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No-One Lives Forever: Retro PC Time Capsule vs PlayStation 2 - A Monolith Classic Revisited

winjer

Gold Member
I didn't know this port was so bad on the PS2.
At the time I played it on PC and it ran very well. In fact, I still have the original CDs.
A real shame this game's rights is in purgatory, so we don't get new releases, nor remasters or remakes.
 

01011001

Banned
as someone who was in a retro shooter craze a few months ago, I tried playing the NOLF games... and oh boy are they dogshit...

I can not for the life of me understand why they have this cult following. they might be among the worst shooters of that era that I personally played recently and/or came in contact with at the time.

maybe they get better in the later levels, but I tried sticking with them and just couldn't for more than 2 missions + tutorial or so each.

after always hearing about how great NOLF is and what a shame it is that the IP is dead, I was honestly shocked at how bad they were.
 
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KaiserBecks

Member
as someone who was in a retro shooter craze a few months ago, I tried playing the NOLF games... and oh boy are they dogshit...

I can not for the life of me understand why they have this cult following. they might be among the worst shooters of that era that I personally played recently and/or came in contact with at the time.

maybe they get better in the later levels, but I tried sticking with them and just couldn't for more than 2 missions + tutorial or so each.

after always hearing about how great NOLF is and what a shame it is that the IP is dead, I was honestly shocked at how bad they were.

Well how could you possibly understand if you only played 2 missions or so.
 

01011001

Banned
Well how could you possibly understand if you only played 2 missions or so.

a game that sucks for 2 full missions doesn't deserve to be played longer than that 🤷

during those 2 missions each, I encountered some of the worst leveldesign and mission design that era of shooters has to offer
 
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Shame as I’d love to play these. Outside of owning the CDs I don’t believe there is a legitimate way of playing them.

sadly, this is still true. There's a few projects out there modernising the code, ala ioquake type of thing, but you'd still need the original games to pluck the asset archives off of.
 

moniker

Member
as someone who was in a retro shooter craze a few months ago, I tried playing the NOLF games... and oh boy are they dogshit...

I can not for the life of me understand why they have this cult following. they might be among the worst shooters of that era that I personally played recently and/or came in contact with at the time.

maybe they get better in the later levels, but I tried sticking with them and just couldn't for more than 2 missions + tutorial or so each.

after always hearing about how great NOLF is and what a shame it is that the IP is dead, I was honestly shocked at how bad they were.

The gameplay isn't the best (though I don't think it's that horrible either). What is great though is the writing (story, characters, the banter between the bad guys which is often hilarious etc.), and level locale variety (which is nuts).

For anyone that want to play this, just go to http://nolfrevival.tk/. It's unclear who even owns the rights at this point (though Nightdive Studios own the trademark), and the chances that this will get a re-release is nearly zero.
 

mrcroket

Member
To be honest I don't think the PS2 version is that bad, it has a downgrade in textures but more geometry, the performance is acceptable and the control is based on auto aiming so it is too. I was expecting something much worse.
 

sertopico

Member
as someone who was in a retro shooter craze a few months ago, I tried playing the NOLF games... and oh boy are they dogshit...

I can not for the life of me understand why they have this cult following. they might be among the worst shooters of that era that I personally played recently and/or came in contact with at the time.

maybe they get better in the later levels, but I tried sticking with them and just couldn't for more than 2 missions + tutorial or so each.

after always hearing about how great NOLF is and what a shame it is that the IP is dead, I was honestly shocked at how bad they were.
Ok zoomer.
 

intbal

Member
I honestly preferred Contract JACK to both the NOLF games.
It doesn't have as much character or story development, but the layouts of combat sections are designed a bit better.
 

Tazzu

Member
To be honest I don't think the PS2 version is that bad, it has a downgrade in textures but more geometry, the performance is acceptable and the control is based on auto aiming so it is too. I was expecting something much worse.
For me gamepad support is really important so I play a lot of these old PC games on consoles if I can. On PCSX2 you can get the game to run at 60FPS, in widescreen, fix the aspect ratio and use quicksaves which the port really needed.
 
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CrustyBritches

Gold Member
I loved these games. I remember buying it from Toys "R" Us back in 2000. Great box the cover really sold me on the game. This was during the Austin Powers era and there was a lot of it's influence in those games. Cate came off like Vanessa Kensington from the first Austin Powers.

Sexy Cate:
No_one_lives_forever_video_game_PC_cover_scan.jpg

Bonus sexy Elizabeth Hurley:
tumblr_ohozwgMBwp1vc5zsdo1_1280.jpg
 

Forsythia

Member
Man, I love these games. Still have the dvd's, but there is no shame in downloading the "fan patches" as mentioned earlier in this thread, as there is no easy way to get these games nowadays. What a shame these games aren't on GOG. Will probably never happen.

Too bad Contract JACK was the last game in the series, because that one sucked ass.
 
Night Dive are still fighting for the rights for this thing, but the question is who are they fighting with? Nobody even knows who holds the damn rights to the series, I believe it was last Activision and in that case we're doomed. NOLF was a great shooter with some amazingly varied environments, soundtrack, characters and weapons. The level design is so good that moving through bland and dreary warehouses is still enjoyable. Ironically in a game about espionage and sneaking, the stealth mechanics are absolutely lacklustre and it's pretty much impossible to sneak through the game without mashing the reload button.
 

graywolf323

Member
Night Dive are still fighting for the rights for this thing, but the question is who are they fighting with? Nobody even knows who holds the damn rights to the series, I believe it was last Activision and in that case we're doomed. NOLF was a great shooter with some amazingly varied environments, soundtrack, characters and weapons. The level design is so good that moving through bland and dreary warehouses is still enjoyable. Ironically in a game about espionage and sneaking, the stealth mechanics are absolutely lacklustre and it's pretty much impossible to sneak through the game without mashing the reload button.
the problem is the rights were split across various companies which have since been absorbed, merged, acquired, etc. to the point no one’s legal team is even sure who owns what nor do they want to go to the trouble of figuring it out (since that would cost money)

basically the rights are split across Disney (acquisition of Fox), WB (bought Monolith), and ABK (merged with Vivendi) so it’s a completely mess

 
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Antwix

Member
A real shame this game's rights is in purgatory, so we don't get new releases, nor remasters or remakes.
Probably for the best. I can't imagine a new release of this franchise in 2023 would be anything worth playing. Same reason why I have zero expectations for Perfect Dark.
 
Probably for the best. I can't imagine a new release of this franchise in 2023 would be anything worth playing. Same reason why I have zero expectations for Perfect Dark.
Both would just need good level designers. That was the main draw of both franchises.
 

winjer

Gold Member
Probably for the best. I can't imagine a new release of this franchise in 2023 would be anything worth playing. Same reason why I have zero expectations for Perfect Dark.

Several gams have already received good remasters or remakes.
A recent example is System Shock, from Nightdive Studios.
 

Dane

Member
I didn't know this port was so bad on the PS2.
At the time I played it on PC and it ran very well. In fact, I still have the original CDs.
A real shame this game's rights is in purgatory, so we don't get new releases, nor remasters or remakes.
Back then games tailored to high end PCs had compromised versions on consoles, Max Payne for example ran with slowdowns and worse textures on PS2, Soldier of Fortune was a loading nightmare, Half Life 2 had a very choppy framerate on OG Xbox, ironically enough Doom 3 ran well despite its obvious cuts.
 

Puscifer

Member
as someone who was in a retro shooter craze a few months ago, I tried playing the NOLF games... and oh boy are they dogshit...

I can not for the life of me understand why they have this cult following. they might be among the worst shooters of that era that I personally played recently and/or came in contact with at the time.

maybe they get better in the later levels, but I tried sticking with them and just couldn't for more than 2 missions + tutorial or so each.

after always hearing about how great NOLF is and what a shame it is that the IP is dead, I was honestly shocked at how bad they were.
It's a period piece for sure. There was a serious nostalgia kick in the early 2000s with Kung Fu Revival stuff, retro aesthetics from that 70s show and Austin Powers and movies like Kill Bill that this aesthetic fit right in at the time. I remember liking them at the time but I'm going to be 100% honest in saying that nostalgia is best left in the past
 

NeptuneCL

Member
I played NOLF back in 2000 on PC and it was truly an experience, a very good game.

I hope the copyright resolves soon, this game doesn't deserve to be in the forgotten side.
 

CGNoire

Member
as someone who was in a retro shooter craze a few months ago, I tried playing the NOLF games... and oh boy are they dogshit...

I can not for the life of me understand why they have this cult following. they might be among the worst shooters of that era that I personally played recently and/or came in contact with at the time.

maybe they get better in the later levels, but I tried sticking with them and just couldn't for more than 2 missions + tutorial or so each.

after always hearing about how great NOLF is and what a shame it is that the IP is dead, I was honestly shocked at how bad they were.
Yah same for me but for some weird reason it seems alot of PC FPS gamers of the era where really clamering for an Austin Powers FPS crossover. Go figure.
 
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CGNoire

Member
I always hated the Monolith engine they used for this and AVP2. It supported really high quality character models no doubt but there enviroments always looked like shit and super flat with its horrible quality lightmaps and very low polygon counts even for that time period.
 
I'm not a fan of this format for DF:Retro. I miss the older episodes where it was just John discussing the history and technology behind old games, their launch experience and the general assessment of framerate and problems the old games had. They felt like genuine Grade A old school TV quality content. Reminded me a lot of the classic G4TV show Icons, but with the focus being the game itself rather than the studio or people behind it. These discord streams are boring and come off kinda lazy.
 
Imho the first truly good shooter. Fuck Unreal or HL (or Quake or Duke).

This together with MoH AA, Goldeneye and finally CoD4 set the foundation for the now much neglected corridor shooter genre.
 
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