The Operative: No One Lives Forever

"Goldeneye meets Austin Powers!"

No-one Lives Forever (NOLF) is a first person shooter staring Cate Archer set around the 1960's. Cate is a member of the organization UNITY and during the course of the game you'll fight the evil meglomanianical organization HARM.
During the game you will visit many different places around the world, and fight a great number of enemies. But NOLF is not your average shooter. Often missions will require you to use stealth and a wide array of gadgets. Such gadgets include hairpins that are also lockpicks, sunglasses with built in camera and mine detector and many others. One of my personal favourites is the robotic dog, that causes guard dogs in the area to fall in love with it and get distracted allowing you to slip past unnoticed. There is also a huge array of weapons to choose from, including pistols, machine guns, sniper rifles, grenade launchers, even space blasters!
The whole theme of NOLF is not very serious, more like Austin Powers than James Bond. Quite often if you sneak up to the guards unnoticed you will be rewarded with funny conversations between them. Really NOLF is a spoof of all those 60's spy flicks.
Another cool feature of NOLF is that you can talk to a wide variety of non playable characters and engage in conversation with them. But if you flash a gun in their face they run away scared, always funny!
Graphically NOLF is a very pretty game, provided you have the system to run it. the animation is beautiful, and in a few scenes if you shoot a guard and kill him while hes standing in the middle of a staircase you can watch his lifeless corpse roll down the stairs, unlike many other FPS games where they just lie unrealistically where you kill them (i.e hanging halfway over a cliff). There is a fair bit of slowdown on older machines (mine!) in larger areas, but otherwise it runs fairly well.
The sound of NOLF fits the atmosphere, with all those 60's tunes. The voice acting is top notch and really brings each character to life.

Graphics: 9 If you have a good system then NOLF is a treat to look at!
Sound: 9 Excellent voice acting and music
Gameplay: 10 Wonderfully varied missions, and locals, ranging from sunken ships, to many places all over the world and even SPACE! Think Goldeneye crossed with Austin Powers and James Bond. Highly playable and extremely funny.
Replayability: 10 New gadgets unlocked in latter missions allow access to previously unaccessible areas the first time around.
Rent or Buy? Simple, BUY IT! The 'Game of the Year Edition' is now out so its definately worth a look.
Overall: 10 Humor, action, suspense all go together to make one of the best first Person Shooters ever. A must buy!

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 05/18/02, Updated 07/12/02