You Only Let's Play Twice (No One Lives Forever 2)

No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy In H.A.R.M.'s Way is a really good game! The sequel to The Operative, the humor has changed, the gameplay has largely improved, the gunplay has improved, the graphics have definitely improved, and all over it’s an extremely solid experience. The game kicks off fairly shortly after the conclusion of No One Lives Forever 1 (which I previously LP’d here). H.A.R.M. is resurgent due to the events of Contract: J.A.C.K. which is a bad game I’ll talk about here and there but otherwise ignore. Cate Archer, our brave heroine, continues to foil international plots and look kickin’ rad while doing it.

As before I’m not super familiar with this game but I’m confident most of it will shake out well. These games do remain in rights limbo so unless you’ve got a physical copy you won’t have much (legal) chance of playing it. But as always, please enjoy, and let me know if I can make any improvements.

Videos

Cate Archer Must Die!
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The Death of a Spy
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Project: Omega
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A Spy In H.A.R.M.'s Way
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Night Flight
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Diary of a Double Agent
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Double Cross
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Bonus/Polsy
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Bonus 2!/Polsy

The Art of Murder
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Ice Station Evil
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The Curse of Kali
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The Interlopers
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Underwater
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Terror In The Deep
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Endgame
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Preemptive Strike
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I forgot how much I missed your one-liners until you said the first one in the video. Looking forward to seeing how this game unfolds, should be fun!

I’m still a little rusty on my one-liner game but hopefully it will come back to me. It did take me a little while to settle into NOLF1.

The Death of a Spy
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I’m going to try to keep to this update schedule but I’m gonna start getting busy with real life here pretty quick. Anyway! Video!

Project: Omega
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…IN HELL

I gotta say, I really like how much the facial animations have improved from the first game. It adds a lot of character to all the cutscenes. Also minion dialogue is getting good already.

Dang I’m about to get busy I gotta start recording these things faster.

Also I realized that one liners are hard when you’re trying not to use “IN HELL”.

Project Omega
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I love this game so much. I’m so glad I still have my copy, since a re-release is out of the cards. One of the things I really appreciate about Monolith’s games is that the graphics tend to age far better than their contemporaries. Reminder that this game came out the same year as Grand Theft Auto 3 and Morrowind.

We finally infiltrate the installation and begin to get a feel for the horrors of Soviet filing duty.

A Spy In H.A.R.M.'s Way
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…so with the first game taking a stance against sexism, NOLF2 seems to be making light of sexism in its jokes.

That is … not an ideal change.

Yeah they could have pulled that one off a bit better. There’s lots of jokes to be made about domestic violence in Russia and they’re all kinda terrible.

A Spy In H.A.R.M.'s Way
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There is going to be so much paperwork to file after this.

A Spy In H.A.R.M.'s Way
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A few alarms, a few bullets between friends, and a quick takeoff.

Night Flight
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Now that we’re out of it, I’ll just say that the Siberia level is extremely dull, artistically. Nothing but whites and greys, and it all gets turned into a washed out night-filter blue at the end there. Every building outside the base is a boring old blockhouse, and everything inside the base is simple corridors. Even the supercomputer wing, which in any other spy fiction would be a cool setpiece, just looks like generic office space. For a game putting on the 60s Espionage look, this level really dropped the ball.

Mechanically it’s rather good, there’s a lot of different orders you can approach the tasks given to you, and a bunch of gadgets to use. If it weren’t so visually bland (and if you didn’t have to go through it twice) it would probably be a lot better.

Something I’ve mentioned in the SA thread but not here, if you are looking to play these games they are ~available~ under a project called nolfrevival. I can’t speak for the quality or safety of it but the games are patched and available to run on modern systems, and since they’re in rights hell good luck finding them otherwise.

Anyway! Now that we’re out of Siberia, the game will start getting more interesting.

Diary of a Double Agent
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Gonna follow the heck outta this.

Good news! Cate isn’t dead! Also welcome to India, where it’s really just a jolly old time.

Double Cross
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Also I have been peer pressure shamed into recording the phone call.

Double Cross
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Did someone say forced stealth section?!?!?

Oh. I did. Shit.

Double Cross
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Time to relax and take in a nice movie.

Double Cross
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