real army and put real bags over the heads of real foreigners.

And so, with a sultry hip-sway shimmy, to the subject of voices. Your orders come direct from the US president. No, not the chimp in the White House - nobody wants a game that confusing - but Dennis Haysbert, the more believable one from the Kiefer Sutherland-rehabilitating TV series 24. Fisher once again gets his grumbles from eternal bad guy Michael Ironside, who you may know from such films as McBain (Frank Bruce), Total Recall (Richter) and Top Gun (Jester). Naturally this gives the script a far greater gravitas than that of most games - namely, some gravitas - despite the sometimes confusing script that appears to have been dropped in the wind and not quite pieced back together right. How can this car crash of a design be fun? Almost in spite of itself is the answer, because the basic premise - crouching breathlessly in the shadows, inches from those patrolling maniacs we mentioned in the first paragraph - is so strong. And there's something else. Time to reload.

The online mode is brilliant. Ubisoft could easily have just wedged in a basic deathmatch little dark Sams leaping everywhere. But no. Instead, it put some thought in and came up with a deep, involving mode that could teach the single-player a thing or two about balance. Here, for every advantage a vision mode, weapn, gadget or ability brings, there's a cancelling advantage to the other side. It's two spies playing against two mercenaries in first-person. Despite first-person being new, it's excellent, and the view emphasises the differences while somehow covering them up. You never find yourself frustrated at being unable to do something the other side can.

Plusses and minuses Night-vision goggles can be detected by the mercenaries' magnetic resonance detectors. Spies can climb poles but mercs can't. Mercs can set traps but spies can disable them... look, the differences are too numerous for here, but it boils down to this: spies are agile, gadgeted-up but lightly armed, while mercs bear heavy weaponry but have limited manoeuvrability. And, in practice, it manages to work beautifully.

The levels are large and multi-layered, with objectives too scattered for one team to successfully camp on, making efficient movement and cunning vital. And familiarity actually makes the experience better, as the level of tactical planning and double-guessing doubles and trebles. And the headset means you can orchestrate your manoeuvres instantly and - amusingly - spies can even talk to a merc if they've got one in a headlock. Those conversations are never polite... You certainly feel vulnerable as a spy (your gun doesn't even fire lethal shots), but if you get caught in the torchlight it's not necessarily all over. And you can still kill mercenaries - you've just got to do it with your hands.

But it's what you've got to do with your brain that's most appealing, though at the same time, it's not complicated. The single-player may be annoyingly staccato at times, flawed in ways a sequel really shouldn't be, but it still manages to cling on to that compelling atmosphere (just) that keeps you going. The all-grown-up Clancy politi-story helps here, too, but it's the multiplayer that really stands out. It's way deeper than something like SOCOM's online mode, and retains more of the main game's atmosphere, but it's no harder to play. It only takes a few games to work out your strengths and weaknesses, and after that it's up to you to exploit them. And that, friends and witnesses, is where the most fun is to be found in this game. Time to reload...

Graphics 80%
Often lovely, but sometimes ugly.

Sound 90%
Great voices and atmospherics.

Gameplay 70%
Pernickety single-player, tense online.

Lifespan 90%
Lengthy missions, great multi-player.

Overall 80%
Not the leap over the original we were hoping for, but fun despite itself and great online. More Splinter Cell 1.5, perhaps?