I'm all for attempts to cross genres. It can work, sci-fi horror's cool, action comedies are great, in fact it works particularly well in the movie world. Not so for games. Exhibit A: No One Lives Forever 2...I'm aware that spies have to do a certain amount of spying, but this game never commits to one genre or the other. Effectively it's an FPS, but it shoehorns stealth gaming in as well.
Or it attempts to. I have no qualms in saying that NOLF2 is cleverly written, graphically impressive and has a great plot. However, while Deus Ex or Half Life enable you to select how you are going to take on enemies and missions, offering you a wide variety of options, NOLF2 forces you to use stealth on certain missions, then puts you in charge of a large gun with thousands of enemies charging at you the next. It's schizophrenic! This is insulting really. I'm used to the old 'don't be seen/don't kill the police' levels on console games, but increasingly they're fazing them out, and I thought PC games had risen above that kind of thing. But no, I find myself halfway through the game, sneaking about like some beflared Sam Fisher, grinding my teeth on account of the fact that the game took all my guns away.
It's made doubly frustrating by it's execution. Shooting levels are awesome, filled with fun corridors full of enemies and heavy weaponry, made doubly invigorating perhaps by the feel of finally wielding some decent guns and being able to use them. However, the stealth sections are put together with total abandon and a lack of finesse rarely seen outside of movie-license-tie-ins. Enemies not only re-spawn minutes after their death, in several instances I've been seen through walls and even if you do manage to evade the blighters they don't return to their posts, they just hang around the last place you were indefinitely. Given the game's 'spy' vibe, these levels make up most of the game, and they are badly made, shockingly glitchy and above all, unfairly difficult. Sudden death and constant reloading is unfortunately a game NOLF knows very well.
Maybe I'm being unfair. NOLF isn't a really recent game. Since it's release we've seen things like Cold-Winter, Half-Life 2 and Killzone, brainy shooters that put real power in the player's hands. I just can't understand how so many people can like something that kills you off, steals your powers away or chucks you into the deep end without warning so often so much. The bottom line is this: When you're playing a game, you want to be having fun. Real life is harsh, frustrating and dull. You don't want your games to be the same. Don't even get me started on how often it crashes either.
To sum up, No One Lives Forever 2 is a witty game with a nice story line, but it forces you to do things a particular way a little too much for my liking. It's not as bad as Hit-man (which only let you complete levels by doing things the EXACT same way as the developers had planned) but the game constricts your options an awful lot. If you can withstand the awful stealth levels in the middle and the overly intelligent seemingly omnipresent bad guys, then the game rewards you with some very well written cut scenes and humour, plus a final stage shootout that finishes the game with a real bang, but I can't see many making it through the games unfair, extremely difficult middle sections.
