Stolen Hands-On

Playable versions of Stolen have proved to be every bit as elusive as the game's catsuit-wearing central character since we first saw the game in London last year. We finally managed to get our hands on work-in-progress builds of both the PlayStation 2 and Xbox games this week, and we're pleased to report that we've enjoyed every minute that we've spent playing them thus far.

Stolen places an even greater emphasis on stealth than other games in the genre.

If you've been following our previous coverage of Stolen, you'll know that the game slips you into the catsuit of an agile character named Anya Romanov, who makes her living as a thief in the fictional Forge City. Anya isn't nearly as proficient in combat situations as characters like Metal Gear Solid's Snake or Splinter Cell's Sam Fisher; as a result, there is more of an emphasis on stealth in Stolen than in either of those series. The high-tech gadgets you'll have at your disposal are comparable to those employed by the aforementioned stealth-action-game heroes, but since Anya is a thief rather than a killer, you'll notice a distinct lack of lethal weapons in her arsenal.

When you play Stolen for the first time, you'll find that there's no tutorial level. Instead, brief instructions for each of Anya's moves and gadgets appear on the screen the first time you need to use them. Requisite moves such as jumping, crouching, rolling, climbing, flattening against walls, and leaning around corners are easy to perform on both the PS2 and Xbox controllers, and Anya's trademark acrobatics are actually far less challenging than we expected them to be. In fact, some of Anya's acrobatics are almost a little too easy to use, since swinging around and jumping between poles and such require no timing on your part--just a single press of the jump button. Locating objects that Anya can interact with is also less challenging than it could be, because taking a moment to look around any locale using the first-person view will highlight everything from ammo pickups and items that can be stolen to environmental objects, such as doors, switches, and poles, that have a role to play in your progression through the area. Being able to identify important objects using the first-person view isn't a bad thing, but it would be nice if there were an option to disable the feature, since doing so would go some way toward making the exploration and navigation aspects of the game as challenging as the stealth.

The guards behave in a way that's both unpredictable and believable.

Although to date we've only played through some of Stolen's early stages, the guards that we've been doing our best to avoid have proved to be worthy (and believable) adversaries for the most part. The guards invariably follow quite predictable patrol patterns when you arrive in an area, but the different ways that they react if they become suspicious feel far less scripted. When you use a sonic emitter device to try to draw a guard to a particular area, for example, there's a good chance that he'll do exactly what you want him to, but there's also a chance that he might just mumble to himself and not budge an inch or that he might get paranoid and radio for backup. If you do end up having to fight a guard, you'll often find that they're not too difficult to knock out just by repeatedly pressing your attack button. You can't take any of your adversaries out of the game permanently, though, and when they come around after a short time, they'll often reach for their radio and ask for assistance from any guards who happen to be nearby. Even in the early stages of the game, you'll find that guards in this situation can be quite persistent, although avoiding them (and their flashlights) is often just a case of finding the correct dark corner to hide in until they're told to return to their posts. The fact that the guards carry flashlights is significant, by the way, because whereas Sam Fisher has often been able to get out of tight spots simply by shooting out every lightbulb in sight, that strategy is a lot less effective in Stolen.