The Operative: No One Lives Forever

aka: NOLF, Nikto Ne Zhivjot Vechno, No One Lives Forever, Wu Ren Yong Sheng
Moby ID: 2617
Windows Specs
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Conversion (official) Included in See Also

Description official descriptions

Some time in the 1960s, a former thief Cate Archer is the only female agent in the service of U.N.I.T.Y.; a worldwide secret espionage agency. Having been relegated to menial tasks over the years, Cate is finally given a chance to prove herself when a terrorist organization called H.A.R.M. starts to knock off active field agents. Under the qualification of being available as a trained agent, Cate is given the authority to track down and investigate these H.A.R.M. activities. In missions around the globe, Agent Archer will find herself sniping assassins, stealing documents, and doing a host of other suitably sneaky, often deadly espionage tasks.

No Ones Lives Forever is a first-person shooter with stealth elements, often focusing on remaining undetected and obtaining intelligence data. The game combines stylistic elements of James Bond espionage stories and games (such as GoldenEye 007) with a humorous attitude. Cate will need to use her weaponry and gadgets to get the drop on enemy agents. Among the gadgets available are photographic sunglasses, a lockpicking barrette, body remover powder, a cigarette lighter which can be used for wielding, lipstick explosives, and a robotic poodle for distracting guard dogs.

Emphasizing sneakiness, the game not only gives extra points for not being seen, it also features alarms that cannot be shut off and guards that don't return to their docile ways once alerted to the protagonist's presence. Enemies follow AI routines such as knocking tables over and ducking for cover. However, in most levels stealthy approach is not mandatory: theoretically the player may almost always opt for dealing with the situation aggressively, having Cate shoot first and ask questions later, gleefully blazing through the levels. However, while the mission will get completed, Agent Archer will receive a lower score for taking the non-subtle approach. In addition, by acquiring intelligence items Cate will obtain various bonuses to her health, armor, ammo capacity, damage, or accuracy.

The game's artwork and music reflect the 1960s setting, from the loud outfits to the beatnik rhythms in the bars. In a homage to spy movies and series of that time period, there are plot twists, shootouts, close calls, set pieces, confrontations against villains, and a few over-the-top action scenes.

Spellings

  • Никто Не Живёт Вечно - Russian spelling
  • 无人永生 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

163 People (76 developers, 87 thanks) · View all

Additional Thanks to
  • MCA
  • 1500 Records
  • Avalon
  • Panasonic
  • Language Institute
  • ATI
  • NVidia
  • GameSpy
Recording Studio
  • Asylum Studios
Producer
Associate Producer
Fox Quality Assurance Supervisor
Fox Quality Assurance Lead
Fox Test Team
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 88% (based on 53 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 141 ratings with 10 reviews)

Possibly the best game since Half-Life!

The Good
This is the first time in years that I have been so engrossed in a game single-player campaign. The average shooter right now pretty much works like this: Walk into a warehouse, shoot all the bad guys, walk back out, walk down the street to the next warehouse, and so on. No One Lives Forever lets you explore a beautifully detailed variety of locations including night clubs, hotels, exotic countries, airplanes, sunken ships, and even a space station! And the best part of all these neat locations is what you'll get to do inside them, such as where you jump out of the plane to steal the parachute on a diver below. Between each mission you'll get very well-done, in-engine cutscenes that advance the story, give you your briefing, and, most of the time, are really quite hilarious. Plus, No One Lives Forever has one of the best, most fitting soundtracks I have every heard in a game! This is the kind of game that literally makes hours seem like minutes!

The Bad
There's only one complaint I have about this game, and that is the multi-play. While it is definitely above average, it doesn't quite compare to the online play found in other shooters.

The Bottom Line
A funny, classy, incredibly fun game that no gamer should be without.

Windows · by Brian Jordan (19) · 2001

Best shooter since Half-Life, and just as good!

The Good
Great, colorful, varied graphics; interesting, innovative fresh and generally brilliant missions; original and very interesting level design; fantastic character models; interesting, and pretty complex story with lots of interesting characters; fantastic weapons and gadgets; very good voice acting and sound in general; a lot of comic relief, jokes, and funny situations and dialogue in general; a breath of fresh air in a market full of clones;

The Bad
Some hard missions involving stealth elements and superhumanly acute guards; some slowdowns;

The Bottom Line
A brilliant, innovative, original, funny, fresh, interesting and polished first person shooter with a great story and fantastic gameplay.

Windows · by Timotei Centea (5) · 2000

An outstanding FPS which did not age one bit

The Good
Full disclosure: I played with a fan patch which makes the game playable on modern systems and adjusts the HUD for higher resolutions.

No One Lives Forever was made by shooter specialists who used their own established engine and it shows: the shooter mechanics are flawless and the gunplay is very good (although some of them are redundant). One of the strengths is the possibility to play much of the game stealthy if desired. It is very fun to do a section with a silenced weapon and kill everyone with headshots and switch to a machine gun in the next moment.

This is a very long game, but the levels are so varied (both in optics and gameplay) that it never becomes boring. NOLF has almost perfect level design: some are linear, some are more open (but always simple enough that you don't get lost) and others have adventure elements and consist of talking and collecting items.

The graphics are fantastic. Don't get me wrong: I don't say they are good for a 20 year old game, I say they are good for 2021. Of course they are blocky and technically outdated, but they are made so well it doesn't show much. The levels and assets are built with love, the offices and such are all furnished individually, the atmosphere is perfectly implemented. This is a game which could not have been made outside of the early 2000s - in later graphic engines the assets for one level alone would probably cost more to make than the whole game. It also helps that the game is genuinely funny.

The Bad
NOLF was made in a time in which every FPS had to have at least one shitty stealth level. This game is no exception, but since stealth is baked into the main gameplay mechanics those levels are not as bad as in other games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Still, NOLF works best when it leaves the choice between stealth and action to the player and therefore the forced stealth levels are among the weaker sections.

As a James Bond parody, the game also has a lot of gadgets such as a lighter which can meld locks or a knockout perfume. Unfortunately their usage is lacking: you'll only use them at pre-defined places when a specific gadget has to be used to proceed, which speeds down gameplay without benefit. You'll never use the gameplay gadgets because they are useless and unnecessary. The only not underused gadgets are the vehicles which even have their own levels dedicated to them. Unfortunately, I might add, because they handle very badly and the levels are boring slogs (drive, dismount in order to dispatch some distant enemies, rinse and repeat) which don't even look as well as the rest.

I already praised the humor, but nevertheless conversation cutscenes between levels can be tiring because they go on for too long. I also did not like the conclusion of the story - of course I can't go into the specifics, but there are some final twists which are only explained in another way too long conversation.

The Bottom Line
There is no way around it: NOLF is one of the best shooters ever made. Despite my complaints above, the good parts greatly outweigh the negatives and make a very fun shooter which is still worth playing.

A few words about the GOTY version
Later a GOTY version was released which added a new mission after the ending. It lasts for about 30 minutes and is pretty fun, although there is another driving section included. However, if you already own the original, it is not worth hunting down the re-release.

Windows · by Patrick Bregger (298879) · 2021

[ View all 10 player reviews ]

Trivia

Development

The game evolved quite a lot from its original conception. Originally you didn't play as a woman, but as Adam Church, operative for Her Majesty's Most Secret Service (MI0) and the game was not as Austin Powers-Swinging Sixties but strived for a more serious humorous take on the James Bond films (Adam himself was a satirical version of Bond). Early screenshots from late 1999 can be found on the web or in old magazines where you can see the early incarnations of NOLF.

ESRB

A few months after NOLF's release, the ESRB changed its rating to M and its descriptors to Animated Blood, Animated Violence. The Game of the Year Edition has this rating, and it is listed as M on the website, but the original boxes don't. Inquiries to the ESRB about why this happened result in a canned "When the game was first submitted, we gave it a T, but then it was resubmitted with more mature content," which is obviously not true.

Germany

Several of the game's missions take place in German cities such as East Berlin, Bremen and Frankfurt. While the developers did make an effort to create a proper setting by making signs that are correctly written in German there are some errors. One in particular is a sign in the Stasi (state security ) compound in East Berlin which reads "Begriff -- Kein Trespassing". This would literally translate to "Term -- No Trespassing". Additionally, most of the articles on posters and Inge Wagner's banner are wrong since they use the wrong gender.

Another noteworthy issue are the villains accent's: Most of the villains are supposed to be German. However, some of their accents sound rather East European. One voice actor seems to have based his supposedly German accent on Arnold Schwarzenegger with a more Austrian note to his German.

German version

In the German version, all blood and death cries were removed. This also means that the "MoreBloodOption" cheat has no effect.

Guards

On nearly every level the guards, if you don't alert them, will carry on conversations with each other. Many of these are very humorous, as the guards discuss things which range from high brow topics like sociology in how it relates to criminals and alcoholics to how to let the guard dog relieve itself at the guard's post. Even if it was not part of the point system, being stealthy would be something players would strive for just to overhear all these talks.

Inge Wagner

The game features Inge Wagner, supposedly a grand-granddaughter of the famous German composer Richard Wagner. During your battle against her, a tape recorder plays Wagner's music.

Inspiration

The model and actress Mitzi Martin was the inspiration for the heroine of the story, Cate Archer.

References

  • In one of the missions, Kate receives a codename "Foxhound". This is an obvious reference to Konami's Metal Gear series., Mitzi Martin, was the inspiration for the heroine of the story, Cate Archer.
  • In one of the cut scenes in the mission "The Dive" you'll see a submarine that has the number 5675-309. This is likely a reference to a popular rock song of the 80's by Tommy Tutone, called "Jenny 8675309". Notice the similarities between the numbers?

Sales

The game initially sold poorly until the reviews and word of mouth increased interest in the game. Notably, the sales spiked a few months after the games release and enough positive reviews were printed.

Soundtrack

The second disc includes In the Lounge: 9 exclusive music tracks inspired by the 60s, plus 2 groovy music tracks from the Fox Interactive & Indiespace.com music search. The track listing is:

  1. Goodman's Surprise
  2. Santa's Workshop
  3. Be-boppin' Shoo-woopin' Along
  4. The Operative
  5. Elevator of Love
  6. No One Grooves Forever
  7. Suisse Chalet
  8. UNITY's Spy
  9. [untitled track]
  10. El Dorado (by Archie Thompson)
  11. Void (by Red Delicious)
Tracks 1-9:
Written and composed by Becky Kneubuhl;
Doug Norwine, Flute;
Joe Finetti, Trombone;
Lee Thornberg, Trumpet;
Lisa Kable, Vocals;
Chris Lee, Guitars;
Mixed and recorded by Gabriel Rutman at Asylum Studios

"El Dorado" (Track 10):
Written and performed by Archie Thompson;
Published by ArchType Music (BMI);
© 2000 Archie Thompson;

"Void" (Track 11):
Written and performed by Red Delicious (Steve Baca, Sara Wallace, Rob King);
Published by Stompin' Music (BMI);
© 2000 Red Delicious

Source code release

The publishers have released the source code for NOLF for anyone to modify. For anyone interested, they can be downloaded at the download section of the official NOLF webpage (link available at the related sites section).

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • April 2001 (Issue #201) – Action Game of the Year
    • April 2001 (Issue #201) – Best Screenplay of the Year
    • April 2001 (Issue #201) – Villain of the Year (for H.A.R.M.'s Evil Hand Puppet)
    • May 2005 (Issue #251) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame
  • GameSpy
    • 2000 – Special Award for Story
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 02/2001 - Best Action Game in 2000
    • Issue 12/2008 - One of the "10 Coolest Levels" (for the level "Unexpected Turbulence". It is a short level of six minutes but manages to stay in the player's memory because of its original, funny and challenging main idea.
  • PC Gamer
    • October 2001 - #44 in the "op 50 Best Games of All Time" list
  • PC Player (Germany)
    • Issue 01/2001 - Best Action-Adventure in 2000

Information also contributed by dasfatso, Emepol, Entorphane,, Fire Convoy, Marko Poutiainen, Scott Monster, Szajd, Unicorn Lynx, Zovni

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Ray Soderlund.

Macintosh added by Kabushi.

Additional contributors: Kalirion, Unicorn Lynx, Solid Flamingo, Szajd, oct, Patrick Bregger, Xy Yz.

Game added November 14, 2000. Last modified March 20, 2024.