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by Monolith
 First-person
shooters generally come in two
flavors; there are those that serve the “frag on, dewdz”
crowd and those that cater to the “thinking man’s”
group. The first kind emphasizes blowing stuff up good, quick-twitch
muscle groups, and endless nights of Mountain Dew-powered multiplayer
gaming. Think Quake III and Unreal Tournament. The other emphasizes
problem-solving, stealth, and solid—if not quite Dickensian—single
player narratives. Think System Shock II and Thief. Though both
kinds of shooter make excellent games, both of course have their
weaknesses. Games that emphasize running around blowing the bejabbers
out of everything can be mind-numbingly dumb (think George W. Bush),
and games that emphasize pondering arcane puzzles can be mind-numbingly
dull (think Al Gore). With No One Lives Forever, Monolith successfully
combines the best points of both types of shooter in one game. And
the end result is terrific, the gaming equivalent of combining chocolate
and peanut butter.
 No
One Lives Forever lives unashamedly in the world of the 60’s
spy genre. There are sly tips of the hat everywhere to James Bond
movies, The Avengers, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E., but the game
is clever enough not to take the genre seriously—it also plays
off great spy spoofs past and present, like Get Smart! and the Austin
Powers movies. You step into this world as Cate Archer, a Scot catburglar
turned spy who works for a benevolent spy consortium named UNITY.
And yes, she looks fabulous.Your problem (and the rest of the world’s
problem) is a shadowy organization named H.A.R.M., which has been
setting off a series of mysterious and powerful explosions. You
job is to figure out who’s doing this, how they’re doing
it, and why.
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