Note: While the Gist List is usually devoted to a number of unrelated topics, this week I've decided to write a longer analysis of Monolith's latest first person shooter, No One Lives Forever.

After playing No One Lives Forever for a few hours, you reach a point where you say to yourself, "Wait a minute, this game is actually good.  Shockingly good."  No One Lives Forever, a James Bond-ish spy shooter created by Seattle-based Monolith Production and published by Fox Interactive, isn't the kind of game that grabs you in the first five seconds with stunning visuals or a thrashing rock soundtrack that blares out of your speakers as a legion of enemies threaten your very existence within seconds of starting the game.   No, this game develops in a much more organic way.  It the type of products that unfolds as you play it, as opposed to most games that put all the razzle-dazzle at the get-go and end up feeling like someone did a creative cut-and-paste job on the rest of the content.   In other words, No One Lives Forever has a thematic structure; there is a feeling of progression as you move through the game.  And no, this isn't just a reference to the story, but rather a discussion of the gameplay experience that, with apologies to the Energizer bunny, seems to keep going and going.

I think I reached s threshold with NOLF when I was playing an underwater level half way through the game where you swim through a sunken ship with sharks in the water and try to retrieve the captain's log.  While only a few levels in the game take place underwater, they don't feel like they are tacked on for the sake of variety.   This underwater level in question was incredibly well designed – note to the Rune developers: underwater levels don't have to mean complete disorienting – and ultimately, I sat back and said, 'You know, this game has given me more variety than I could have ever imagined.'  Sure, artistic and thematic variety, but also gameplay variety.  In a day and age when action games seem to stop giving after the first level (can you really say you were ever surprised by anything that happened in Quake 3: Arena?),  NOLF is best classified as an epic game.  It's a game that has a contiguous flow to it in addition to a huge variety in the levels.  Just when you think the developers might not have had time to craft a new setting for NOLF, the next level transports you to a new environment that freshens the game.

James Bond Archetype
The environment of No One Lives Forever is set to tell a story in typical spy-thriller archetype: unappreciated-special-agent-needs-to-prove-
worth-against-insurmountable-odds-and-
save-the-world.  The spy here is Cate Archer, who feels like Lara Croft injected with a bit of Judy Dench-esque spite.  The story, told through copious cut-scenes, pits Archer and her team at UNITY against H.A.R.M., a rag-tag group of forgettable villains who are more comic relief than a real threat – they aren't exactly the mysterious blue suited man in Half-Life.  Then again, NOLF is a game that, at least thematically, tries to be a bit of everything, although it ends up playing out more as a campy romp than a serious Metal Gear Solid-like thriller.

That being said, the shell of the story provides ample room for the developers at Monolith to take players around the world to a vast array of locations.  The level design is uniformly excellent and best of all, the LithTech game engine finally shows that it's just as capable of producing a quality title as Unreal or Quake technology.  In many ways it's hard to believe this is a game from the same company that produced Shogo and the Blood series.  Why?  This is the first Monolith game that really feels like it has some direction behind it.  There's a focus to the design that has never appeared to be part of process for previous efforts from the company.

Next, The Actual Gameplay  >

Back To Top

Copyright 2000, Ola Balola LLC.
Comments? feedback@gameslice.com