Thus begins Rogue Ops, the upcoming stealth/action title Kemco showed at this week's E3 conference in Los Angeles. Rogue Ops, to put it simply, is a mix of Splinter Cell's stealth and Tomb Raider's action elements. While there are weapons aplenty in Rogue Ops, we found that we were much more successful when we used stealth and skill to solve problems and get past the terrorists.

Whereas Splinter Cell was somewhat unapproachable to new players, Rogue Ops' gameplay is far more obvious, automatically pointing out items you need to interact with, and spotting dangerous obstacles for your beforehand. While this makes it easy to avoid problems beforehand, it still allows you to decide exactly how you're going to solve the problem at hand, either by attack or evasion. For example, when we were playing the game, we came upon a stairwell guarded by a machine gun turret. We had two obvious options; blow it away, or sneak past it. Then we realized we also had uncovered a keycard from a guard we had knocked out. We used the keycard and quickly bypassed the door. However, we could have (and we tried it later) just as easily popped a few rounds into the turret, or play it stealthy, grabbing onto a high up ledge and do a hand-over-hand walk along the ledge until we bypassed the turret's field of view. Most of the puzzles in Rogue Ops' follow this style of gameplay, ensuring each gamer enjoys a unique gaming experience.

Just like Sam Fisher of Splinter Cell fame, Nikki carries quite a high tech pack of gadgets. Everything from a two-way radio embedded in her thermal vision sunglasses to a special "retinal pattern capturing" camera is available. The retinal camera is particularly cool, as it allows you to shoot a photo of a guard's retinas from a distance, then use that photograph to bypass retinal scanner locks. Thus, you never need to capture a guard and force him to open a lock a la Splinter Cell. It's touches like this that make the game easier than Splinter Cell, yet still keep it fresh and interesting.

For Xbox Live fans, Rogue Ops will be a double treat, as it will allow you to download new missions to extend Nikki's adventures. Unfortunately, there will be no online support for any other consoles, since downloadable levels require a hard drive for storage.

Graphically, Rogue Ops is a great looking game, as you'll see from the media page. Dynamic lighting and shadows are used to enforce stealth, while the character sprites are great to look at. The environments are very easy on the eyes, with good texturing and nice details here and there.

Overall, the near complete demo we played of Rogue Ops was certainly a good bit of fun. While it's certainly not the most unique title around, its gameplay is open ended enough to please both the trigger-happy and the ultra-stealthy gamers out there.