Heist: The Score

Whenever you watch films nowadays about gangs of bank robbers cracking open vaults, they always make it seem so meticulous, with huge plans and perfect timing for every action.

Check out a bank robbery scene set in the 1920s, however, and it's all guns ablazing and explosives. You could say the art has become more refined, but we'd personally take the guns and explosions over the stealthy approach any day.

Heist: The Score is you, a heap of guns and bullets, and a vault to crack, with the police and rival gangs on your tail all the while. As long as you can trust your fellow robbers, it'll all be okay.

It plays like an on-rails first-person shooter, with the central goal of killing all the enemies in each section before you get shunted into the next.

It's fast-paced, exciting, and action-packed, with plenty of little extras that really help to keep the shoot-outs flowing. You can duck behind cover to reload your weapon, and swap between various weapons, such as shotguns and rifles.

Aiming for headshots is the best way to take down a room of cops quickly, although the recoil on each gun makes this pretty difficult. The controls are spot-on, and immersion levels are sky-high.

What's great is that the enemies aren't stupid enough to simply stand around - they'll jump in and out of cover and move around the levels to evade your bullets.

It also helps that the game has oodles of personality, with music playing constantly throughout that matches the action perfectly, and full voice acting that builds your connection with your fellow robbers.

The story also does its bit. You may just be simply breaking into a vault, but there are plenty of mysteries bubbling under the surface - for example, moments when a character will say or do something a little odd and you'll be left wondering what exactly the big picture is.

The bank looks great, and as you make your way down into its depths you really get a feeling of progression - especially when the tougher enemies begin to show up.

While your surroundings look great, in comparison the character models are awfully blocky and look like they've been plucked straight out of the '90s.

Not every combat element works well, either. The grenades, for example, are utterly pointless - when someone throws one at you, you simply hide in cover and take a tiny amount of damage, however close you are to the explosion.

Heist's biggest issue, however, is its length. This is just the first in a series of episodes, but even taking that into consideration its 20-30 minute playing time is very short indeed.

We were hoping that an episode would contain more than just the opening level, and this makes us worry about the rest of the series - if each release is just a single level, that's going to rub us up the wrong way.

As it stands, Heist gets bank robbery very right indeed. If we can get a slightly more meaty episode next time we'll be singing its praises.