No One Lives Forever Notes
Well, its a top rated game so I thought Id check out what its all about. I opted not to read the reviews first and just let it impress me on its own. Of course, the graphics are a little dated, but I liked Alice a lot and its getting a little long in the tooth. My favorite games have survived a graphics cycle or two and are still fun in any case.
What I Liked
- Cool settings (settings like the bottom of the ocean, not settings like an on-off button) and level design
- A female hero that even a feminist could like–shes smart, good looking, capable, and anatomically possible. Though there is a nude hack for the teenage boys in the audience. ;) Not that I know anything about that.
- The theme of a woman battling to make it in a chauvinistic organization was kinda cool and even educational (or propagandist depending on your perspectiveI liked it in any case). Goes to show that games can have more to them than entertainment value. Reminded me that our society still has some glass ceilings lying around. I wonder how many women are on EA’s board…checking…looks like 1 in 8. And shes in marketing, of course. :p Heh heh, if a game can inspire me to check that out, thats saying something.
- I loved the progressive introduction of new gadgets and the way they integrated training seamlessly into the game. The training moved a bit slow for my tastes, but pretty cool nonetheless.
- Had some elements of Thief–you could get a lot done by sneaking around, but you could also whip out a gun and raise some hell. Shooting things up can get you through the level faster–just depends on what you are in the mood for.
What I Didnt Dig As Much
- The story felt a bit thin. The odd thing was it was interwoven with the action pretty well…maybe it was the fact that I kept getting pulled out of the field and back into the office. Made it difficult for me to immerse.
- Little sense of momentum. I would walk somewhere, do something, and then I could go into a room and sit there for 30 minutes if I wanted. No external force kept me moving forward. As a counterexample, if I sat around in Homeworld, Id get my ass kicked. Half-Life you could sit around though. Hmm There was something more compelling about HL though–maybe it was that there were more scripted events lying around. I’ll have to ponder this one a little more.
I’ve just bought a bunch of new games to try out, so I stopped after the first 10 missions or so. I just wasnt getting drawn into the game, but I’ll probably come back and finish it off. I like to play games all the way through even though they I find a lot of games seem to be front loaded with best gameplay (take Unreal2 single-player, for example).
Updated on October 6th, 2013
Some of the links were broken. I replaced them with working links to pages with the same or similar content as before.