I don't know abut you, but stealth doesn't really figure in our everyday lives at Official UK Xbox Magazine. Unless, of course, we're late for work (sorry Max), in which case we make the journey from the front door to our desks as unobtrusively as a sponge ninja. Who is invisible. In the main, though, we're not ones to keep quiet for long.

Not everyone can afford to be so astoundingly brash and brazen, mind. Sam Fisher, star of Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, is one of these people. If he was to prance about like us, loudly impersonating Papa Lazarou from The League of Gentlemen, he'd be shot to bits in seconds. We're sorry to say that you can't actually do Papa Lazarou impressions in Splinter Cell. What you can do, though, is pretty much everything that a stealthy, gadget-laden blokey like Sam would do in real life (we'd imagine).

Abseil down a building and through a window? Check. Flick off the lights, flick on the night vision, and bash some heads? Go on then. Play through the game without being constantly interrupted by cut-scenes that last longer than most marriages? Blimey, you can do that too, along with loads of other cool new stuff. What you can expect from a single-player stealth adventure has changed, while the success of Metal Gear Solid and its sequel indicate that gamers like sneaking about, for every Solid Snake fan there's someone who can't be bothered with FMV clip after FMV clip. Those latter folks can now rest easy, because the stealth game they've always wanted to play is here. Sam Fisher has knocked Snake off his pedestal.

Splinter Cell is superb. The feeling of being on a covert mission and doing virtually anything possible to remain undetected has rarely been achieved to the extent it has here. The subtlety of the analogue control means that your actions become as careful and considered as they would be in real life. Staying in the dark and checking out your surroundings with thermal and night vision soon becomes second nature, as does slipping fibre-optic cable under doors and knocking out the lights.

Silently taking out enemies by grabbing them from behind and bashing their heads is a skill that you'll soon become frighteningly adept at. Fans of stealth will love the tense process of tracking a foe and choosing the right moment to attack him.

Happily, that's not all there is to the game. While stealth is always high on Fisher's list of priorities, there's significant variety in the gameplay, helping to keep the basic sneaky premise fresh throughout. On some missions, killing anyone results in failure, putting far more emphasis on remaining totally undetected. New equipment is also added to Sam's arsenal throughout; it's some time before his versatile rifle becomes available, for example.

Other neat variations on the traditional adventure missions include a kidnapping and a rush to defuse a bomb, forcing you to adapt your skills at a moment's notice. Tasks like these prevent the action from ever becoming stale.

The plot encourages progression, too. Cut-scenes progress the basic plot between missions, with Sam's personal situation being neatly blended with news broadcasts relaying the 'bigger picture' to the world at large.

Relatively unusually for a video game plot (although not previous Tom Clancy games on PC), Splinter Cell's story is genuinely intriguing and mature, not to mention credible.

Perhaps the greatest indication of the story's success is that cut-scenes are welcome when they arise, rather than being something you just want to skip through to get back to the action.

The story is also intertwined in the gameplay. Sam can check computers he comes across and read data sticks dropped by enemies on his nifty Palm computer.

Taking the form of email exchanges between terrorists and often informing you of door codes, these little bites of information add a layer of depth and purpose to the action.

If you've ever played the ground-breaking Deus Ex, you'll understand how little things like this add to the overall atmosphere.

Splinter Cell's jaw-dropping visuals help in this department, too. This is easily among the most impressive looking games we've seen on Xbox and, therefore, ever.

The thermal and night vision filters are as amazing-looking as they are useful: the night vision goggles, in particular, make Sam's world look almost photo-realistic at times. Equally stunning is the lighting. Shadows are cast in an amazingly realistic fashion and are exploited to the full by the game's designers.

As well as looking simply gorgeous, the shadowing is something you'll need to exploit well to remain undetected. If GoldenEye made you constantly check for CCTV cameras whenever you went out, then Splinter Cell will give you an aversion to bright light matched only by vampire moles.

The locations illuminated by the exemplary lighting effects are hugely impressive. Every room looks exactly how you'd expect it to; offices feel like places of work and you can almost smell the Toilet Duck in the lavatories you come across. All this graphical realism adds enormous amounts of atmosphere and grittiness to the action, and the wide variety of locations means there's a hell of a lot of opportunity for showing off. And there's nothing wrong with that.

A trio of niggles stop Splinter Cell from being perfect. Each mission is interspersed with checkpoints, meaning that progression is steady for the most part. But you'll find you get stuck at some points for quite some time; if you get to a new checkpoint with little health and even less ammo, getting to the next one can be a nightmare. It doesn't happen all that often, but when it does, frustration can set in because trial and error is required to work out how to progress beyond these tricky bits.

Some patchy enemy AI contributes to this element of try and retry. It varies quite a bit, so that some guards are convincingly alert and others are simpletons that let you get away with murder (literally). It means that you're never quite sure how they'll react, although that does help make things suitably tense.

The game is rather linear, too. Perhaps because the levels look so realistic, it's easy to assume you are in a building and can go where you want. The truth is that your route through them is largely predetermined, as in a Tomb Raider game. Your freedom tends to be restricted to stealthy strategies rather than how to negotiate levels - we'd have liked a little more leeway to explore more open environments, especially given Sam's impressive repertoire of acrobatics.

That said, the linearity does have its benefits. It means that the game is perfectly paced and exciting, with a minimum of slack moments.

Thankfully, the niggles don't spoil things, mainly because Splinter Cell is such an overwhelmingly enthralling game to play. The combination of cracking scenarios, cutting-edge visuals and tense atmosphere is spot-on. It's one of those games where you tell yourself you'll play to just one more checkpoint before turning it off, and then you look at your watch and three or four hours have passed by.

What's more, it'll stand up to a lot of lengthy gaming sessions, because there are plenty of long missions in the game, with the promise of more to come, thanks to downloadable content via Xbox Live.

This slick, engrossing stealth adventure uses the power of Xbox to its full capacity, and has some of the most exciting moments we've experienced in a game of this sort. This game should be part of your collection.

1. Lighting effects are wonderful
2. Lots of cool gadgets to try out
3. Variety of gameplay and locations
4. Superbly tense

1. Some mighty frustrating moments

Power
Graphically stunning, with amazing lighting and detailed textures in abundance.

Style
Posh effects aren't just for show; they make the game wonderfully gritty and atmospheric.

Immersion
The gripping plot and tense action keep you playing through the occasional frustrating section.

Lifespan
Long missions, and plenty of them - plus downloadable content coming on Xbox Live. It'll last you.

Summary
An amazingly good-looking, exciting adventure that's so addictive it should carry a Government Stealth Warning.