'The Great Escape' not a great game

Stealth is getting out of hand.

The latest title to feature the sneaky style of play is "The Great Escape" from Pivotal and Gotham Games.

The reasoning behind basing a 2003 video game on a 1963 movie is a topic for another day. The film has achieved cult status and is one of the movies most closely tied to the legend of Steve McQueen.

The game will achieve no such status. Sadly, it's just not that good.

The game begins in a flaming bomber over Germany. After mowing down a bunch of Nazi fighters, the bomber is hit and is heading for a crash. You bail out, but are greeted when you land by German soldiers who escort you to a nasty-looking prisoner of war camp.

You play as several of the movie's key characters, including McQueen's Virgil Hilts, whose specialty is picking locks. Andy McDonald is an intelligence expert, Robert Hendley a scrounger and Sedgewick an expert in making and repairing machines.

Your goal: Escape.

Opposing you are a variety of Nazi toadies, including Wehrmacht soldiers, special "ferrets" who focus on countering escapes, combat troops who generally shoot first and forget to ask questions later, and Gestapo officers, the meanest of the mean.

There is some combat action, but most of the time you're sneaking around, trying to avoid bumping into enemy soldiers while accomplishing some task. To help you, there's a "stealth" camera which lets you peek through keyholes and around corners to keep track of guards.

If one happens to surprise you, you can slug him or choke him from behind. And there are weapons, of course, though using them in the wrong places will bring a horde of slavering Nazis down on you in short order.

Comparing the game to the best of the stealth genre, such as "Metal Gear Solid," shows its serious shortcomings. My main complaint: Getting caught rarely can be explained or predicted. Sometimes you'll be all but buried underground and you'll be spotted, while in other cases a guard will walk by just a foot or two from your hideout, your head sticking up like a lamppost, and he won't give you a look.

While you'll be playing those stealth scenes over a few times before you clear them, "The Great Escape" does have one should-be-mandatory feature -- you can save at any point in the game. Save at the start of each stealth mission and at least you won't be playing an entire level over.

The big complaint? Stealth isn't fun as a steady diet unless the missions are greatly varied. That's not the case in "The Great Escape."

You do get to ride as McQueen in that famous motorcycle scene, but the controls manage to spoil the ride and other vehicular jaunts and leave you annoyed and frustrated. McQueen's probably spinning in his grave.

Graphics get a C. The characters look sort of like the movie stars they're modeled after, but in a stilted, awkward way. Lighting is adequate, detailing is skimpy, and there are problems with slowdown.

Controls get a B. Your characters follow the controls well, and there is no difficulty in getting where you need to go. Camera angles are good.

Sound gets a B. Voice acting is good and the dialogue is acceptable. The music works well with the theme and the on-screen action.

"The Great Escape" gets a B. It could have been improved with more fine-tuning. Instead, it's just another game clogging video store shelves, with little that stands out.