PlayStation 2

The Operative: No One Lives Forever

In the end, NOLF is a good game that has been done a terrible injustice. One only has to look at the Gamecube version of Resident Evil to see what a little bit of love can do for revamping a classic to a console port. That game is beautiful. The graphics are nothing short of stunning. They even went in and tweaked the gameplay and added different puzzles. They made it so good that even the people who had abandoned the series have to play it. I used to rant on and on about how Capcom was a lazy, money-grubbing monster that released nothing but sequels and clones of Street Fighter. After playing the PS2 ports of Half-Life and NOLF, Sierra has become the monster.

If No One Lives Forever sounds like a James Bond movie, it’s because this finely crafted game harkens back to those great 1960s spy flicks. Good guys wear trench coats, bad guys speak with Russian accents, and everybody’s tongues are planted firmly in their cheeks.

Böse technische Probleme halten No One Lives Forever davon ab, eine ernst zu nehmende Konkurrenz für die Genre-Größen zu werden. Was nützen ein sprühender Humor, eine phänomenale Sounduntermalung, intelligentes Leveldesign und eine immer wieder überraschende Wendungen nehmende Story, wenn die Grafik viel zu häufig zu einer Ruckelorgie verkommt und dabei die sowieso schon zu sensible Steuerung in Mitleidenschaft zieht? Wer sich trotzdem an No One Lives Forever heranwagt und die angesprochenen technischen Schwächen in Kauf nehmen will, erhält im Gegenzug ein spannendes, witziges und unterhaltsames Abenteuer, das den Spieler immer wieder fordert. Wenn nur die Technik mithalten würde...

No One Lives Forever has a lot to offer to action fans and despite its weaknesses the game’s charming humor and unique missions provide enough thrills to keep everyone entertained.

We need more games like the new PS2 port of The Operative: No One Lives Forever. Not that this tongue-in-cheek first-person action title is an exceptional piece of game design or even a must-get game -- it is neither. But it is a competent first-person shooter with a good sense of humor, the sort of middling fun you should enjoy between those truly taxing blockbuster titles.

No One Lives Forever is a game that is good enough to play, but difficult to describe without telling the whole story behind it. The stealth elements are fun if unnecessarily difficult (and redundant in some places), but the whole game is a blast and is the total experience with the great audio, but killed by some poor visuals. As is, NOLF is a decent port of a pretty good game, and one that FPS fans (and Bond fans) should enjoy once your eyes get past the rough visual display. It’s by no means perfect, but No One Lives Forever is not a terrible addition to your PS2 library – but yet not a must-own. If you like FPS’s, give it a try – if not, you probably won’t like it.

No One Lives Forever was, and still is, a monumental landmark for the PC. It's unfortunate, however, that the PS2 version is more of an average game rather than an outstanding one. The game certainly lacks a lot of polish, and the absence of a multi-player mode really limits its replay value. Monolith's efforts aren't a complete failure because the game is rather fun and entertaining, but given the potential, much is still desired.

Unfortunately, the game looks a tad dated and isn’t quite as smooth as its PC counterpart. Great action, but mediocre production.

Un an et demi après sa sortie PC, No One Lives Forever a pris un sacré coup de vieux. Avec une réalisation graphiquement très pauvre, on ne pourra conseiller cette version qu'aux joueurs n'ayant pas suivi Cate dans la version originale. Les autres attendront sagement la suite déjà en chantier.

Overall, the PS2 version of No One Lives Forever fails to fully hit its intended mark. While it’s great to see a classic PC title ported over to the console for more people to enjoy, and the promise of additional missions seems appealing, the degradation of graphics and gameplay diminishes how great this game truly is. Fans of the original who don’t feel like cranking up their computer, or players who’ve got a spy jones will probably love playing this on their PS2. Otherwise, some of them might be better served picking up a copy of the game for the PC.

Sierra/Universal's No One Lives Forever (NOLF) is a damn good game. It was a damn good game on the PC two years ago. But now that it's on the PS2, the porting or re-creating process has taken its toll on poor Cate Archer and her comedic '60s underworld of cheesy code words and dumb American contacts. NOLF has not only aged visually, it's been apparently crammed into a box that doesn't like it so much, creating a world of production trouble.

No One Lives Forever is a game that PC enthusiasts worldwide have been evangelizing since the day of its release, and rightly so. This is one of the first FPS's that took the genre to a new, original height. Witty dialogue and creative game play dynamics help this game to stand out from the barrage of sub-par shooter games, even to this day. Plus its got the hot hot hottie mc'hottie Cate Archer to satisfy every googly eyed geek-boy this side of Lara Croft.

Espionage is very familiar to me. I've been a ninja, an undercover cyborg and even a depilated hitman, although my secret disguises were less than convincing. It must have been the hair.

The Operative: No One Lives Forever received a great deal of praise when it was originally released for the PC in November of 2000. The game featured terrific AI, humorous dialogue, and a great mix of first-person action and stealth. Naturally, the long-awaited PlayStation 2 version of the game includes just about all the same elements that made the PC version a hit, except the quick save feature. While leaving the quick save feature out may seem like a slight oversight, the reality is that it changes the game into a frustrating exercise in trial and error.