The Operative: No One Lives Forever

"A few frame-rate problems doesn't stop this game from being the best Single player FPS sinse Half-Life!"

No One Lives Forever is not your basic “kill everything” FPS game, in fact it’s probably one of the more unique FPS games out there, more focused on the single player experience (which is seemingly becoming rarer and rarer) then anything else with great voice-overs, game play, and graphics to carry out an excellent story and involving experience.

Sound: 10/10
“Why must I be made to say such idiotic things?”
I always liked it when games made characters say certain things while being shot instead of the usual grunting noise. That’s exactly what I got in this game, enemies will spout off some pretty hilarious stuff while you’re shooting them, things like “Bullets are not my friend!” or “I do not like getting shot at!” But that’s not all, the game also has some of the best voice-overs I’ve heard in a PC game, the voices perfectly fit the characters and add to a great experience. Not to mention if your careful enough you can listen in to some of the most hilarious conversations, such as one character sneaking away from his post and being nagged at by his co-working about doing so. Other conversations have characters talking about purchasing and selling monkey’s, upcoming TV shows and other misc. things you probably wouldn’t expect.

Voices aren’t the only things done very well, the sound effects are perfect, shoot something metallic and you’ll hear the clang, step on wood and it sounds like you’re walking on wood, same with metal and other materials. And this all comes in handy when sneaking around. The weapon effects are done well also, each gun effect sounds exactly as it should.

Graphics: 8/10 “You look like you need a Monkey”
Character models in this game are awesome, they have a true 60’s or 70’s look, and are really well animated too. Especially in the cut scenes you can see the level of detail they put into individual characters, they look like real people, in fact, they actually modeled Cate Archer after Mitzi Martin, I have no clue about the rest of the characters, but they all seem to share the same amount of detail. But as always there is an exception to the rule, they could’ve tossed in a couple of more different looking enemies per level. For instance in the Morocco levels you’ll see 3 different looking bad guys white suit, gray suit, red suit, through out the entire level. This is sort of tiring, but I guess it works out especially since your just going to kill them anyways.

The levels in this game are truly beautiful the level in detail in the stages is just excellent. In fact, if it weren’t for one thing I would give the graphics a ten. That thing?
The game engine, the game engine seems to drag this game down, I have a fairly powerful system (PIII 550, 128 ram GeForce 2 64 ram), and the game still seems to have frame rate issues. Not to the point where it’s impossible to play, but it is a problem. A friend of mine who has a very powerful system tells me that he gets the same problem, perhaps if the game was running on a different engine this wouldn’t be a problem. If it weren’t for that, the game would be drop dead gorgeous.

Game play: 10/10 “I do not like getting shot at!”
The game play is truly, truly refreshing, it’s a single player experience you will not forget anytime soon. A few of the latest FPS games have been focused on the multi-player experience (quake 3 arena/team arena, Unreal Tournament), not this game!

No One Lives Forever is kind of like the old show Get Smart but instead of CONTROL Vs. KAOS, it’s UNITY Vs. HARM. The game even seems to do a great job of putting you in the place of a spy. You get all the cool gadgets (sun glasses that double as a camera, lip stick explosives, a barrette that works as a lock pick, and knife with poisoning, and many more). Heck you even get to go to “Santa’s Toy Shop” to try these things out after ever mission.

Speaking of missions the variety in the levels is truly a wonder. Sure, a great bulk of the levels are the “get out alive” and “kill or be killed”, but you also get levels where you have to sneak around and avoid cameras (can’t simply destroy them also, if you do they’ll figure something is up and send men in immediately), a level where you need to protect a subject using a sniper rifle, a level where you need to get information from another subject while acting as a magazine interviewer, and even a level where you’re free falling from an airplane so you can catch up to a guy who has one of the last parachutes!

All of this carried out with some great game play where your actions can change the way you take on the rest of the level. Like I said before you can sneak around, well, instead of sneaking around you can go ahead, start killing and have just about the entire base on your butt, or be as careful as possible and then take your time with the rest of level taking out enemies one by one. Doing so is much easier said then done however, one mistake and you’ll alert most of the guards, and as I said you need to sneak around cameras or use an item you’ll get later on to avoid them.

Being an FPS and all, the control’s are as good as you set them up to be, you can re-map the keyboard to your liking and set up the mouse sensitivity the way you want, so it plays perfectly for the kind of game it is.

To buy or not to buy: “We’ll meet again Miss Archer”
If you enjoy single player focused FPS games, then this is absolutely a must buy, it has a great story, excellent game play, a great amount of variety, and it’s just cool in general, if you don’t have it by now, what are you waiting for?

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/10/01, Updated 05/10/01