In Rogue Ops you play as Nikki Connors, a lady who’s an obvious mix of Sam Fisher (Splinter Cell) and Lara Croft (Tomb Raider). It must have become pretty obvious to Bits that they were creating a graphical knockoff of Lara during development as one day, she suddenly got a makeover and when from flowing brunette locks to a close cropped blonde stealth-ops ‘do. That should’ve been our first hint at just how derivative Rogue Ops would become before it shipped.

The story of Rogue Ops follows Nikki Connors and her quest for vengeance. Nikki’s a former special operations agent, and when her husband and child are killed by an evil shadow organization, she teams up with her old boss to take down the baddies responsible for it.

The gameplay focuses around Nikki being stealthy. Through the use of high tech gadgetry, she’ll spot enemies behind walls, easily locate traps and find hidden doorways. While it’s nice to have gadgets that help you out with these things, they make it all too easy to finish levels quickly and effortlessly, leaving you wondering if there is any challenge at all to this game. The developers professed to create multiple ways around a problem; however, you’ll rarely need to look past the obvious.

The controls are fairly simple, though the reticule system makes things far too easy and turns a cool stealth title into a point-and-click adventure. As you look around an area, a green reticule will appear to point out items you need to interact with in some way. Be it a door to open or a ladder to climb, the game points you right to it. So the game quickly becomes one of entering an area, scanning for a green target, then hitting the action button. Lather, rinse and repeat ad infinitum. There are some cool gameplay elements such as the stealth attack and dual-purpose inventory that help keep the game from being a totally bland experience, but overall, it’s just a lot of point and click gaming.

As far as the actual stealth elements go, it’s pretty much standard fare with Nikki sneaking under lights, past laser tripwires and performing neck-snapping kills. And while most of the game is just too easy to be considered a serious stealth challenge, there are some stealth segments that are so overdone, you’ll be forced to play them seemingly dozens of times to complete them. Slip up just a tiny bit, and it’s back to the beginning of the level.

Rogue Ops’ presentation is pretty average fare, lacking any knockout visuals or stunning sound. The PlayStation 2 version of Rogue Ops’ is particularly (and literally) rough around the edges, as "jaggies" reign supreme. Most sound is pretty basic, though the voice acting is bland and lifeless.

One of the biggest dings against Rogue Ops is its shortage of real replay value. With a complete lack of unlockables, hidden areas or secrets, there’s just no reason to come back to this game once you’re done. It gets a few points on our replay scale just because you’ll need to replay some levels a few times to find the best way through, but those occasions are pretty rare, and that forced replay won’t make anyone happy.

As a stealth title, Rogue Ops is passable, but nowhere near the quality of the Metal Gear series or Splinter Cell. Many times, it feels like an action title that got reworked when Splinter Cell brought the stealth genre back into vogue. For $50, you should expect more, and at best this game is a weekend rental.