10 Best Stealth Video Game Missions (According To The Internet)

Score breakdown: 10 appearances in 16 critic lists, and 5 appearances in 6 fan lists. Best mission decided by 12 nominations out of 43 (10 missions nominated), an opinion shared by the game’s director.

Perhaps no other mission more expertly showcases the full potential of Splinter Cell’s techno-thriller premise, of stealthily infiltrating a high security facility to secure sensitive intel armed with an array of high-tech gadgets, than the Panamanian Bank.

The degree of player agency is impressive. Routes through the level range from a cinematic rappel into an open lobby, to crawling through the building’s air conditioning system, to ‘persuading’ a helpful guard to let you through a locked door, right down to, if you’re up for a bit of swagger, walking right through the front entrance.

Combine this with variations in visual style, from the suitably glitzy lobby, to the high tech glass box of the security area, to the plush furnishings of the manager’s office, together with the fact that objectives can be completed in any order, and you have a highly replayable sandbox that never grows stale.

The Bank is what you get when tight level design gels perfectly with a game’s theme and game play, resulting in the freedom to experiment the likes of which the franchise had not seen before, nor arguably equalled, since. If ever there is an argument for Chaos Theory remastered, this level is it.