Alias

You know a genre has come of age when this happens. When a B-grade TV senes about a sexy undercover spy-girl gets a B-grade videogame tie-in and it's labelled relentless stealth action' - that's when you know. In days gone by it might have been a sidescrolling shooter or a Tomb Raider clone, but in 2004, Alias The Game is all about stealth. To be fair, it is a fairly good fit for the TV series, in which hot CIA op Sydney Bristow regularly frustrates the machinations of sinister billionaires and rogue Russian agents with her talent for infiltration and disguise. And to be fairer still, the game has impressively high production values, with great voice work by the original cast, a quality storyline and some attractive motion-capture. There's even a minor attempt at innovation with a window-in-window mode that shows security feeds and enemy movements - as if to simulate the extra info being beamed to you from spy HQ.

Sadly however, that's as good as things get. The gameplay is pedestrian at best, fraught as it is with bland level design, a crap control system and a rigidly linear structure. Worse still, you're forced to revisit locations far more times than they deserve - a blatant attempt to skimp on development time.

True to the telly, the undercover alias' aspect of the game is largely just an excuse to dress the lovely Ms Garner up in a different slutty outfit at the beginning of each mission. After a bit of token undercover work and some rudimentary stealthing, things inevitably degenerate into a scrappy martial arts catfight, as our lissome heroine kicks six shades of shit out of a variety of enemy stooges.

What Stealth?

The truth is, the stealth-action' tag given to this game is itself an alias - a shrewd attempt to hop the Splinter Cell bandwagon and ride it to market credibility. The stealth system is extremely shallow - you can hug walls, shoot cameras and perform silent kills, but ultimately you're relying on the frailty of the Al to make any of this possible. And while your inventory of spy gadgets may look good on paper, most of them can only be used in a specific context, reducing their interest value to mere button-pushing.

Under the joke-store wig. the game's true identity is revealed: it's a simple roaming beat 'em up with a few guns and the occasional facile puzzle - a third-person action game of the most mundane kind. If any proof were needed, you only have to look at the melee combat system. You've got a full complement of open-hand attacks, weapon combos and finishing moves, and while it's not complex enough to transcend buttonmashing, it's far more robust than the stealth dynamic.

Even'so, Alias is remarkably boring, and even diehard fans of the series are probably better off without it.

If you're a fan of the show, you'll be a fan of the game ' maybe. Alias is much like many of its weak sister, TV-show knockoffs. A hastily designed game built around the images and sounds of a popular program in the hopes that rapid fans will forgive the almost complete lack of enjoyable gameplay. But unlike many other TV-show games, at least Alias tries and for fans I'm sure that will be enough.

Alias functions as a basic stealth action game as you take on the roll of Sydney Bristow in an attempt to unravel a secret plot to do something nefarious by a bunch of bad guys. You'll spend much of your time accomplishing a series of painful easy tasks as you sneak into the enemy lair, get geared up and try to find the heart of the problem.

The game has a stealth mode button that lets you tiptoe around bad guys. The other buttons are dedicated to an attack and special attack and an action function which does things like open doors or pick up dropped weapons. The combat oscillates between overly simplistic and painfully frustrating. You basically need to punch your buttons as quickly as possible and hope the bad guy actually responds to what appears to be well-placed hits. Sometimes they don't and instead whale on you with heavy tools or pepper you with short bursts of gunfire ' it's quite a challenge to die in this game because no matter how bad of a beating you're getting, they always back away after a few seconds.

Another annoying element of the game is no matter how important the task, where enemies are or what kind of hurry you are in, Bristow walks slowly and elegantly up and down stairs. It's very frustrating. Luckily the bad game mechanics do little to prevent you from beating the game, since the play is so easy. I'm not exaggerating ' as I write this my 2-year-old son is managing to work his way through the game with absolutely no help from me.

Despite the horrendous gameplay and a constant stream of in-game messages that lead you by the nose through the plot, Alias does have relatively good graphics and sound. Bristow, for the most part, looks just like Jennifer Garner's character as do the rest of the Alias cast who appear in the game. In addition, the voices of most of the cast are used for the game as well.

Gaming fans will absolutely hate Alias, seeing through its nearly transparent plot and shoddy gameplay in an instant, but fans of the show will likely enjoy the chance to take on the roll of their favorite character even if it's in a bad game.