While Cate Archer wasn´t the first popular superspy to spoof the
sometimes hammy settings, villains, and plots of the numerous James
Bond movies, she was the first computer game character to do so in such
a successful manner. Released in 2000, The Operative: No One Lives
Forever was a superb first-person shooter that blended an impressive
graphics engine with witty dialogue and a humorous setting, which made
it one of the most memorable action games in recent memory. In fact,
NOLF´s single-player campaign was so good, the game walked away with
our Action Game of the Year award for that year. But as well executed
as No One Lives Forever´s single-player game was, its multiplayer
component was passable at best. Quake III and Unreal Tournament weren´t
even a year old at the time of NOLF´s release, and when compared to
those two online powerhouses, the multiplayer modes and the somewhat
floaty controls of No One Lives Forever simply didn´t stack up. In
creating the sequel to No One Lives Forever, the designers at Monolith
opted to eschew the tried-and-true but highly competitive standard
multiplayer modes of deathmatch, capture the flag, and whatnot in favor
of the path less traveled: cooperative play--the ability for multiple
players to work together in order to complete objectives in a manner
typically found in single-player games. We were able to take a
firsthand look at NOLF 2´s somewhat unique multiplayer mode during a
recent visit to the Monolith offices in the Seattle area, and we liked
what we saw.ets of Calcutta are cramped but very colorful.
Only
a few first-person shooters in recent memory have included a
single-player cooperative mode, the most memorable of which are the
Serious Sam series for the PC and Halo for the Xbox. In all of those
games, this mode is simply the single-player component played with
numerous players simultaneously. And while there´s no questioning the
amount of fun to be had in Halo´s or Serious Sam´s cooperative modes,
replicating that formula for No One Lives Forever 2 would have been
impossible, according to Monolith. That´s because the single-player
game is so story driven, so dependent on Cate Archer´s presence, and
has so many lines of dialogue and scripted events, that converting that
entire campaign into a cooperative mode would have "broken" the game.
Instead, No One Lives Forever 2 will have about a dozen
cooperative-only levels that will be slightly different from their
single-player counterparts in that they´ll have their own plot and
characters. Most of these missions will take place either before or
after familiar single-player missions. For example, one of these
minicampaigns takes place in Calcutta, a few hours before the events in
the corresponding single-player level. You´ll be part of a team of
UNITY members--the same organization that sponsors Cate Archer´s
globe-trotting and villain-bashing--that´s been sent in to prepare the
area for Cate´s arrival, which takes place in one of the single-player
missions. You and the other players on this intercept team will be
tasked with scoping out the area where a meeting between Cate and a
local named Balaji Malpani is scheduled to take place
Successful
completion of this and other multiplayer missions will require that you
accomplish several tasks as a team. In the case of this Calcutta
mission, your first task is to meet up with a UNITY informant named
Kamal, who´ll ask you for 40 rupees before giving you access to a part
of town that you need to get to. This money is spread around the level
in 10-rupee increments, though it won´t take you long to collect the
full amount in between the sporadic firefights that you´ll find
yourself engaged in. After paying Kamal off, you´ll be able to enter
the previously inaccessible part of this level, and it´s here that the
fighting with the locals really becomes frantic. The AI in NOLF 2 has
been significantly retooled since the original game, and as such, the
enemies that you´ll face will put up quite a fight. In classic NOLF
fashion, you´ll often stumble upon a pair of guards who are already
engaged in a humorous conversation about monkeys or grandmothers, but
once the fighting starts, enemies in the area will be alerted not only
by the sounds of gunfire, but by the sight of their fallen comrades.
Since the enemies in NOLF 2 are so sensitive to dead bodies, you´ll now
have the ability to pick up those that you´ve killed or knocked
unconscious in order to move them to a secure area, away from prying
eyes.