I Was a Teenage Adventure Gamer
No One
Lives Forever
The 1960s were a time of promoting peace and harmony, the
1960s were a time of turmoil with the war in Vietnam breaking out. And the 1960s
were a time of espionage. Fox Interactive’s latest game, No One Lives Forever,
does a good job of taking Austin Powers-style humor and James Bond action
and combines it into an action game starring Cate Archer, the Operative.
No
One Lives Forever puts you into the role of Cate Archer, a spy for U.N.I.T.Y.,
a multinational spy organization that has branches throughout the free world.
Archer’s headquarters are in London (but then again, aren’t headquarters for all
multinational spy agencies located in London?). Under the watchful eye of a man
named Bruno, Archer starts out her spy career after attempting to steal from him.
She was successful in her attempt, but little did she know that there was a homing
beacon placed on the item that she stole. And so began her career.
No One
Lives Forever allows you to do some very interesting things. For example,
the first level of the game puts you in the role of a sniper. And with this game,
you are always given choices. In real life during a sniper mission there are two
people, the sniper and the observer. Bruno, who goes with you on this mission,
gives you the option of having him be the observer and call out where the bad
guys are. You can accept and get some extra help with the mission or you
can say, “No thanks, Bruno,” and you’ll be in big trouble about the
time somebody waxes the guy you were trying to protect.
There are many,
many missions like this in No One Lives Forever. There is a mission where
you are free-falling through the air, trying to grab onto a parachute that an
evil H.A.R.M. agent is planning on using. The mission doesn’t end until you manage
to grab onto the parachute; that way, the player has some time to actually fly
on down to the guy with the parachute and grab it and put it on.
There is
also a mission where you return to a ship you were traveling on. The only catch?
You are doing deep-sea diving to get to the ship. And, of course, about the only
weapon that works underwater is a spear gun. The diabolical H.A.R.M. agents are
out to spoil your day. They’ll be sending their underwater diving crews out to
attack you as you retrieve a log book and a shipping manifest that you were supposed
to recover on the previous mission onboard the ship, but, as usual, your partner
gets in the way of things by forgetting to notify you that he has placed bombs
onboard the ship and that he was going to detonate them.
The game also has
some interesting character interactions. Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones, the two guys
in charge of the U.N.I.T.Y. branch in London, are completely opposite of each
other. One believes that Ms. Archer should be kicked out of U.N.I.T.Y., while
the other says, “Hey, it wasn’t her fault.” “Yes it was!”
“Was not!” “Was too!” “Was not!” I laughed my head
off on numerous occasions throughout the game. I mean, imagine Austin Powers meets
Bond meets Charlie’s Angels. That’s about the only way to describe this game.
And it’s one wild romp through the 60s.
Not only that, but the game also
comes with a music soundtrack, which is located on CD 2, that you can insert
it into any CD player to listen to the groovy soundtrack that comes with the game.
And of course, the graphics are first-rate because the game uses the LithTech
2.5 engine. I believe that if the game used the Quake III or Unreal
engine, the game wouldn’t have looked as good. And like I said, this is one
good romp through the late 1960s espionage era.
I would also like to take
a moment and talk about how stereotypical the game is of the spy genre. In all
of the levels you play, the bad guys will wear outfits that could be typically
expected to be seen in the specific area that you are in. In Morocco, the bad
guys will wear either red or white suits, black pants, dark sun glasses, and a
red fez. In the ship mission, everyone will be dressed in typical sailor garb.
This is pretty much how it goes for the entire game.
If you are a fan of
the FPS genre and like action and adventure, give No One Lives Forever a
try. It’ll surely satisfy your hunger for a good FPS and adventure game mix.
