hartro
3 reviews liked by hartro
".....so.....this is The Indominable Cate Archer.....ssssuperspy."
Lost to the annals of pre-digital copyright documents, Monolith's No One Lives Forever stands tall as an excellent example of the blender approach to game design; sprinkle a little Half Life, a little Goldeneye, a little bit of Blood and Shogi in for good measure, an entire VHS cassette collection of The Sean Connery James Bond Collection, and bits and pieces of every 60s Spy novel and film adaptation. Press blend on highest speed. Filter the product through the brains that thought it would be fitting to open Shogi with a full anime intro, and boom: you have one of the all time greats of the first person shooting genre.
You inhabit the role of fledging U.N.I.T.Y. agent Cate Archer, wrangled from a life of petty crime into becoming the world's best hope for survival. After losing her mentor on her first mission in the field, she's forced to build her reputation with the agency from the ground up. In the process she uncovers a great plot to destroy the world; the supervillain organization H.A.R.M. has developed a secret weapon capable to turning anyone into a bomb. Armed with a gun, a slew of gadgets, and enough snark and misogyny from her employers to kill a small child, she alone stands between the world and its complete destabilization.
The Operative: No One Live Forever lives on today in infamy; attempts to secure its rights for rerelease have become its legacy in the era where even Shogi, arguably a less significant game, is available on GoG for purchase. What this obscures is perhaps the finest realization of the late 90s FPS boom; the last great bastion of the wave that started with Quake in 1996 and ended when Master Chief landed on Halo. It has everything; objective driven missions set in tightly designed action levels, a fully voiced story that almost perfectly captures the tone of the 60s Spy craze without becoming Austin Powers-core, a set of punchy, delicious weapons, and a dynamic score that adjusts to match the intensity of what you're getting yourself into, similar to Lucasarts' iMUSE system of old. It's the real deal.
Each level, split into multiple small scenes likely due to memory limitations and story structure decisions, feature a variety of objectives that allow for an excellent chance to roleplay as a 60s super spy. One mission has you meeting up with a contact at different locations to exchange information using janky code phrases, the next has you diving through the wreckage of a sunken freighter ship to seek information on its cargo in full scuba gear. Some missions insist on you moving through the level undetected, while others allow you the freedom to go in guns blazing, Metal Gear Rambo style. If variety in objective and setting isn't enough, the game features a full suite of gadgets and weapons with various forms of ammo that you can mix and match as you please to allow for maximized flexibility in your approach; each level is carefully designed to reward both broad progression, as well as minute exploration to uncover secrets and shortcuts. It's absolutely wonderful.
The game isn't without its shortcomings however; its stealth mechanics can be a bit cumbersome as AI pathing and frustrating camera placements restrict your options in levels that mandate it. Occasionally alarms will go off for seemingly no reason which can sometimes make success feel random.
It also suffers from classic FPS blunders; boss fights feel sloppy and amount to little more than grappling with bullet sponges, and vehicle controls are largely atrocious.
All of these things considered, No One Lives Forever is still an exceptional game. Even encased in copyright carbonite, community support has worked wonders to keep it accessible even on the most modern of Windows operating systems. You owe it to yourself even if you have a little bit of interest in the genre's history or just have an interest in playing excellent games in general to shoot your way through this FPS classic. Highly recommended.
Lost to the annals of pre-digital copyright documents, Monolith's No One Lives Forever stands tall as an excellent example of the blender approach to game design; sprinkle a little Half Life, a little Goldeneye, a little bit of Blood and Shogi in for good measure, an entire VHS cassette collection of The Sean Connery James Bond Collection, and bits and pieces of every 60s Spy novel and film adaptation. Press blend on highest speed. Filter the product through the brains that thought it would be fitting to open Shogi with a full anime intro, and boom: you have one of the all time greats of the first person shooting genre.
You inhabit the role of fledging U.N.I.T.Y. agent Cate Archer, wrangled from a life of petty crime into becoming the world's best hope for survival. After losing her mentor on her first mission in the field, she's forced to build her reputation with the agency from the ground up. In the process she uncovers a great plot to destroy the world; the supervillain organization H.A.R.M. has developed a secret weapon capable to turning anyone into a bomb. Armed with a gun, a slew of gadgets, and enough snark and misogyny from her employers to kill a small child, she alone stands between the world and its complete destabilization.
The Operative: No One Live Forever lives on today in infamy; attempts to secure its rights for rerelease have become its legacy in the era where even Shogi, arguably a less significant game, is available on GoG for purchase. What this obscures is perhaps the finest realization of the late 90s FPS boom; the last great bastion of the wave that started with Quake in 1996 and ended when Master Chief landed on Halo. It has everything; objective driven missions set in tightly designed action levels, a fully voiced story that almost perfectly captures the tone of the 60s Spy craze without becoming Austin Powers-core, a set of punchy, delicious weapons, and a dynamic score that adjusts to match the intensity of what you're getting yourself into, similar to Lucasarts' iMUSE system of old. It's the real deal.
Each level, split into multiple small scenes likely due to memory limitations and story structure decisions, feature a variety of objectives that allow for an excellent chance to roleplay as a 60s super spy. One mission has you meeting up with a contact at different locations to exchange information using janky code phrases, the next has you diving through the wreckage of a sunken freighter ship to seek information on its cargo in full scuba gear. Some missions insist on you moving through the level undetected, while others allow you the freedom to go in guns blazing, Metal Gear Rambo style. If variety in objective and setting isn't enough, the game features a full suite of gadgets and weapons with various forms of ammo that you can mix and match as you please to allow for maximized flexibility in your approach; each level is carefully designed to reward both broad progression, as well as minute exploration to uncover secrets and shortcuts. It's absolutely wonderful.
The game isn't without its shortcomings however; its stealth mechanics can be a bit cumbersome as AI pathing and frustrating camera placements restrict your options in levels that mandate it. Occasionally alarms will go off for seemingly no reason which can sometimes make success feel random.
It also suffers from classic FPS blunders; boss fights feel sloppy and amount to little more than grappling with bullet sponges, and vehicle controls are largely atrocious.
All of these things considered, No One Lives Forever is still an exceptional game. Even encased in copyright carbonite, community support has worked wonders to keep it accessible even on the most modern of Windows operating systems. You owe it to yourself even if you have a little bit of interest in the genre's history or just have an interest in playing excellent games in general to shoot your way through this FPS classic. Highly recommended.
the house in fata morgana would've been a lot shorter if john ward was there
The Aveyond series has been my favorite game series for well over a decade now, something which means I owe the first title the special honor of "probably the singular most important video game to me, ever". Most die-hard fans of this series got into it within the first few years of Aveyond 1's release, and while a lot of people chalk that up to nostalgia, I'd credit something far more special than that: Aveyond 1 was truly something unique back in 2006. It was frequently positively highlighted for being an indie RPG by a female developer, something that obviously shown through its storyline and characters. It was also one of the first Western commercial RPG Maker games. There was a time where many, if not most, of the RPG Maker lists and interviews you'd find highlighted Aveyond. I'm grateful for the fact that neither of those elements are particularly remarkable anymore, and all the cool games we get to play as a result. But it feels worth mentioning!
In 2022, Aveyond holds up fairly well, though perhaps not quite as well as I would like it to. This is in many ways the series' weakest installment without nostalgia or the context of its release, but it remains a worthy opener. Despite that, I'm giving it 5 stars because anything else would simply be inaccurate given the depth of love I have for this game.
The plot is simple, straight-forward fantasy fare, but to me that's a pro and not a con. The cast isn't very well fleshed out, but they have strong, charming bones that easily endear players and just beg you to expand on them in your head. Protagonist Rhen feels like the halfway point between a fully realized character and a player insert protagonist, but the level of choice the player is given for her at the end lets it feel cohesive and pay off. Lars and Dameon, the secondary and tertiary leads, leave a little to be desired in their arcs, but a few key points at least provide reasonably compelling scaffolding for the player to fill in. The rest of the playable cast is filled out by a series of entertaining spins on common fantasy archetypes: a flirty demon summoner with three husbands searching for a fourth, a vampress who longs for the light and the patronizing paladin she sets her sights on, a pirate who rides dragons part time and a bar maid for hire.
Aveyond 1 has some of my favorite mapping in an RPG Maker game to date - the tilesets cohesively combine the typical more pixelated style with art more evocative of paintings. The colors, scale, and parallaxes combine together to make the world feel truly rich and magical. Trees seem massive and looming, chasms jagged and eerie. Multiple caverns inexplicably show the night or sunset sky below as you wander through. The battle scaling is a little ridiculous - play on Easy mode if you don't want to have to grind to level up! - but for me it breezes past "works" into enhancing the game - it makes me feel like I really am training for an epic quest, and gives me more time to roll the characters over in my head and get attached.
If you want a fantasy epic with plenty of plot twists and fully-realized character arcs, Aveyond probably isn't the game for you. But if you want a goofy high fantasy ride across magic retro-inspired landscapes filled with characters who will pique your interest and who you can make your personal playground, I can't recommend it enough. Ultimately, this game is FUN, and that's exactly what it's trying to be. It gets five stars for doing it so damn well, and managing to keep doing so a decade full of replays later.
In 2022, Aveyond holds up fairly well, though perhaps not quite as well as I would like it to. This is in many ways the series' weakest installment without nostalgia or the context of its release, but it remains a worthy opener. Despite that, I'm giving it 5 stars because anything else would simply be inaccurate given the depth of love I have for this game.
The plot is simple, straight-forward fantasy fare, but to me that's a pro and not a con. The cast isn't very well fleshed out, but they have strong, charming bones that easily endear players and just beg you to expand on them in your head. Protagonist Rhen feels like the halfway point between a fully realized character and a player insert protagonist, but the level of choice the player is given for her at the end lets it feel cohesive and pay off. Lars and Dameon, the secondary and tertiary leads, leave a little to be desired in their arcs, but a few key points at least provide reasonably compelling scaffolding for the player to fill in. The rest of the playable cast is filled out by a series of entertaining spins on common fantasy archetypes: a flirty demon summoner with three husbands searching for a fourth, a vampress who longs for the light and the patronizing paladin she sets her sights on, a pirate who rides dragons part time and a bar maid for hire.
Aveyond 1 has some of my favorite mapping in an RPG Maker game to date - the tilesets cohesively combine the typical more pixelated style with art more evocative of paintings. The colors, scale, and parallaxes combine together to make the world feel truly rich and magical. Trees seem massive and looming, chasms jagged and eerie. Multiple caverns inexplicably show the night or sunset sky below as you wander through. The battle scaling is a little ridiculous - play on Easy mode if you don't want to have to grind to level up! - but for me it breezes past "works" into enhancing the game - it makes me feel like I really am training for an epic quest, and gives me more time to roll the characters over in my head and get attached.
If you want a fantasy epic with plenty of plot twists and fully-realized character arcs, Aveyond probably isn't the game for you. But if you want a goofy high fantasy ride across magic retro-inspired landscapes filled with characters who will pique your interest and who you can make your personal playground, I can't recommend it enough. Ultimately, this game is FUN, and that's exactly what it's trying to be. It gets five stars for doing it so damn well, and managing to keep doing so a decade full of replays later.