The Operative: No One Lives Forever

The pacing of NO-ONE LIVES FOREVER is weird, and it's not for better. The moment-to-moment is written engagingly, and the voice acting is superb, but there is little in the cutscenes that it visually engaging, and they go on forever. Dialogue, of course, isn't inherently boring, but characters barely move and in true early-2000s fashion, retain the same facial expression for the whole game. This type of character model invokes a deep rage within me. In a game like HALF-LIFE this isn't too much of an issue because you're free to move as you please, and the environment is dynamic, but after being forced to stare at a still face for a couple minutes you might get restless. You might as well close your eyes. Indeed, the dialogue is most interesting when stumbled upon in the environment in short snippets, like when overhearing the conversation of two guards, as they make full use of the snappy writing without any of the downsides.

Unfortunately for THE OPERATIVE, I had completed DEUS EX the same day I started it, so my expectations were high. Even so, my opinion wouldn't be much different had this not been the case. No doubt, it was somewhat impressive in 2000, but this game's gameplay doesn't hold up well. You have two playstyle options—stealthy and aggressive—with stealth being so unreliable and aggressive so easy that it's ridiculous to pick the former. The surface-based noise mechanics are interesting but unpredictable. Sometimes, when the alarm was ringing, the enemies seemed privy to my position even if I had given no indication of it. Other times, I could make a ton of noise without being heard. You can't lean around corners so you have to pop in and out of cover and pray to god you aren't spotted, which you almost always are. The security cameras each have different ranges so you have to trial-and error past them. Misleadingly, there also seem to be no lighting-based mechanics despite variation in lighting. Moreover, the game unwittingly springs stealth missions on you, and any player that had a loud approach previously and didn't equip silent weapons will find these near-impossible. One or two particularly evil missions take away your weapons, falling into that deservedly despised game design trope.

It's more interesting to weave between loud and stealthy, accepting the alarm instead of loading a quick-save. I have an idea of what was being attempted here—a slow build-up to occasional explosions of violence with a lot of downtime in-between. I suppose this was a success, but the game becomes painfully boring in this downtime. The gameplay loop goes like this: kill a couple of enemies with a silenced pistol, get bored and accidentally set off the alarm, then easily mow down every enemy in the nearest 600 metres within the next 7 seconds as their AI causes them to form into a conga line through a doorway. With nothing to shoot at, you're left with something no better than key card scrounging, except where the methods to progress in the level are even more arcane. Further, by encouraging an aggressive approach, the game encourages the player to ignore the most interesting part of the game, the conversations between enemy goons, as they'll be dead before they get a chance to chat.

This level design is frequently infuriating, mostly because of an excruciating disregard for environmental leading and inconsistent gimmicks. For example, the player can interact with all the doors in the game, but this mostly means turning the handle or knocking on it, and there's no way to discern between an openable and an un-openable door, so the player is left endlessly turning handles and knocking just in case one of them is the intended passage through the level. There are also some absurd mini-puzzles which will likely only be solved if you stumble upon the solutions accidentally, such as one in which you have to interact with a broken forklift—the other forklifts being previously uninteractable—to crash it and make a hole in a wall. Once, I came across a helicopter, but had no idea I was supposed to destroy it with small arms fire. Another time, I came across a shark, and having previously killed sharks with small arms, assumed as supposed to do so again. It turned out to be invincible. There is a lot of backtracking. Some of it is mandatory, but often I couldn't find the objective, and as I had been conditioned to backtrack to continue the level, I was left running in circles for a while, only to find I had passed objective several times already. I do get frustrated by excessive objective markers but something would have been helpful, especially when there's so little leading in the environment. The large, branching levels worked in DEUX EX because the player had something to do in them, but here they only exist as a pretence of non-linearity since the gameplay is always the same. There are some gaudy, stand-out levels, like the moon base and the more outrageous, 60s-styled ones, but most, especially those earlier in the game, are painfully generic, so trawling through them is rarely interesting.

The gunplay is extremely average, with very flaccid gun feel, and as all the enemies are hitscan it's mostly just point-and-shoot. As I'll delve into in more depth shortly, there's also a lot of superficial variety. You have three bullet types but they aren't at all situational and you're best off just using the most damaging one. There are also several weapons, but many are more-or-less reskins with a silencer, like the three pistols and two SMGs.

Archer—the player's—gadget arsenal is another perplexing part of the game. You have a selection—a barrette, belt buckle, body remover, camera disabler, cigarette lighter, code breaker, lipstick explosive and variations, canine persuader, spy-glasses and some gas weapons disguised as perfume. The barrette functions as a lockpick and a dagger, but you can shoot out every lock with a silenced pistol and melee is cumbersome because of low damage and inconsistent hit detection. The belt buckle is a grappling hook that can only be used with a specific prop. You only have three uses of the body remover so it's pointless to bother with it. The security camera disabler is also made useless by the emptiness of the stealth. The code breaker is another lockpick that sticks onto a keypad, which can't be shot out. The lipstick explosive is made obsolete with the grenade launcher given to you later. The canine persuader allows you to prevent a specific dog from attacking you, but dogs are rare, and when they appear they can simply be shot with a silenced pistol. The spy-glasses are used to take photos of intel and scout for mines, perhaps the only worthwhile gadget in the game. In summation, half of these gadgets are extremely circumstantial and are not used frequently enough so your brain is trained to notice when they can be used, but frequently enough to be a nuisance and cause you to run around in circles without noticing the tiny prop to use them on. The code breaker suffers from this especially. It also takes about 10 seconds to work, and halts the game completely for that length—all the enemies in the area will be long dead, leaving the player nothing to defend against, though defending against enemies would have been the only sensible gameplay motivation for such a timer's implementation. Once, I was escorting a character through a trapped facility, but I had forgotten to pick up my code breaker after using it and was forced to backtrack to get it, only I couldn't tell him to stand still, so I had to go slowly through the traps to get it back for fear of him dying. This is the level of arbitration the game forces you through to make you feel like you're doing something. It's another pretence of non-linearity, but it's really nothing more than a glorified quick time event. You have to have the gadgets in your inventory to use them. The game auto-equips the necessary gadgets at the mission start screen, and if you deliberately un-equip them for some reason you have to scrounge for them in the environment. I wonder why the bad guys have the exact same type of code breaker lying around in their office that I do. The rest of the gadgets are just useless. Yes, some of them are non-lethal weapons, like the sleeping gas perfume, but they are far too weak to be used for the whole game, removing that role-playing aspect. This is another missed opportunity—the game frequently humanises the enemy soldiers through their side conversations but it never gives the player a legitimate chance to act on that with a non-lethal approach.

You may have noticed that the gadgets are disguised as female fashion objects. THE OPERATIVE is fairly incisive feminist fiction. In your first mission, your superiors mercilessly drawl that women are too "emotional" to get a job like this done right. Really, Archer is a very good spy but has the worst luck possible—every time she's about to complete a mission, events beyond her control make it an utter failure. This is blamed by her superiors on her being a woman, vindicating their previous sexist comments. The few times that you actually succeed, they say things like "About damn time!" or "Better late than never." The weapons disguised as jewellery are not purely an aesthetic choice—Archer turns the objects of sexual desire back on the men they titillate. Not even the camera titillates the viewer—in cutscenes, despite her brightly-coloured skin-tight spy-suit, and unlike nearly every other female character in the history of gaming, Archer is mostly framed from the shoulders up, apart from in the Bond-esque introductory cutscene which could have stood to be removed. Humorously, her 60s-style dresses make her blend in with her surroundings, while the male spies are instantly recognisable because of their tan trench coat and fedora.

There's a running gag that one of the villains keeps capturing but refuses to kill you and allows you to keep getting away. There's even a scene in which a goon tries to convince him to kill you, and he references how in spy fiction it is a common trope that allows the protagonist to get away. Scenes like this betoken a broader problem with game's narrative: it being self-aware doesn't make it any less annoying. At one point I'm told that I was poisoned when I was shot with a sleeping dart, but the poison would take 10 days to kill me. I was told this 45 minutes before the end of those 10 days so that I could find an antidote. The spy genre is fraught with contrivances, but something like 007 succeeds because it doesn't draw attention to them, while THE OPERATIVE brings them up constantly. There's a villain who is introduced then completely forgotten till the end just for a boss fight, but it's terribly anticlimactic, and the battle is terrible. It's cute and it recalls a less cutthroat, self-serious era of game design, which is probably part of why it's so beloved, but it's also utterly uninvesting as narrative fiction.

The game was one of the first to implement an adaptive soundtrack. Unfortunately, while somewhat interesting on first listens, the tracks become grating after being heard tens of times. The infernal theme tune is a perfect example of this. The atmosphere is best with the sparse vibraphone punctuating occasional gunfire, not on the 15th repetition of that piece you became annoyed with on second listen. It's also an amalgam of every spy aesthetic cliché, but again, it's self-awareness doesn't make it any less annoying.

Some of the greatest action heroes are the ones that rarely use a gun. Indiana Jones uses his whip and wit to escape artifact-crazed nazis, Bruce Lee used his fists, and James Bond uses gadgets and espionage. Well, that is if you are talking about Bond films. Bond games tend to focus only on the high-speed chases, explosions, and gunfights. He rarely uses his gadgets, and missions take place far away from nightclubs and exotic resorts. Bond games are cut and dried first-person shooters that happen to star 007.

And, this is why I love No One Lives Forever: It’s the best James Bond game ever made, even if it doesn’t star Bond. Cate Archer is Bond’s videogame equal. She is smart, witty, and deadly with a 9mm. Unlike the Bond games, NOLF makes the player feel like a spy, sneaking in the shadows, trading intel with codenamed agents, and using gadgets to bypass tripwires.

I want a James Bond game like NOLF, but I have my doubts that it’d be as good.

No One Lives Forever is a first-person shooter that strongly leans on stealth mechanics. The story centers on Cate Archer, cat burglar turned international spy. Growing tired of her new job, she is anxious to be put on the field for a mission. When things go awry during her first outing, Cate is suddenly thrown into a mess of espionage, conspiracy, and intrigue.

“What film are you watching?” my mom asked, during NOLF’s opening cutscene. I never forgot that moment. It was the moment I felt video games had grown up, alongside me. Returning to NOLF, the graphics are a bit dated but the game’s whip-smart dialog hasn’t aged a bit. The snappy, witty script of NOLF imitates the great thrillers of the ‘60s while poking fun at the psychedelic, feel-good pop culture of the time. Austin Powers may have spurred the project, but NOLF handles the satire with a lighter touch. On the other hand, the laughs aren’t quite as great.

NOLF is packed full of dialog in briefings, overheard conversations, and cinematics. Characters and relationships are made immediately familiar through the game’s lively conversations. Take for example, the opening exchange between protagonist Cate Archer and her boss Bruno. Cate’s reluctance and inflammatory wit and Bruno’s protectiveness come through along with details on his and her past. With no time at all, I cared for and felt I knew each each character. The same is true of the rest of the game’s villains and periphery characters.

Another great example is the introduction of Agent Goodman at a Hamburg nightclub. Not only does the scene establish Goodman as a lazy, arrogant partner, the dialog also boldy and directly addresses Cate’s female attributes in a way I haven’t seen a game do since. It’s a great scene that I recommend watching on YouTube, if you decide not to play.

Being a good spy is all about having control over a situation without letting anyone know it. Like James Bond, Cate Archer is frequently tasked with blending in at public spaces, using gadgets to get past security, and keeping a low profile in enemy compounds.

NOLF gets all the details right without being afraid to poke fun at genre tropes, such as agency code phrases that take the form of long, nonsensical conversations and gadgets that would fit right into a Roger Moore Bond film. Cate has a robot dog that will distract canines, an explosive makeup kit, a hairpin that doubles as a lock pick, a poisonous bottle of perfume, and many other great toys.

Sneaking into an office is something you’ve done in a game before, but NOLF’s smartly designed levels make you feel like you are on a great spy adventure. There are boss fights, outlandish setpieces, and lots of firefights, but it’s the trip to a nightclub and hunting down a fellow agent in Berlin that stick with me. Though its sequel is better in many ways, NOLF 2 didn’t quite embody the essence of being a spy in the same way -- at least it tried, which is more than I can say of any recent Bond game.

Coming out soon after the first Austin Powers, it’s hard not to compare NOLF to it. It’s not a fair comparison since NOLF takes itself a bit more seriously but never too seriously. Its plot, full of mysteries and twists, borrows a lot from the Roger Moore Bond films, such as Moonraker. While the over the top characters and scenarios broke immersion in those films, they fit perfectly in NOLF.

The villains in NOLF are so ridiculous and lovable that it’s hard to put an end to their evil plans. The main villain, Dmitrij Volkov, is a master chess player who grew up in the Gulag, Inge Wagner is a heavyset, terrible opera singer that kills with her strained vocal chords, and Magnus Armstrong is a kilt-wearing Scotsman that puts his personal honor above any orders. Each one deserves their own dedicated game.

The humor doesn’t stop at the main cutscenes, though. Each mission is filled with conversations between enemies that you can stop and overhear. The length, writing, and performances of these conversations is pretty stunning for the time. Some conversations give detail on the background of characters, while others are just random, comical tangents. NOLF is filled with so much color, literally and figuratively. It's rare that you find a game with such a unique, fully realized world.

Some may say different, but 1998 to 2000 was the most exciting period for games. I attribute this feeling largely to the introduction of advanced scripting and cinematic storytelling introduced by Half-Life and Metal Gear Solid. Suddenly, it felt like video games were advancing and taking the place of non-interactive entertainment. NOLF was one of the few games to follow suit, offering a lenghty story with setpieces, surprises, and memorable cinematics -- three years before Call of Duty, mind you.

The first thing that comes to mind when I think about NOLF is the mission titled ‘Unexpected Turbulence’, in which the player clears out an airplane, dives out of it, and steals an enemy’s parachute before crashing to the ground. In 2000, it was mindblowing. Now, it’s still a pretty great scene. Escaping a meteor shower in a space station, sniping as your partner calls out targets in Morocco, and escaping a sinking submarine only to revisit it later in the game all stand out as memorable moments in NOLF.

Scripted events are a dime a dozen in games today, but rarely do they contain the flair and imagination that NOLF had before the trend even began. Now, it’s all crashing helicopters and crumbling buildings that take away player input. NOLF not only did scripted scenes a generation early, it did it better.

NOLF is a better version of Goldeneye 007 on the Nintendo 64, minus worthwhile multiplayer. I loved Goldeneye but NOLF offers a more sophisticated take on Rare’s objective-based shooter. Most of NOLF’s missions offer freedom in approach. You’ll find multiple paths, alternate ways of completing an objective, and almost always have the ability to blow your cover, if you choose.

I enjoy a good stealth game when I’m in the mood. Though dated, NOLF’s core mechanics of hiding in the dark, sneaking silently, and distracting guards with a quarter remains satisfying, all these years later. I occasionally grow tired of these sections, so I’m glad that the game lets me go in guns blazing. Unfortunately, NOLF doesn’t compensate by adding more guards, so this approach makes for an easy, albeit enjoyable FPS. In comparison to its competition, NOLF was a very forward thinking game that knows that sometimes players don’t want to follow the suggested path laid before them.

NOLF owes a lot to Austin Powers and James Bond, but its world, characters, and story are all its own. No other FPS at the time had dynamic music, scripted events, controllable vehicles, dialogue options, and lengthy cutscenes. Time had a way of catching up to NOLF, as now these things are all commonplace. What’s not common is the game’s style and confidence. This past generation has been one of space aliens and bombed-out middle eastern villages that all blend together. NOLF is a rare example of inspired, holistic design in a FPS, where all the pieces form to create a greater whole. My mind spins in thinking what a new NOLF could be now, but part of me worries that the spirit, freedom, and personality wouldn’t remain intact, in favor of current trends.

Thankfully, the two NOLFs we have hold up just fine.

You'll love this game if you have bad taste.
Boring cutscenes galore which you'll skip unless you enjoy your brain melting away.
The AI is terrible; their only manoeuvre is recklessly charging into your bullets.
The stealth missions suck. And the first one caught me off-guard since every other mission was easier and quicker to beat guns A' blazing, so I never bothered to pack stealth equipment.
There's a mandatory tutorial every other mission which takes a minute or two to complete when a simple illustration and text bubble could state everything you need to know in seconds.
As you unlock more gadgets you'll be able to explore new areas and find new collectables in previous missions. But why would you want to? This game sucks.
This game doesn't need to exist. There are much better stealth games; there are much better FPS games. You should play one of those.