I'm enjoying NOLF. The missions have a fair amount of variety and really make you feel like you're in a 60s spy movie, and there are some great gags - the obnoxious yet deaf-blind US ambassador you have to protect from assassins, who is continually dodging bullets by dropping quarters then bending over to pick them up, and the ongoing 'cheesy pick-up line as pass-phrase' bit. Downside is that the briefing/training sections are pretty tedious - they really could be trimmed by 70% in most instances.
I've just got to a stealth bit, unfortunately, and I can't figure out what I'm supposed to do. Seems I need to set off the alarm to get to a certain section, but that alerts all the guards and makes death inevitable. Annoying. I'm going to check a walkthrough.
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I'm not enjoying NOLF. This game is actually pretty awful outside of the presentation. It turns out every level is a stealth section, and what's more, it's impossible not to set off the alarms. Mixed with the "no health regen per set of levels" rule, it makes the whole thing too difficult/boring. I've never had to check walkthroughs so much for any FPS, thanks to badly signposted/overly-guarded objectives, and I'm skipping every cutscene. And every cool idea is clumsily executed to the point of frustration.
I've been micro-saving through levels for a while now and I've finally saved myself into a corner, so I'm going to give up. It's a shame because I really wanted to enjoy this game (and I put a fair bit of effort into getting it running!) but it's just not fun. I'm not only bored, I'm rather irritated by it. Hopefully NOLF 2 will prove more polished.
Some other good things about NOLF (still all presentation): the cartoonish body animation was great - it reminded me of those flappy-limbed Garry's Mod machinima videos you used to get. I'm not sure if it was mo-capped or not. The enemies flinging themselves down stairs or off balconies like over-enthusiastic stuntmen, and cars blowing up with a single bullet, were always good fun. And the first-person tumble you take when you die, as Cate puts her arms out and you roll to the floor, gave a Mirror's Edge-like immediacy to it, especially if you happened to be the one rolling down some stairs.
This bears similarities to my experience with Monolith's previous game, Shogo: great setting, fun cheesy presentation, unpolished gameplay. I don't have FEAR or AvP2, but I do have NOLF2, Tron 2.0 and Condemned. Hopefully the three remaining games from this dev on my list prove a little more satisfying.
Rating: Orange.
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