Contract J.A.C.K

a second wind review

No One Lives Forever is one of FBT’s fave games. Contract JACK isn’t.

There’s many games I’ve disliked, loads I’ve given up on and a fair few I hated for what they were, but Contract J.A.C.K. is the only one I hate for what it isn’t.

There’s two things that set NOLF apart from any other FPS game; it’s celebration of the Sixties spy genre, and Cate Archer. CJ doesn’t have either and does nothing to replace them. It is a spin-off without the spin. It’s just off.

Set before / alongside NOLF2, John Jack is ‘just another contract killer’ who escapes a bunch of Mafioso thugs only to be tricked into a to-the-death shootout with waves of HARM troops – the super-villain group Cate fights – and discovers it’s actually a fairly extreme job interview to work for HARM itself. Hired, JJ is sent to uncover what ‘Danger Danger’, a rival super-villain group is up to. Essentially our mission is to stop them finding a mad scientist and deliver him to HARM instead, and that means us raiding military bases, a secret rocket facility, NOLF1’s Moon Base and assaulting Danger Danger’s headquarters in Italy. Considering the universe CJ is set in, you can’t help but think you’re in for some fun with the eccentric, surreal inner workings of HARM; at least more of the sixties tv love and silliness. Nope, nothing. Not a thing. Amazingly, what sounds like a fun romp and reboot of NOLF’s plot is a straight shooter without any of of NOLF’s charm, ingenuity or commentary.

There’s nothing to this at all but shooting. Endless, repetitive shooting in badly paced missions that just won’t end, facing waves of henchmen like some close-quarter Serious Sam. CJ has none of the spirit of NOLF, it just happens to look like it, and so you’re constantly reminded of how sublime that was. Cate Archer was a brilliant character. Smart-as, beautiful, capable and able to bat away rampant sexism with a deft one-liner. In her place we have JJ, a standard silent hero – an opportunity to explore the inevitability of being a nameless NCP? Surely he’s called ‘just another contract killer’ for a reason? He should be Sam Rockwell’s character in Galaxy Quest, constantly terrified of getting killed because his character doesn’t even have a name. Or continue NOLF’s commentary on sexism, and parody the unbeatable male hero? No, none of that, JJ isn’t just another killer, he’s just another arm in a shooter.

CJ doesn’t even take the opportunity to repeat Cate’s experiences from the POV of the villains. Hang out with the henchmen, suck up to the Director, observe key moments in the background, getting involved in/ruining HARM’s schemes, meeting Isako, recruiting the villains Cate later faces, the creation of the Supersoliders – there’s a whole subplot about Abigail they could have explored. All ignored. We don’t even get to play with the Man-Handler. So much opportunity and instead we have nothing to do with HARM at all, just a self-contained plot to stop Danger Danger – mostly humourless Italian clichés who aren’t a patch on the French Mimes or Indian Evil Alliance. NOLF parodied generic FPS (remember the sewers?) and now here we are in a master-class of what NOLF aped.

There’s so little of NOLF here it’s like a mod (except the fans would have done better). No stealth, gadgets, puzzles, Santa-style Quartermaster; also missing is Cate’s travels as she dismantles HARM. Admittedly, NOLF2 overdoes the India location but CJ is essentially three locations – the base, the moon and the lair (from the outside) and each outstay their welcome, over-long and over-populated with the same villains doing the same things. It’s so repetitive CJ almost ruins NOLF; there’s so many henchmen to fight you notice how scripted they are when they’re not talking about their mother in law or the causality between villainy and alcoholism. It’s just no fun; how do you miss the fun? Why don’t we have a mission where we (try) to silence Armstrong or recruit Pierre the Mime King? Failure could have been a fun option for this game, an anti-hero in the literal sense, but no.

What about something to tie it in? Naa – when CJ does reference the original it’s getting it wrong; the moonbase is a repeat of NOLF’s trip but without any of the cool 2001-inspired spacesuits or, unforgivably, the nightclub. JJ gets blasted into space and has to fight off other space-villains, repeating the fall from the plane in NOLF, except there’s no henchman yelling ‘please be full of hay’. It’s just a straight shooter using NOLFs assets. There’s no quotable lines, quirky behaviours, in-jokes, references. The only reason I’m persevering is in the hopes Cate might make an appearance. And kill me.

And then, after a too-little, too-late fun ending where we use cannons to take out Danger Danger’s base (which was a slog to get to, enlivened only by a short ride on a Vespa), JJ gets double-crossed by HARM and takes his revenge on Volkov, explaining his pained reappearance in NOLF2. It doesn’t even make sense, other than to explain why Cate doesn’t face off with JJ in NOLF2. Plus, JJ is supposed to be a stone-cold killer and his revenge is ruining Volkov’s holiday? That’s our NOLF payoff? There’s one scene where we torture a Danger-Danger henchman but although it’s played for laughs it’s actually more painful for us, and not an ounce on the scene where Cate tricks a HARM henchman into telling her where their base is.

What were Monolith thinking with this? I can understand some other developer being given the franchise and missing the point but this is inexcusable – they made the original. I mean, CJ is built entirely on NOLF2’s assets, so why did they drop the one thing that made NOLF special? Everyone in HARM is an eccentric, why is JJ a cliched silent hero? He should have been a parody of ill-fated henchmen, or a Frank Drebin type, at least a satire on the silent, masculine heroes. At the very least, it should have been a NOLF game. Contract JACK is one of those straight to video sequels starring Joe Estevez and Don Swayze. It’s Highlander 2.

The most annoying moment is during the opening of JJ’s first mission where, from the back of a truck, we briefly glimpse Cate on her way somewhere far more interesting than we are. That’s like briefly seeing the shark from Jaws then realising you’re in Sharknado. Contract JACK is just a loud, relentless, mindless slog of a shooter and aside from being thankfully short, there’s nothing redeeming about it – I was even more pissed off when in researching this, I discovered something I didn’t know. The PS2 version of NOLF contained an additional level called ‘Nine Years Ago…’ which featured The Fox, Cate’s burglarising alter-ego before her capture by Bruno. How do we have Contract JACK and that’s not available? How could they not have made that prequel instead of this ‘side-quel’? I can’t think of a game that has more spectacularly backfired – and I’ve played Mass Effect Andromeda.

2003 | Developer Monolith Productions | Publisher Sierra Entertainment

Platforms; Win/Internet

No One Lives Forever 2

A Blast from the Past review

FBT reviews the return of Cate Archer. That’s if he can see her all the way up on that pedestal.

The Past

The best thing about discovering games released on budget labels was you didn’t have to wait forever for the sequel. When I picked up Xplosiv’s NOLF release, A Spy In HARMs Way was only a few months behind so I didn’t have to wait too long before slipping into Cate’s kinky boots again. I loved Cate. I mean, NOLF.

I remember NOLF2 being a huge leap from the first. Graphically it looked amazing as Cate continent-hopped trying to avert a Bay of Pigs event. Great baddies including the mime assassins (who doesn’t want to shoot a mime?), a huge amount of comedy and some commentary on the Cold War. And Cate, being Cate. Lovely Cate. It was just really good; a great shooter with a solid story and good characters; a rarity for any sequel, in any media. It was more of the same without being samey; more outlandish than the original, with hulking super-soldiers to take down – but then the original was all about people mysteriously exploding so where do you go from there? I remembered playing it so much the two games merged into one beloved game. But as I prise them apart in my head, I realise my best remembered moments were from the first and remember NOLF2 getting repetitive and spending way too long in India, like they’d run out of money and just shoe-horned narrative reasons for everything to take place in one or two locations. But it was still a great game, its Cate and it’s still the swinging sixties. I’m excited to go back and see if those Kinky Boots still fit. Everybody’s going for those kinky boots, kinky boots (boop-boop) kinky boots.

Still a Blast?

Our first mission as Cate, looking as lovely and acting as cool as ever, is to infiltrate a super villain convention being held at a Ninja Village. It’s largely a tutorial as we learn the ropes of this more seasoned – but no less perfect – Cate. It’s a great little mission where we learn a few new tricks like stealth-hiding, moving bodies and searching for goodies, and relearn awesome distractions like listening to hilarious conversations and daft moments, and soon enough we’ve lost ourselves in Cate. I mean World, Cate’s world. It’s good to be back, I’m grinning and enjoying it way too much and that’s not just ‘cos Cate’s back and she hasn’t aged a bit. Cate’s back because HARM is up to something with an island called Khios. A speck in the ocean to most, its strategic worth has become a lynchpin in the cold war build-up and HARM offers to help the USSR take it – in return for building the world’s first ‘5star Communist Hotel’ on the island. Stopping WWIII and all-inclusive holidays? Cate has her work cut out for her.

NOLF2 is technically better looking than its predecessor and it’s a good shooter, the goons are quick and hard to pin down, while stealthing is actually fun for the most part, especially when you’ve got the camera disabler and tracker darts – new and improved presents from her Q, Santa; while Cate no longer does runs through his Workshop, Santa is still here, advising via a robotic bird that unnervingly knows where to perch when Cate needs info on the mission and monitors how she’s doing (‘don’t shoot the bloody bird…’). He also leaves dainty little presents for Cate to find, filled with lethal and fun goodies. Cate also gains intel from rifling desks and can trigger side-goals, both of which give xp to upgrade; better weapon handling, health etc., but also how quickly she can hide and use gadgets. We also don’t have the loadout screen anymore, Cate defaults to basic weapons and everything she needs, not that she needs anything, being perfect n’all. I can see why gadget picking was dropped from the first one, anything that was required for the mission you’d find nearby or were default carried anyway and the optionals are now always available. But it does mean your approach is dictated; you can’t pick a sniper rifle if you intend to stealth or the Corrector if you wanted to be anti-stealth. The weapons and the multiple ammo makes a return but there’s new gadgets like a hair-spray that doubles as a welder, nail-clipper lock-picks, a phone bug that looks like a ladybug (which Cate plays with while idle) and a cute little robo-kitty that will attract baddies with explosive results. Not quite as good as the fluffy slippers and belt-buckle grappling hook but still silly yet practical ways UNITY, Cate’s spy organisation, found to equip their first female agent. But Cate’s not a ‘female agent’ anymore, she’s Agent Archer, UNITY Spy; less eager newbie and more company man now.

Being a company man means practically none of the sexism Cate endured in the first. There’s references, comments but she’s accepted and respected. She has a reputation after the events of the first and that’s what they comment on, not her dress sense. Although the catsuits are gone, she’s not been sexed up either; Cate’s no less stylish but she is refreshingly functional. When in Siberia she’s in a parka rather than some barely there outfit (there are some fetching white gloves clutching the gun), around the office she’s in a stylish little V-neck dress and leather jacket, but there’s no cleavage on display. The closest she gets to baring flesh is in India, and she’s only showing a midriff. She still has her charm and playfulness (‘can you stop fidgeting?’ / ‘no’ ) but less of the sharp putdowns because she’s no longer enduring the sexist passcodes or fending off security guards belittling her for being on the shooting range and then asking her out on dates.

But then, what looks like NOLF2 topping NOLF’s sexism and misogyny by exploring feminism and patriarchy is actually a missed opportunity in the form of Isako, a female Nina Master whom Cate spends much of the game battling. Isako’s indebted to the HARM Director who toys with her, promising Isako freedom if she brings him Cate’s head then says she is his and he’ll never let her go. That’s the kind of thing Cate would not have taken kindly to. Isako is the only non-jokey mini-boss of the entire series and Cate’s equal; recognising Isako’s predicament, Cate tries to reason with her even after Isako puts her in the hospital -twice- and it feels like their relationship and Cate’s influence was intended to weave into the plot as if Cate, having won her personal battle must now step up and fight for other women but it doesn’t really happen. While their resolution technically works, it’s solving the problem not the issue and it’s a let down after the searing commentary on sexisim in the original.

NOLF2 just doesn’t explore empowerment as it should have, like Cate ‘proved’ herself in NOLF1 and that’s enough but being capable isn’t the same as equal and I expected NOLF2 to satirise the fact that Cate had to save the world to get respect. There’s none of that in NOLF2, but it’s good to see Cate simply treated as an Agent rather than judged as a woman, even if it’s ironic that she’s accepted as an equal and that feels like a fantasy.

The biggest (well, smallest) foe of Cate’s adventure is an assassin called Pierre the Mime King. The little theatrical brat has been tasked with stopping Cate from interfering with HARM’s plans, and he unleashes a group of mimes on her trail. Who are a work of genius. They hunt you down, invisible walls notwithstanding, tip-toeing despite their huge size, yelling in ‘Allo-‘Allo accents. You never get tired of them – it’s really saying something when you’re pleased to see more of an enemy. Less welcome are the Russians you battle, who aren’t quite on the same scale as the original HARM goons – they’re a lot more shooter-typical, although they have their fair share of comments (‘This is the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics – People don’t just disappear without a trace!’) and at one sneaky stage I caught them dancing to an evil capitalist radio station, but overall there’s a lot less of the conversations going on; NOLF2 feels shorter than NOLF1 because you’re not wasting hours listening to them complain about mothers-in-law or discussing the moral implications of providing beer to HARM’s ranks. Volkov is back too, spending the entire game in a head-to-foot plaster cast and not in the best of moods, while Armstrong returns as an ally. Drafted in for his intel on HARM, Cate and Armstrong constantly bicker and argue to cover their mutual respect; that there’s zero implication of an attraction makes it even better. The big lunk is one of the best things in the game, constantly pissing and moaning before doing something hugely heroic, or really dumb. He was always an ambiguous character in the first game and in NOLF2 those flashes of a moral code come to the fore. But, he’s not above winding Cate up – and she responds by making him hold her handbag. They’re great.

We also fight HARM’s soldiers, who are somewhere between the Mimes and the Russians and do have some awesomely inane conversations or spend time practicing their evil laughs, and perhaps the most surreal baddie of any shooter is the ‘Man-Crates’ – Volkov punishes HARM thugs by turning them into crates who remain committed to the HARM cause, rolling towards you trying to get in a bite. There is one absolutely beautiful moment when, if you’re quick and sneaky, you can hear two HARM goons discussing something (‘Like all quantities, horror has its ultimate. And I am that.’ / ‘Hey! That’s from The Brain that wouldn’t Die, I love that movie!’) and it turns out one of the goons is actually just sitting on his crate-friend as they chat. Nobody does it better than NOLF. But the real big bads of NOLF2 are the Super-soldiers. Genetically engineered hulk-meets-Big Daddy, they are HARM’s present to the USSR to secure Khios and not to be messed with.

After Cate survives the Ninja Village and her first encounter with Isako, it’s off to Siberia where we learn more of the Soviet’s plans. It’s a huge and mostly fun mission, with lots of infiltration, skimobiles and explosions. And save our drunk pilot twice. Later we investigate double-agent Tom from the first game, learning how he’d been conditioned by HARM. What follows is a running fight with the Ninjas, spilling out into a nearby trailer park as we try to outrun an approaching Tornado. Until Isako blocks our exit. Cate asks if we can possibly postpone considering the tornado is ripping up trailers all around us, but Isako thinks the storm adds a level of excitement to their duel. We wind up fighting with Katanas inside a trailer spinning in mid-air inside the storm. Although Isako uses flashbangs to stealth attack, it’s one intense, close-quarter scrap (and maybe a Kill Bill reference) and the game’s standout. Only the graphical limitations stop this from being heart-attack thrilling as the trailer disintegrates and Cate has to avoid the swirling winds and Isako’s attacks. Awesome stuff. And I’m sure there’s a Mary Poppins – Wizard of Oz reference in there.

NOLF2 does run out of steam a little after the trailer park fight; the extended stay in India is even longer than I remember and it’s a bit of a slog; infiltrating HARM twice, putting down a HARM rival (Unlike HARM and UNITY, they don’t have an acronym, they’re just called Evil Alliance …) It also hits the same beats as the original – a rescue mission, a sneak mission that’s mission-fail if you get spotted, it starts to feel a little familiar. Things pick up with a ‘The Thing’-like exploration mission in Antarctica to discover HARM’s ace in the hole – the Super-soldiers – then it drops again when HARM field-tests them (in India, again) and it’s a ‘save the population while avoiding death’ mission which just feels forced. But we’re back in the saddle when the mimes attack UNITY and Cate goes on a rescue mission inside HARM’s underwater base. While it’s always fun, NOLF2 is mostly Cate just playing catch up, whereas in the first she foiled plans and was a thorn in HARM’s side.

There’s nothing wrong with NOLF2’s middle section, there’s tons of gags, in-jokes and bullets flying about but it’s largely padding – Tom’s house and The Thing base are essentially the same for instance – find enough clues to trigger the next scene – while India outstays it’s welcome. You get this feeling we’re just kicking our heels until the final mission which slowly builds during the cut-scenes, as a warmongering US general pushes for war – and straight into HARM’s hands.

The finale, escaping HARM’s (amusingly fake) volcano base, resolving Cate’s differences with Isako and stopping the Super-soldiers on Khios is all good fun – and there’s even time for a touching moment with one of the super-soldiers, who retained some memory and thinks Cate is its daughter – but NOLF2 doesn’t quite have that warmth of the original, that love for its sixties TV inspiration. Instead it ramps up the humour, almost reaching screwball comedy; I’m not saying Cate jumps the shark here, but it’s definitely going for the silly. I have nothing against chasing a three-foot-tall unicycle-riding mime through the backstreets of Calcutta while riding on Armstrong’s back as he peddles a kid’s tricycle, who can argue with that, but NOLF2 is more an absurdist experience compared to the subversive tone of the first. Okay, so NOLF1 had an opera-warbling mini-boss you bested by turning off her radio so she walked into electrified puddles, but NOLF2 is The Monkeys to NOLF1’s The Beatles.

The unrealised potential of Isako and Cate’s relationship does sour things a little, and the subplot of the Super-solider searching for his daughter is another aspect that could have been explored instead of more India shenanigans, but NOLF2 is still a far better realised game than most. It’s not NOLF1 but few games are (almost none to be honest) and pacing and plotting aside, there’s a lot of fun to be had in the world. Around HARM bases there’s constant reminders to the staff ‘remember what HARM stands for’ – even though no one knows (Unless you play Monolith’s FEAR…) Games could learn a lot from Cate; they don’t all have to build social or gender commentary into their narratives or feature men turned into crates, but the NOLF games show it’s possible to deliver so much more than a reskin. The energy, excitement, wit and fun on display in NOLF2 reminds you why you love gaming so much; this is a game that loves to be played. Cate is lovely too.

The real heartbreaker here though isn’t the unobtainable, perfect Cate, it’s that the NOLF franchise is so mired in copyright issues it’ll never see the light of day or manage a re-release let alone a third game. And so, the NOLF games remain the very definition of a Blast from the Past – a real, genuine contender for the ‘they don’t make them like that anymore’ crown. Cate would look great in a crown, but only if it had a grappling hook hidden in it.

2002 | Developer Monolith | Publisher Sierra

Platforms; Win

No One Lives Forever

A Blast from the Past review

FBT looks like he needs a monkey.

The Past

I bought ‘NOLF’ on a budget label re-release. Back then, a combination of a wheezing PC and asthmatic bank account meant I could only play cheap or old. Budget resell labels like Xplosiv or SoldOut catered for both requirements. Their carousels in PC World and Game were my domain, not those chart shelves with their snazzy new releases. Pah … Anyways, budget browsing is easy in this digital world, you’ve got gamer’s reviews, trailers, gameplay examples, previousweapon.com … but doing it back then in a real shop meant going by the back cover; If I counted all the £4.99’s I spent on budget games that I regretted buying, I could have afforded Doom 2016 on release day and had all that disappointment in one go. But then I would have missed NOLF. Based solely on Monolith’s logo, the creators of Blood, and not at all the cat-suited Cate Archer cover, £4.99 was blindly spent.

NOLF was a hidden gem. It changed my gamer life and influenced every purchase since. Monolith had done it again. Why this wasn’t up there with the heavy hitters I never understood; why wasn’t Angelina playing Cate in a movie version? Where were the Cate Cosplayers? What happened? It often appears in best retro game lists, and a quick google shows the love for Cate is still going strong. I don’t like to think of others crushing on Cate … She was whip-smart, fantastic to look at and had a mischievous streak; the kind of girl who could get away with anything. She looked like Emma Peel but wasn’t the sidekick. She wasn’t dressed like a stripper or a fantasy image; Cate didn’t slay beasts while wearing Victoria’s Secret.

I played it endlessly, until some sort of tech fallout between Windows and the Lithtech engine meant all I saw of Cate was a fleeting glance then a MFC error. Sad days. I eventually accepted it was over and said goodbye to Cate, the love of my digital life, briefly rekindled with the equally ace sequel. It turned out Copyright issues kept Cate from being rediscovered on Steam or GOG, and so Cate and I slowly drifted apart. Sniff. I blame the patriarchy. I still remember Cate very fondly and she … I mean NOLF, is still in my top five games despite having not played it for nearly a decade. Such was Cate’s influence that given the choice in modern games, I always play female, hoping to see Cate reincarnated. She’s never been equaled. And to think I got NOLF on the cheap. It’s been a while Cate, but thanks to the internet and fan patches, I’m back. I hope I still have what it takes.

Still a Blast?

It took some serious googling and dodgy downloads from sites written in Chinese, but after some yelling, I managed to crank NOLF into life and my life suddenly gets better. The menu looks like the set of The Monkeys, the music like the soundtrack to The Avengers. I’m so happy to be back. Influenced by just about every sight and sound from the sixties, it looks great and its retro without seeming like a parody. This is a homage, a loving nod to when we were kids and watched once prime-time stuff on Saturday afternoon repeats. Why don’t they make stuff this classy anymore? On TV and in games.

We meet Cate stepping out of the shower, but there are no longing shots of her body. She’s hidden, tantalisingly, as she talks on the phone with her mentor Bruno and teases him about what she’s up to. We think we’re about to meet some femme fatale super-spy, but Cate, a kind of Modesty Blaise, is a newbie; an eager ex-Cat Burglar retrained by ‘UNITY’ as an infiltration spy only to be stuck with menial jobs, a victim of her gender and positive discrimination so the bosses can say they’re progressive. With her English-Scot accent spouting sly comments, Cate is finally let off the leash by her misogynistic bosses after all the male spies are killed while investigating mysterious exploding people and discovers ‘HARM’, a super-villain agency. And so, we battle and giggle our way through a wacko episode of Avengers, The Saint, U.N.C.L.E, Bond, Matt Helm and … I could go on, and NOLF does. I never feel like I’m actually in the sixties, instead I’m in all the sixties shows and movies and that’s way more fun.

NOLF is still brilliant to play. Graphically it’s been surpassed but this is a real gaming experience. They don’t make them like this anymore. To get the most out of it you need to be sneaky and aware, but it doesn’t punish you for slipping up and getting spotted. Likewise, going in shooting is fine too, they’re not drastically different experiences but it’s up to you how Cate behaves. NOLF is an adventure, a shooter at its core with stealth elements but that’s a simplistic description. It’s an old TV episode with bursts of action, story, changes in pace and location, pathos and plot-twists. And it’s not all style; there’s substance under the disco balls and kinky boots, a lot of commentary and observation and it’s strange to think NOLF was ahead of its time then, and regrettably, still is now.

As she shoots and quips her way through the plot, Cate contends with sexism more damaging than the bullets she faces. From the condescension and dismissive attitude of her superiors, the sexist behaviour of the muscled American spy she’s teamed with, to even the people she saves who express amusement that a ‘girl’ is saving them, Cate classily proves she’s more than a match for them all. In one of the more wicked nods to misogyny, every time Cate meets a contact, they are forced to use terrible pickup lines to confirm her identity. You can imagine the ‘lads’ back at base giggling over making her go through this and thinking it’s just a bit of harmless slap and tickle. Cate rises above it but doesn’t accept it – she even expresses discomfort for the poor contact who has to say the lines. That’s class. I don’t know what’s worse, that it took until 2000 to have a female character who’s sexuality isn’t a key element of her capabilities or that we’ve not had one since. And no, Lara in the TR reboot doesn’t count; resisting rape attempts and avoiding graphic deaths via button-mashing is not an expression of strength; she’s a manipulative character in the reboot – manipulating us into caring that is, as she sits helpless and crying at a campfire, unlike the original Tomb Raider who DGAF what we thought. She may have looked like a sex-doll but that Lara was more than her looks, more of a feminist character than the reboot can dream about and no way OG Lara sprang from that wishy-washy brat. Maybe Fem-Shep comes close to a modern female hero, but that’s just reskinning and why is it Femshep? It’s just Shepard. But Cate revels in the danger while taking it seriously; she is consistently smarter, wittier that those around her and a capable hero; the he/she identifier doesn’t matter. Yes she’s feminine, but in moments where gender means nothing, it doesn’t come up unless it’s making that very point.

The villains are great fun to fight. The AI was advanced then and still holds up well now thanks to their clever scripting – both in actions and words. They investigate sounds or evidence of you being there, can be led into areas away from others and leap about, look for cover, run and retreat when you whittle them down. But I’ve never played a game that encouraged sneaking so successfully; not to get the drop on them but to listen to the goons moaning. They whinge about the health and safety aspects of being a henchman, the perks, bitch about their bosses, discuss other supervillain groups they may join, complain about their mother in law. And when the shooting starts, they throw out some genius lines – ‘I do not like getting shot at!’, ‘watch out for the bullets!’ and a personal favourite ‘I should definitely stop ingesting hallucinogens’ when they give up looking for you.

You get to choose which weapons you load out each mission with, and there’s lot to choose from as Cate will add any weapons she picks up to her next loadout inventory. Within the usual groups – pistols, machine guns etc – they’re mostly variations on a theme making it as much an aesthetic choice as a practical one but you also get different ammo choices, including dum-dums (the stupidest name ever for a bullet) and ones that are coated with poison or phosphorous; the goons have those too and the effects bypass your bullet-proof vest. Cate can’t gain health while on the mission so just diving in gun first is a riskier option if you want her to make it to the end. Cate is also furnished with an array of sixties inspired gadgets by ‘Santa’, her version of Bond’s Q, allowing Cate to go into the field with fluffy bunny slippers to quieten her footsteps, a belt-buckle grappling hook, perfume that knocks people out, lipstick grenades and a robotic poodle to distract the guard dogs. It’s a nice touch in the way Santa’s Little Helpers find appropriate ways for a girl to hide grenades and not raise suspicion. Plus, they all have a great sixties look.

Of course, no Bond film would be complete without supervillains and NOLF has some and then some. The brilliant mini boss, Wagner who warbles terrible operas and provides a fun mini-boss battle, the creepy Volkov who becomes Cate’s arch enemy and a Scottish vagabond called Magnus who appreciates Cate for her abilities – and that she’s a Scot. When she goads the hulk into a brawl to prove she’s better than him is one of the best moments in the game (least in the cutscenes, scuffling with the lug is a nightmare and the only time I wish Cate would just use her feminine wiles to get around someone instead. Damned equality.) Plus there’s three slinky female assassins who spend most of their time lounging about in a classic Our Man Flint-style apartment waiting for the call to kill Cate. Those ladies are not to be messed with, although it’s a shame it’s not more hands on – not that I wanted a cat fight for any titillation, just that the build up to them appearing is actually let down by it being an explosive firefight rather than a roustabout or an opportunity to further the equality issue which would have been more fun.

The levels are nicely done too, full of little interactions and areas to explore, and they’re epic-sized, but rarely drag and it’s well balanced for the most part. Only a few camera-avoiding stealth-only scenes grate. It’s not strictly linear and you can take various routes or approaches, sometimes dictated by the gadgets you brought along. The NCPs wandering about slow the action down because you can’t help but stop to listen to their conversations too. Some areas do drag a little, especially where Stealth is insisted on, and there’s an interrogation mission where you have to listen to a rich old duffer blather on about his life – Cate is posing as a journalist – but I like to think it’s a commentary on sexism, that a man would assume a woman would be delighted to listen at length to obvious fibs about his manly life rather than just talk to her as an equal. Mansplaining in a shooter?

This being an espionage thriller, the plot takes you all over the world stopping off in nightclubs, a shark infested sunken ship (which Cate previously sank), a mid-air shootout after a plane explosion, and in space – What spy thriller doesn’t feature a space station, brilliantly including a Go-Go club? As Cate investigates H.A.R.M a real plot emerges, not just a cut-scene to justify the next shoot-em-up; Problems, double-crosses and unexpected events play out and it’s not until the credits are rolling you realise you played what could have passed as a classic TV spy-caper. Instead we got a classic game. And if you’re lucky enough to have the GotY edition, there’s a full post-credits level where Cate, enjoying some R&R on an island getaway has her gun stolen by a monkey…

Being over 15 years old, NOLF has aged. It looks very Half-Life 1 era, but only if you’re a real fan of environmental design or screen clutter. NOLF’s art design is so well done, the story so compelling, the gameplay so tight it’s just brilliant to be a part of, not to mention the characters, the humour and of course Cate herself. In short, all the stuff they add nowadays to make games look cool is missing and NOLF makes you realise it’s not needed. Peal that away from a lot of today’s games and you’d realise how empty they are. NOLF is missing that shine and yet it’s incredibly polished. It’s more than a shooter, it’s an adventure, a battle-of-the-sexes comedy-homage to a great-looking era all through the eyes of one of the very best heroes of modern gaming. It was one of my all-time favourite games when I first played it, and now it might be my favourite game. It’s certainly one of the best games of all time.

It’s a shame that NOLF is so mired in rights issues and big business indifference that Cate won’t get to adventure for a third time, let alone the classic originals see the legal light of day. I’m not ashamed to admit that when my original disk went MFC Error on me and Windows was no help, I wound up pirating NOLF from a site that just wants to keep Cate alive, keeping it playable as Windows updates threaten to leave her behind – that’s hero worship. Night Dive Studios tried to re-release it as did GOG.com, but both got so entangled they gave up. It’s a masterclass in mergers and acquisitions of mega-corps; Vivendi, Activision Blizzard, Fox and WB all possibly own a slice; some of them aren’t even sure themselves, having either owned, sold or absorbed companies that might have had a stake, and they all seem to have owned each other at some point. If they could all just get in a room, agree to share and let Monolith do what they do best, we’d all win. Of course, we could wind up with an unpleasant TR reboot but I’d love to see Cate save the world again. For now, there is something about how no one gets to ‘own’ Cate in the end. It seems oddly fitting.

2000 | Developer Monolith | Publisher Fox Interactive

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