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The Operative: No One Lives ForeverReviewed By: Kirk Hiner Review Date: January 30, 2002 Review Computer: 867MHz G4, 640MB RAM, ATI RADEON 8500, Mac OS X v10.2.3
In all of my years of computer and video gaming, I've undoubtedly killed countless thousands of people, animals, robots, aliens and demons. It's just what you do in computer games. I don't think this is bad, no matter what Joe Bacca says, as even gamers who have access to only 1/4 of the 1/10 of the brain cells used by humans are capable of separating pixels on a screen from real life. I'm not worried about that. Yet, in all of the games I've played, I've never once felt bad about the fake computer people, animals, robots, aliens and demons I've killed. Well...maybe the dogs. I really like dogs, even those that want to tear out my larynx. The Operative: No One Lives Forever changed all of that. Bill Stiteler got through this game faster than I did (he always does, now that he's been kicked out of the Masons yet again), and we often talked about the various levels and elements. "Did you get to..." he'd ask. "Did you see the part where..." I'd continue. Unfortunately, the conversation would lead nowhere since we always seemed to trail off on our questions. See what I did there? It's comedy, folks! Anyway, at one point Bill asked if I'd gotten to the part where the two guards were talking about playing in a band. I had, and agreed with Bill that these were two very likable characters. Neither of us wanted to kill them, but we both did.
NOLF is a first-person shooter (or third-person, depending upon your preference) designed in homage to late-60s spy movies. You play Cate Archer, a clever girl with a clever name who's out to prove that a woman can survive in a traditionally male role. This is all well and good, but extremely heavy-handed. As Cate sets out on her missions, it seems that every man she meets has to question why a woman is performing a "man's job." Even those who believe in her skills do so with trepidation. It's annoying. I wish the writers could've just made their point and moved on, but that wasn't their style. Indeed, the phrase "just move on" seems quite foreign to these writers, but more on that later. Cate works for an organization called UNITY (without periods) who's trying to learn more about the evil organization H.A.R.M. (with periods) because all organizations--good and evil--need to have to clever acronyms for names...acronyms that accurately reflect the overall intent of the organization. I'd say this is also a nice send-up of 60s spy films, but it could just as easily be a send-up of modern U.S. culture. D.A.R.E., M.A.D.D., the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act...it's severely depressing, what people consider clever these days. So, H.A.R.M. is out to take over the world, as well they should be. Aim high, those Air Force posters always said. UNITY is out to stop them. Trouble is, a good number of their operatives have been killed, which is why UNITY had to resort to calling up Cate, the woman. She has a somewhat sordid background, luckily, and is not foreign to sneaking about and using her wits to keep out of trouble.
Somewhat inspired by the assassination of Georgi Markov in London in 1978, I would assume, H.A.R.M. has a habit of using umbrellas (or blow darts, etc.) to inject their targets with a deadly agent. Only here, instead of recin or another such biotoxin, the agent planted in the target is actually a sort of bomb. A bomb with a really big explosion. See, that's the mark of a good story. Yes, it's a bit fantastic, but it's rooted in real life, and that makes the scenario a bit more urgent and believable...even if the demands are delivered by a hand puppet. An impassioned hand puppet, at that. So, as Cate seeks to unravel this mystery (who's been infected, what's the anecdote, where can it be picked up, and who exactly is behind all of this?), she'll jet off to many exotic locales and cross paths with many diabolical villains...and some friendly villains as well. This is a spy game, after all...villains can't be normal joes working out of warehouses in Akron, Ohio. Well, not until the sequel, anyway. Also because this is a spy game, you'll get plenty of interesting devices to aid you in your quest. You know the type...a blowtorch lighter, poison gas perfume, exploding lipstick, camera sunglasses...the kind of stuff you'd otherwise only see in the backs of comic books or at websites like this. As is tradition, they're all presented to you just before you need them. However, not just before you want them. Some areas in the early levels are unreachable because you don't have the proper device to access them. Once you complete the game and have all the devices, you can go back through and play the levels again to explore these area. It's an interesting way to extend the life of the game. You get some control over which items to take with you on missions, but there's never a point where you'll be stuck because you didn't bring the correct device. Say, for instance, you didn't bring the code breaker you need to access the elevator. There'll either be another way to get to your destination, or there'll be a code breaker lying around somewhere. Yes, there are multiple weapons as well, but you should know me well enough by now to realize I couldn't give two figs about weaponry in games. They all look like guns and they all shoot like guns. Who cares about the details, other than the people who develop websites like this? What I do like in computer games are well designed levels, and NOLF excels in that department. Unlike recent titles such Jedi Outcast and--to a lesser degree--Return to Castle Wolfenstein, every level of NOLF was farily logical and felt different from the previous. This is not only due to the varying locales, but also the way in which those locales were played. You can't use the same strategy in the space station that you used in the jungle, for example. Even the levels on the ship looked and played radically different when it was above water versus after it had sunk.
...except for during the cut scenes. This drove Bill nuts, but I was a little more patient with it. The trouble with it isn't that the dialogues were long, but that you got the point well before the characters were done stressing the point. You can skip these prolonged segments to get back to the action, but the game is generally so funny that I was afraid to skip anything for fear I'd miss another Tommy Tutone or Men Without Hats reference (admittedly, most of the spy movie/T.V. show references were lost on me). So, get ready to spend a lot of time watching and listening. Oddly, the best dialogue moments weren't in the cut scenes that drove the plot. As you approach the guards while playing the game, you almost always find them in conversation about something...anything from the aforementioned band (one guard needed a drummer for a gig he had set up, the potential replacement was worried about having to schlep his kit around) to discussions about girlfriends to laments over the loss of a once respected evil organization. These dialogues usually are very, very funny. Strategically, it sometimes pays to sit through them (one of the guards may leave when the conversation is finished), and sometimes it pays to quickly sneak by while the participants are distracted. In that way, this game felt much more realistic than in most first person shooters where the enemy mainly just stands in one spot waiting for you to arrive. The graphics in NOLF were pretty good even though the game is a couple years late in getting to us. Normally, this would be fine as it would therefore play well on older machines. Nope, not here. Even on my 867MHz G4 (see specs above), I had many problems with low frame rates. Oddly, adjusting the video settings never seemed to help. Sometimes the game performed well at the maximum settings, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes it performed well at lower settings, sometimes it didn't. I was never able to pinpoint this fickle behavior. I guess it was just moody. A lot of attention was paid to the way the characters look while just standing around. They blink repeatedly during conversations. They stand as real people would--hand on hip, for example--and sway a bit as they talk (or sway a lot as they drink). Cate was especially fun to watch...her moves were cat-like; you knew this was a woman who was secure in her ability to get the job done. Computer games usually have trouble conveying such personality without resorting to canned dialogue.
Speaking of personality, the voice acting is top-notch here. Some of the villains were a bit over-the-top, but in a fun way. I especially liked Cate's attitude, or lack thereof. She seemed real to me, not full of forced one-liners and bravado. She tolerated the sexism of the men around her because she knew that accomplishing this mission and saving lives was more important...and that she could do it without their support. She showed concern for the operatives she met in the field, even when they were traditionally loud, boisterous Americans. Which brings up a curious point. Cate is Scottish, although her accent is much more English. Why do all spies from the 60s have to be from the United Kingdom? Did America not have a spy network back then, or were we just not very good about it? Also, why do so many female computer characters have to have English accents? Actually, I can answer that myself...English accents just sound cool. Intelligent. It's sexy. I'd like to move to the U.K. just so I could develop one. But, back to the review. MacPlay brought us the Game of the Year Edition of NOLF, which basically means four additional levels and a music CD. The new levels start out promising (a monkey steals Cate's gun and she has to get it back), but end up becoming the same thing you just finished. Playing them is like watching deleted scenes from a movie; it's interesting to do, but you can see why they were omitted in the first place. The music CD is odd in that it's not the music in the game, and it's not as good as the music in the game. There was one track I kind of liked with a nice, staccato harpsichord sound at the intro, but the rest is only worth about one listen...and I hope the lyrics to the song about Cate were written in parody of something, because they're hideous. I ran through The Operative: No One Lives Forever immediately after playing Jedi Outcast, and I enjoyed NOLF much, much more. It's not necessarily that much better, but it was somehow much lighter than Jedi Outcast yet just as challenging. It didn't seem as heavy or oppressive as other first-person shooters, and I liked that freshness. I liked it to the point where I can safely say that NOLF now sits just under Deus Ex as my favorite FPS of all time. I'm looking forward to playing through it again to find what I may have missed, and I'm even more looking forward to the sequel which was recently announced by MacPlay. Yes, it means more killing, but at least NOLF will let me feel bad about it. Oh, and I'm told there's a multiplayer feature in here somewhere. I'd point you to IMG or MacGamer for their coverage of that, but they pretty much agree with me when I ask about multiplayer in NOLF, "Who cares?" It's a good thing Cate doesn't have that attitude.  [an error occurred while processing this directive]
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That's the thing about The Operative: No One Lives Forever (NOLF). You like the characters. I'm not talking about the main characters, I mean the incidental characters who, in any other game, would be there just for you to kill. You like them because they have personality. They have lives...albeit short ones if they're in the way of your mission.
Some levels require you to use stealth and take your time, others give you only a few moments to complete your task. In some, it's imperative that you not be detected by either humans or security cameras, in others, it's impossible to not be detected. You're on foot in most, but a few require you to take control of a motorcycle or snowmobile, and there is some swimming and even a bit of weightlessness and...well...plummeting thrown in for good measure. In most of the levels, a combination of all these tactics and devices will help you get through with the highest ranking. In short, NOLF constantly changes up its look and feel, so the game never really grows old...