Deep within the bowels of a research center that wouldn't feel out of place at Black Mesa or Aperture Science, the lights come up on a lone stasis chamber that's only just whirring to life. The atmosphere is smotheringly thick as your clone (one of so many) awakens from his temporary entombment, the neon green of his stealth goggles ominously illuminating the dark. I like to call him Solid Snake or Sam Fisher, but this little clone doesn't have a name. None of them do. And yet, as I led him down the first dimly lit corridor of Stealth Inc.: A Clone in the Dark (known on more open platforms as Stealth Bastard), I couldn't escape the feeling that this clone was somehow different. Maybe it was the way he lithely responded to my input, or the promise of danger pulsing within the music, but whatever it was, these first few moments felt like the start of something special – a feeling that rarely left me until the end credits rolled.

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As a stealth-focused puzzle-platformer, Stealth Inc. is nearly faultless in its mechanics. That's something I came to learn over the long haul of its missions, where new twists are slowly layered on one after another. What grabbed me right away, though, was the loving detail that seems to have gone into every aspect of its presentation. Imagine if Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey and Flashback got stuck in a blender, and you're half way there. Semi-sentient movable blocks have electronic “eyes” that turn from gleeful to destitute as you walk away, while oddly proportioned security bots amble distinctively along their patrol routes like crabs wearing preposterous tin top-hats for shells. Though there's a memorable, menacing soundtrack setting the stage for it all, the lighting immediately emerges as the true show-stealer. Moving platforms, like polygonal shadow puppets, stamp stark silhouettes across the surrounding environment, giving the world of Stealth Inc. fangs and claws that feel ready to rip into you at any moment.

A bastard by any other name is just as stealthy.

Adding to that tone of malevolence is a nameless, voiceless observer who regularly projects its thoughts against the back wall of the testing facility as you go. This anonymous watcher's commentary runs the gamut from eerie sadism to outright belligerence for most of your journey, but at times it appears to be rooting for you and the odd clone that steps in to aid you in your escape. It's a trick straight out of the GlaDOS playbook for sure, but played straight enough to feel like its own entity. Story isn't a big part of the Stealth Inc. experience, but the world and its mechanical inhabitants are crafted to an extent that wondering what your clone's true purpose is becomes a natural question – one that will be answered in a devious, definitive way should you make it all the way through.And that's no small feat. Stealth Inc. has absolutely no qualms about punishing poor planning or execution with a swift death and a trip back to the last checkpoint, which is thankfully never too far away. With no loading between deaths, and an endless supply of lives, I never felt punished or frustrated, even when throwing clones to their doom by the fistfuls. Puzzles in Stealth Inc. are pleasant amalgamations of experimentation, observation, timing, and skill in which I built up a gradual understanding of its many nuances until I felt like a super-genius by the end. It starts with familiar genre staples like using movable blocks to hold down pressure-sensitive plates, but before long you're dealing with arrays of laser-tripped moving platforms, semi-passable hard-light barriers, and Portal-esque warp pads that maintain your momentum as you soar through. The variety is impressive, and new mechanics keep coming almost all the way to the end.With so many different contraptions, it'd be easy for artificial challenge to pop up from sheer confusion, but Stealth Inc. skillfully avoids that trap with informative visual design. Everything from sight ranges to noise levels are conveyed clearly, so you're never left wondering how or why you got snuffed out. Differentiating between light levels is fairly intuitive on sight, but if you ever have a doubt, the color of your clone's handy-dandy goggles puts it to rest. This may sound like a hand-holding easy mode, but the reality couldn't be any farther from the truth. These puzzles are ingeniously designed, and the ways in which they blend Stealth Inc’s many moving parts together is often masterful, particularly in the later stages. There are some odd difficulty spikes where I got stuck on one level forever, only to breeze through the next, but even then it's the type of challenge that begs you to “try, try again” no matter how many clones you kill in the process.Impressively, Stealth Inc. matches its overall level of quality with quantity, offering eight worlds with a total of 64 standard levels and an additional 16 that can only be unlocked by finding hidden items and garnering the maximum possible ranking on every level. Along the way you'll also unlock a suite of five different gadgets which you can use to find increasingly sneaky ways to shave down your clear times for the online leaderboards. It's too bad these toys aren't there for you to play with through your first run, but if you want to see what kind of craziness they could have been used for, you can just build entire levels around them from scratch with the powerful level editor. It's not as thoroughly explained as it could be, and it lacks the ability to share levels with others, but it's still an excellent way to extend an already meaty experience. Cross-buy and transferable cloud saves are merely the icing on the cake.