Gameplay

Sneaky-sneaky!

A lot of NOLF2’s gameplay revolves around stealth, but we wouldn’t call it a first-person-sneaker, in the fashion of the Thief games. There is far too much combat for that to happen. In fact, at least in my style of play, I found sneaking to be only useful to get in position to deal out the most damage while getting little return fire. Cate turned into a deadly assassin in my hands, but she didn’t have to. It’s perfectly feasible to run in guns blazing, lighting up the room with AK-47 or Tommy gun fire like Arnie or Sly would.

Unlike the original, only a few missions demand utter stealth. As usual, they are among the more frustrating tasks, especially if you’ve neglected stealth when spending skill points. There is also one mini-game mission in the game, where you’re doing something just totally… weird. It’s not a James Bond experience like skydiving without a parachute or sniping from a window, but that level is almost worth the price of admission by itself.

A submarine bay

Give him some dart lovin'

Byeeeeeee

The rest of the game involves sneaking around, searching through file cabinets, desks, and chests to find intelligence data. Sometimes the intelligence is useful, other times just funny or amusing. Occasionally you will stumble on a quest to collect a whole series of notes, the reward being skillpoints for completing the task.

What makes NOLF2 great is how much fun the game is. Observing your enemies from a hidden vantage point can be worthwhile as you learn their patrol routes. Sneaking up on them gives the opportunity for an ambush, or to hear useful or simply amusing information. In fact, several times we’ve reloaded a previous save because we interrupted one of these conversations before it was over – the chance to listen to something funny was easily work another 4 or 5 minutes. Playing NOLF2 gives this undeniable sense of fun and fulfillment, it’s like the Borg creed: Resistance is futile, you will have fun. The best comparison we can give for NOLF2, without referring to the original, is to call it a light-hearted Deus Ex. High praise indeed! Like the original, it goes through fifteen chapters, each about three missions long, full of puzzles, stealth and combat.

Multiplayer?

No One Lives Forever 2 comes with co-op mode multiplayer. You read that right. In fact, this isn’t even the same campaign as you embark on with Cate. The levels are the same but the goals are different. Where Cate might go on an infiltration mission, you might have to rescue her (as the ‘UNITY Operatives’), or to finish off a job that was an optional quest for her. Co-op mode is most definitely a LAN activity, though support for internet play is still offered.

Share the pain

Nice water... if you can see it

If it wasn't for the glass, he'd be dead

There really aren’t any gripes we can think of that had a serious effect on gameplay. One is the inferior stealth system, which is nowhere near as good as Thief. Then again, nothing before or since has been. It is rather difficult to judge what a good vantage point is, since sometimes enemies spot you behind a rock 50 yards away, other times you can almost go under their noses. The game doesn’t have much in the way of replayability either, except to spend your skill points differently. Speaking of which, the skill system is more like a bonus than a necessity. Except for the armor skill, improving anything seems unnecessary. Yes, you can aim a bit better and recover from movement, or hide/search/reload faster, but personal preference aside, there’s little reason to spend your points in any specific fashion. At the beginning of the game, it’s not made clear that you won’t have enough points to get everything, so those of you just spreading points around generally are in for a disappointment.