Your mission . . .

What it's all about

After you pick a scenario and mission, you're given a briefing, including a 3D flyby of the area you're heading into. Armed with this information, you then go into the team/equipment selection screen. Here, you can select commandos and outfit them using what you know about your mission. If you're in a hurry, there is an auto-equip feature that will do it all for you. Even in the two demo missions, though, it was beneficial (although not necessary) to make some equipment selection yourself. For example, we found it pays to equip your sharpshooter with an additional gun. This way, if he's forced into non-sniping combat, he has a weapon that is more suited to the task.

Say good night

You too

After your men are armed and dangerous, the real fun begins. You sneak/parachute/etc into enemy territory, and that's when things get heavy. You can use the map screen and plot out a coordinated attack plan, hop into the action first-person, or a little of both. This isn't to say that if you go at it first person there is no teamwork, though. Not only is it vital to switch between men depending what you're doing, but any of them men can lead the others using commands like "Follow me!" and "Move on!"

Surveying the scene

He won't be needing these

Pretty sneaky

As you're covert operatives, stealth is a key factor in your missions. Although your men are capable of running in and shooting things up, that generally isn't the best course of action. You could throw a grenade through a door which bad guys are behind, distract someone with a flare gun then blow 'em away, or pull out everyone's favourite, the sniper rifle. Both the sniper rifle and the binoculars allow you to zoom in on a faraway target, something the game pulls off quite smoothly.

Oops . . .

My assailant

Speaking of smooth graphics, Hidden and Dangerous looks like it'll have plenty of those. The two levels we got to play were swell lookin', especially the nicely detailed people, and the nifty fog/rain effects in the opening level. Powered by Illusion Softworks' Insanity engine, the graphics are everything you'd expect out of a contemporary 3D game, if not more. Combined with the absolutely necessary sound (it's important to know as soon as you're being shot at, and you can generally hear bullets whizzing toward you before you see them) and support for force feedback joysticks, it looks like Talonsoft has developed a game that will please a good three out of five senses!