I've always preferred Alias to Buffy, don't get me wrong, I've never really thought that Sydney Bristow was better looking than Buffy (Jennifer Garner isn't my type) but the hi-tech, CIA storylines just interested me a lot more than demons and vampires. The latest in a long standing run of games sourced from books, movies and television, Alias is a stealth based, sneaker, shooter and as such will naturally draw comparisons to Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid. Now most of you are probably already rolling your eyes thinking ‘dodgy movie/tv show cash in' and surprisingly Alias definitely does not fit that category. The truth is that while it simply cannot compete with Splinter Cell, Acclaim has put together a game that is exceptionally accurate to the source material. The games biggest problem is that it's all been done before, and better. Fans of the show will enjoy the most of what Alias has to offer.

Alias is set in the second season before Sydney loses her memory and the 2 years of her life. Unfortunately this means two things, the story is horribly out of date and that there is no Melissa George. But I suppose at least we don't have to put up with her awful British accent that she puts on for the show. SD6 has been destroyed, Dixon works for the CIA (but isn't the boss yet) and we naturally have to listen to a single Flinkman's incessant ramblings and gibberish in between the moments of brilliance. The story begins with the disappearance of fellow CIA agent, Agent Jacobs. His last communication reveals information that Anna Espinosa, one of Sydney's biggest enemies, has gone rogue and teamed up with Arvin Sloane and Sark, two of Sydney's even bigger enemies! It's up to Sydney to travel the globe to find out what they're up to and put a stop to it.

The controls in Alias are quick to learn and contain nothing too difficult to learn. The left stick is used to move Sydney around, the right stick moves the camera, A performs a quick attack, X does a special attack, Y toggles you in and out of stealth mode and B is used for interacting with objects in the game. The left trigger lets you crouch and the right trigger is used for blocking during hand to hand combat. The d-pad clicked left lets you bring up your list of gadgets and clicked right lets you select your weapons. Pressing up on the d-pad puts you into thermal imaging mode and pressing down puts you into enhanced/night vision mode.

The combat in Alias right from the start reminded me of Buffy. You're able to pick up bottles, brooms, spanners and other objects to use as weapons which all definitely come in handy. Hand to hand combat is easy to learn and button mashers will have a fair amount of success with it but it pays to read the manual as Sydney can launch a back attack, crouch attacks, dodge, block, perform counter moves and also disarm the numerous baddies that are carrying guns and other weapons. It must be said that while the combat animations aren't the smoothest I've seen the counter and disarm moves are very nicely done and even feature some environment interaction. One move has Sydney grabbing a baddie, throws him backwards into a wall and then delivers a massive clothesline (forearm across the chest for you non wrestling fans) that puts them onto their back and looks nice and painful. Stealth attacks are also possible and feature some neck crackingly good moments. The only major issue is that the enemy A.I doesn't really pose much of a challenge and you can ignore all the alarms throughout the game and just fight your way through it. You aren't rewarded for finishing levels stealthily and while avoiding the baddies makes things a bit easier, it doesn't make the game overly exciting. There was minimal clipping with baddies landing up against walls and tables the way it should look which was nice to see.

Now while the hand to hand combat generally works pretty well the same can't be said for the weapons. The melee weapons are fine but you can pick up guns that are dropped and their use is fairly limited. Sure, they deal out more damage than your fists and feet but they empty quickly (usually only containing about 12 bullets) and only fire in 3 round bursts. This gets annoying when you know one bad guy has had more than 12 shots at you yet that amount of ammo is all you are ever allowed in return. Firing modes can't be changed from the 3 round burst and the guns also don't feature any kinds of alternate fire modes. For most of the time I made do with champagne bottles, spanners, broom handles or the occasional meat cleaver.

Interaction with the levels is limited to being able to pick up items to use as weapons and open doors, activate elevators etc. Sydney isn't able to jump and can only climb up to certain objects which really limits what you can do. I would have liked to have been able to jump off tables with a big flying kick to a baddies head but unfortunately you can't. Whilst in stealth mode a few extra moves are available such as being able to crawl under some objects and you can also move around making far less noise than usual. A good feature of the stealth mode is that you will automatically hug against a wall and when you get to a corner or doorway, peek around it and perform special attacks against the bad guys. As with the counter and disarm moves, these animations are the best and actually do look great.

Sydney also has a number of ‘Op-tech' gadgets to use and feature a nice assortment of devices. You have a lock pick, mini camera, razor prism (for hacking video signals), finger print replicator and also a disguise gadget that helps you fool the baddies. There are over 20 gadgets all up but the most annoying one would have to be the remote modem. You can put this onto computers for Flinkman to hack but first you have to solve a puzzle that in no way resembles anything remotely to do with hacking and just ends up annoying you every time you're forced to use it.

The graphics are pure cross platform and even feature high quantities of jaggies throughout the game which is never welcome. In this era of Splinter Cell being able to be ported to every device under the sun it has to be said that the graphics in Alias are just simply not good enough. Everything looks ok but Alias doesn't really feature anything that we haven't already seen in 2 years of Xbox gaming. There's a few reflective surfaces and some nice level architecture though so it isn't all bad news. The cut-scenes look pretty good with some nice modeling of the real actors but it also has to be said that while the lip syncing on a few of them looks ok during these scenes, Jack Bristow's in particular is shocking. On the plus side the games audio does a decent job and features voice acting from the cast of the show.