I got the first No One Lives Forever game when it came out in late
2000, but thanks to a frustrating series of events, I didn't complete
it until six years later. The game ran poorly on my Windows 98 POS
computer, and stuttered its way through outdoor environments even at
the lowest settings. I didn't advance far before the computer crapped
out and I lost my save, and lost my interest for a while. Later we got
a new machine, and the game ran perfectly. I got much farther in the
game before the hard drive pooped out and I lost my save again. In the
Fall of 2005, I got my own computer, which kicked the old one's ass,
and checked the game out, but was preoccupied and didn't get around to
actually playing through it a year later. Despite this long, painful
road to completion, I still saw how good a game it was.
It
doesn't have the amazing gameplay and physics engine of Half-Life 2,
and some of the cinemas seem awkward, but it's quite a good
stealth-based shooter. I say stealth-based, but rarely do you actually
have to be stealthy, most of the time you can just cap fools as you
please. The game's brilliance mostly comes from the writing, which is
both hilarious and intelligent for most video games. It creates a fun
and self-referential world that's fun to be a female James Bond in. If
you never played it, you should look past the now-dated engine and
graphics and give it a go.
