The Operative: No One Lives Forever

"A game that needs to go back to the workshop"

Welcome to the 60's. You're a young British woman spy that is very attractive. You are enrolled in mission after mission, killing the bad guys and saving the innocent. The story develops first after going through the training stage. After that, you move on to your first big assignment. You then go through different ''scenes'' for each level. The only downside: movies, movies, and more movies. The movies aren't even that wonderful, due to the lacking graphics, I'll get to that later. This game will remind you a lot of Goldeneye for Nintendo64, except without Bond and replaced with a woman. The game lacks in the ability to let you explore the levels. Instead, forcing you to walk on one path, talking a cut through every one and a while, just to get back on the path. As you can guess, this game gets very monotonous, due to the fact you do the same thing on each level, and leads to your disappointment of the game. An example of the game can be imagined by combining James Bond with Final Fantasy. You have the action from Bond and the cinematic's from Final Fantasy. Before every mission you go on, you watch a five minute movie scene. This gets old by the second one and you'll be wishing that they would have designed it so you were told your mission without a movie.

And that's really the whole story to it. Your a spy that goes on pointless missions that take a minute, and then go to a movie scene. So there for the story disserves a four, due to the lacking story line.

The graphics are atrocious, and make you think back to the days of Playstaition, where the people don't look real and their mouths don't match up with their voices. The characters have been drawn horribly and look like the art directors took a photo and moved the mouth up and down. The weapons were the only things that appealed to me, everything else was just sickening. The levels had no special features to them. For example: the hills, instead of being round, were actually more like boxes with sloped sides. You don't leave foot prints in the sand or after you get out of the water and will leave you wondering why they released this so bare and lacking. Even the cars are one big error. Sure, you can open and close the door, but you can't interact with them, and you can see right through the car from the front, very disappointing. This is why the graphics disserve a two.

The control pretty much makes the game. It's easy enough for a 6 year old, and complex enough for more serious gamers. The rest of the gameplay on the other hand, is much lacking. The levels are very short, mainly composed of movies, and you will be wondering where the fun at is it. You might as well keep a pillow close by, because if you skip the movie you wont know what you are supposed to do, and where to find what you are supposed to do. Gameplay on this one gets a 6

The music and audio were another failed attempt. The music sounds the same through out all the levels, so your probably going to want to turn it off. The gun shots sound good, but only when they hit someone and the person hit screams. Otherwise, it always sounds like you shot metal. They could have done a lot better on improving this, and it coasted them big time. Music and audio disserve a two.

I honestly would never touch the game again, so the replay on this is very low. Once you beat it, your happy that your done and you'll want to brake it in half.

This game shouldn't be sold in stores, or at least not under the PS2 area. If you are a die hard FPS fan, then you may want to rent it, but I wouldn't waste my money on it. It will take you three or four days to beat, and when you finish, you'll be happy that your done.

Heres how it all comes together:

Story - 4
Graphics - 2
Gameplay - 6
Music/Audio - 2
Replayability - Very Low
Rent or Buy? - Rent, if you must

Final Score: 4

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 07/21/02, Updated 07/21/02