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One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way
Review by Steerpike That Ain't the Way My Pappy Did Things A couple of years ago a friend and I went to the movies on a Saturday afternoon to see The Mummy with Brendan Fraser. Neither of us was expecting much—Encino Man in a cheap remake of a not-so-good '30s horror flick? I figured I'd get quite a bit less entertainment than my three-dollar ticket was worth. But The Mummy was a treat in every sense of the word. I loved it. It took its time, managing to be funny and exciting, full of action and comedy, well worth the price of admission. The Mummy strikes me as one of those movies you can throw into the DVD player just whenever, whenever you feel like it. It's a cheerful adventure that harms no one. In many ways The Mummy is similar to No One Lives Forever, one of the great sleeper hits of 2000. Both had the deck stacked against them. Both were unexpected hits. Both were well-loved by fans and repeatedly viewed (or played). Both wound up receiving very positive reviews. And both had highly anticipated and hugely disappointing sequels. If you look to your right you'll note that I've given No One Lives Forever 2 a fairly high rating; the reason for this is that when viewed based on its own merit, NOLF2 is a solid first-person shooter with adequate design and a pretty good script. It's that which results in the thumbs-up rating. But as a sequel to No One Lives Forever, one of the seminal events in innovative first-person game design, it is sorely lacking. Because while to the casual observer The Mummy Returns—er, No One Lives Forever 2 may seem a lot like its predecessor, the designers chose to gut the title in such a way that only a spark of the wit and charm of the original remains. Though I have myriad gripes with the game, ultimately my fundamental complaint about NOLF2 is linked inextricably with its predecessor: in No One Lives Forever, I was part of a story—a complex and hilarious tale with currents and eddies of theme and character and plot. In No One Lives Forever 2, I was playing a game—a game with an impossible-to-spoil story whose end is telegraphed from the beginning and characters in whom I could not invest a single emotional dollar. And that's disappointing. One Moment in Time No One Lives Forever 2 places you once again in the stylish shoes of agent Cate Archer, a spy in service of UNITY, the global-but-largely-British agency set in the '60s and focused on combating the nefarious schemes of various fictional and highly amusing terrorist organizations—Unremitting Evil, Very Bad Inc., and, of course, H.A.R.M.—an acronym that apparently stands for nothing except general divisiveness and evil. Cate was the first woman to be employed by UNITY in NOLF, and therein lay the crux of the storyline: she was untried, untrusted, and unwelcome in the vulgar boys' club of 1960s espionage activity. There was a mole in the organization, operatives were being murdered, UNITY was in desperate straits, and H.A.R.M. was on the verge of taking over the world. Much of the humor of the original NOLF lay in the fact that despite this, H.A.R.M. was (quite intentionally on the part of game designers) the most incompetent terrorist organization in the history of armed conflict, and working against them was laugh-out-loud funny. In NOLF2, H.A.R.M. has reorganized and is once again ascendant in the world of wickedness. Lovable villains and other characters from the first NOLF reappear, including fighting Scotsman Magnus Armstrong, moderately sinister Dimitrij Volkov, Bruno Lawry, and a certain hard-drinking barfly that only those NOLF players who let the end credits roll will fully appreciate. In this iteration, the still not-wildly-competent H.A.R.M. is working with the Soviets on a complex and multitiered world domination program involving, among other things, a strategically insignificant island, a five-star communist hotel, and a clan of fierce female ninjas. However, without the depth and complexity of Cate's struggles for acceptance and the lengthy character-developing cinematics we found in NOLF, the story and characters fall flat. It is disappointing that the developers of NOLF2 chose to replace the voice talent of nearly every major character in the game, including Cate Archer, though I cannot fault them for this; actors are a fickle bunch and there's a possibility that the voice talent from the original was unable or unwilling to return. But some of the leading roles have been recharacterized as well as recast, especially Cate herself. In this sequel, Cate has been tarted up to such a degree that she no longer resembles the highly intelligent, confident, empowered, and, yes, sexy woman that she was in NOLF; she has fallen victim to Lara Croft Syndrome. Her chest is bigger, her clothes are tighter, her skirts are shorter, her behavior is more kittenish than well-groomed international spy, and she seems ultimately designed to appease the hormones of greasy-faced adolescent males who may or may not play the game. This was a conscious decision on the part of the designers, made as a direct result of the success of the original NOLF, and it is highly irritating to those of us who do not need to turn to digital avatars to fulfill fantasies. A smidgen of roleplaying was added in NOLF2, in the form of experience points gained by performing certain actions. These points can then be spent to improve a number of Cate's attributes. While the theory behind this addition is nice, it seems to me unnecessary. Clearly attempts were made to fit NOLF2 into the same mold as Deus Ex and System Shock 2, while its predecessor stood quite strongly as a purist's first person stealth/shooter. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. History Repeats It's interesting to note that the original No One Lives Forever was designed in part as a flip of the bird to reviewers who assumed that anything developed on the LithTech engine was crap. LithTech was, at the time, free—which meant that a lot of industry nonentities snapped up the source code and made a terrible game out of it. As the connotation became more severe, LithTech developer Monolith Entertainment realized that they had to strike back with a game that not only displayed the awesome technical capabilities of LithTech, but was so innovative and clever that it would forever silence those critics who associated the engine with mediocrity. In its own way, NOLF2 is similar. While the developers of NOLF accomplished their goal in spades, LithTech has since evolved from a fairly standard 3D engine to a real competitor for the best and most famous million-dollar engines out there. NOLF2 features a massively retooled LithTech engine, and in a lot of ways I felt like the game was designed (like last time) to showcase the power of the new codebase. This has led to benefits and problems. There is no doubt that NOLF2 is graphically stunning, especially when featuring water and environmental effects. LithTech, like the Build engine before it, is famous for allowing great scripted control of the environment. One scene finds Cate doing battle with H.A.R.M.'s ninja warriors in a trailer park in Ohio—a simple enough environment were it not for the tornado thundering toward the area. Throughout the timed sequence, trailers rock and fall, objects swirl into the air, and heapingly generous particle effects darken the sky as a menacing funnel bears down on you. The price that gamers have paid for the technical power of NOLF2 is significant, however. A quick look at the many forums devoted to discussion of the game will reveal endless complaints about level load times that in some cases exceed five minutes on computers well within the "minimum" requirements; a great number of systems appear to choke on the graphics that are part of the game experience. While trimming the eye-candy settings offsets the problem to a certain degree, gamers who lack supercooled Crays may have a hard time running the program. And though yours truly must admit that he experienced no difficulty on his Athlon 1.33 GHz/512 MB DDR/GeForce 4600 machine, systems that were only slightly less powerful than my own were brought to their knees by this title. Meanwhile, on the audio end of things, soundtrack in NOLF2, while being quite clearly Austin Powers-inspired, is very good. Positional audio is strong even with a two-speaker setup (provided you're accelerating your sound in hardware), so you should have no difficulty telling whether a voice is behind, below, or above you. And while the actors may all be different, they do a good job with their roles. Nothing irritates me more than abysmal voice acting, and you may rest assured that NOLF2's acting quality is well above normal. Have it Your Way, Baby A number of terrific innovations have been added to the gameplay of NOLF2. The ability to search and move bodies greatly increases the sense of urgency and need for stealth throughout the game, and the fact that a thorough search takes time is a wonderful throwback to the very first Castle Wolfenstein. Cate can now switch lights on and off, hide, Thief-like, when the appropriate icon appears on the screen, ruffle through papers on a desk, and open file cabinets to examine the contents. Generally one of the real benefits of the new engine is that as a player you now have greater control over your environment. On the other hand, a number of issues that vexed me in the original have reappeared in the sequel. One of the few aspects of NOLF that drove me nuts was the prevalence of highly repetitive and inane tasks—locate and arm the four explosives, locate and disarm the four explosives, locate and photograph the five pieces of evidence, et cetera. These missions were sprinkled in with some of the most clever and innovative missions yet seen in a first person shooter, and, though infuriating, I was willing to forgive them because I was so hooked on the story and the quality missions. NOLF2 lacks such admirable design, and as a result I found myself much more frustrated by the recurrence of entire levels where your goal was to find audio tapes with yellow, purple, blue, green, and orange labels, or to navigate a huge area and stick explosives on everything that didn't move. Additionally, players will note that opponents are inclined to respawn in areas you've cleared. This is a sign of woeful play balancing and near-childish game design; in a title that is supposed to be otherwise "realistic," enemies are available by the thousands—they're more likely to respawn if there's an alarm going off, but they seem to do it on a timer otherwise—even in remote facilities where logic dictates that there could only be ten or fifteen guards. This just strikes me as so cheap, so 8-bit Nintendo, that I am half-bewildered by it. Fans of the original NOLF—and I really am sorry to keep bringing it up, but honestly, how can one evaluate a sequel if not in comparison to the original?—will probably remember the vast list of available weapons and ammunition. Don't expect the same treatment here; the weapon list is stripped to bare essentials. If you're fighting Russians, you'll pick up and use an AK-47. If you're fighting H.A.R.M. guards, you'll get a Gordon submachine gun. Only one pistol is included (for which there is never adequate ammo)—unless you count the highly amusing CT-180 Utility Launcher, another little gem that NOLF lovers may remember was discussed at great length but never actually seen in the original. Ultimately, however, it looks like the designers either didn't want to be bothered coding myriad weapons into the game or they felt that players wouldn't use them, and I for one howl that they are wrong. Many players will sorely miss such weapons as H.A.R.M.'s Super Atomic Laser Weapon, the mighty Bacalov Corrector, the Parabellum pistol, and many more that make nary an appearance in this sequel. From a general gameplay perspective, as I mentioned above, NOLF2 is a satisfactory first-person stealth/shooter. Despite the respawning and certain insanely annoying tasks, there is a lot to be liked in the overall game design. Some more clever levels demand total stealth and see Cate planting bugs, listening in on telephone calls, locating critical enemy documents, and more. This is not by any means intended to suggest that the level design enjoys the type of creativity we saw in NOLF. You won't fall out of a plane, visit a space station, interview a wealthy small-game hunter, or swim with sharks in NOLF2. You won't see innocuous hilarity—World Domination Prevention Maps, "Welcome to the Big H.A.R.M. Space Station" or "You Are Now in H.A.R.M.'s Way" signs, etc.—on the walls. The level design is, as stated, adequate; and by "adequate" I mean "rushed." Specifically, NOLF was an unexpected hit and it looks to me like its sequel was hut-hutted out the door in an expedited fashion in order to capitalize on that success (and on the increased curviness and size of Cate's new LithTech-powered boobs). Don't expect game design to be in the same league as its predecessor. Though uninspired, physical level design in general is more or less acceptable; though it's doubtful that any of these buildings were created in consultation with architects, they are (for the most part) logically designed and laid out. A stealthy player can take advantage of storage areas, darkened corners, unused rooms, and the like; the more aggressive agent can easily head directly toward the mission's objective, guns blazing. That latter isn't the recommended style of play, of course, but the level design quite rightly allows you to do it if you so choose. If you're willing to look past the predecessor-related shortcomings, gameplay in NOLF2 manages to be generally satisfying, especially if you're not an NOLF purist. It's not nearly as long as the original, though I refuse to complain about its length when I'm spending most of this article shredding the game (it would be like saying I hate the food on my plate and then griping because there's not enough there), but there is a clear sense of approach-to-goal. Like the original, you feel like you're getting closer and closer to unraveling the mystery of H.A.R.M.'s most recent nefarious plot. Also, it mimics the very enjoyable globetrotting feel of the original, sending Cate all over the world during the course of her quest. There is also a multiplayer mode, a unique new cooperative style that allows up to four players to perform missions corollary to the single player storyline. Though the idea is pretty clever, the multiplayer implementation is clearly tacked on; we had difficulties getting a game started and lots of problems once the game began. Furthermore, the multiplayer (quite inexplicably) offers no female models for players in a game that features a female lead character. While the multiplayer concept is a pretty darn clever one, and I'd very much like to see it further fleshed out in some other game, it was poorly and ineptly implemented here. Once More with Feeling If it sounds like NOLF2 is a lot like NOLF, and you're wondering why I'm complaining so bitterly, you have my sympathy. I spent literally hours discussing this game both with friends who'd played it and with other Four Fat Chicks staff in order to put my finger on the pulse of NOLF2, a pulse I found very difficult to find. Mostly I wanted to confirm that my complaints about it weren't mere fluff—I was excited about this game, and some might argue that excitement inevitably leads to disappointment. But in the long run I confirmed that this wasn't true. When I say they "gutted" NOLF2, I mean it, and I can back it up. To wit: training at Advanced Field Tactics—gone. Driving vehicles (except once)—gone. Varied and creative weapons—gone. Customizing your own equipment loadout—gone. Ridiculously clever level design (think of the airplane/parachute sequence from NOLF)—gone. Santa's Workshop—gone. Totally useless "intelligence items" that contribute to the humor level rather than the game—gone. Lengthy, character-developing, multibranch cinematics—gone. Characters you give a damn about—gone. Some of the above is a matter of opinion, and I respect the views of those who disagree with me. But consider, before you flame me, that the whole point of the No One Lives Forever franchise was to prove that the technology was worthwhile—not by producing "just" a technically impressive game series, but by doing something so innovative, so clever, that it would be remembered and emulated for years. There were a lot of long cinematics in the original NOLF, and I bet players with A.D.D. complained about this. I also bet they complained about the long eavesdropping situations—events when most gamers were falling out of their seats in laughter as they secretly listened in to the conversations of H.A.R.M. thugs. Maybe too many players didn't like that they had to reach the end of the game before they understood the whole story. Maybe some of the surprises at the end didn't sit well with gamers. No doubt pornhounds whined that Cate wore too many clothes in the original. If all this is the case, then Monolith was simply responding to
player criticism with this game. If so, then the silent majority
that adored No One Lives Forever should speak up and salvage
the possibility of a terrific third sequel before the developers
wander too far down the path they are currently walking. The original
No One Lives Forever expanded the narrative capacity of the
medium. The sequel ... the sequel is just a game. |
The Verdict
The Lowdown Developer: Monolith Available for: Four Fat Chicks Links Screenshots
System Requirements Windows 98/ME/2000 (with latest service pack)/XP Where to Find It
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