A straight forward shooter that is painfully short and forgets it is part of the No One Lives Forever universe.
In the game Contract JACK, you are John Jack, a hired gun that has just signed up with H.A.R.M., the evil entity from No One Lives Forever 1 & 2. After going through a training session, you are given the assignment of trying to track down the leader of a terrorist group Danger Danger. This takes you through several locations around Europe and beyond while looking for the rogue outfit.
First thing that anyone should know about this game is that it is not a normal No One Lives Forever game. It is nothing like it for that matter. There are no puzzles, no gadgets and the shooting is not all that fun. You are essentially on a hidden rail to some degree, working through uninteresting levels while mowing down bad guys. It is almost like NOLF Doom to some degree. It just does not fit into the series due to the serious play changes. Make some changes to the main enemy characters and you could be playing something with no relationship to the original games and no one would be the wiser.
It seemed like a cool idea at first, playing as the bad guys for a change. For some games, this lets you see how things work through different eyes. But here, it feels flat, because you never really feel like you are working for anyone but yourself. Beyond some chatter by Volkov, your boss in the game, you never really hear from H.A.R.M. No training sessions with an evil scientist or banter with some of the bad guys from the first two games, none of that is here in this game. You never have any sense of attachment to the game.
The game has a generic look. Nothing here taxes your graphic card in anyway if you are of the last few generations of video cards. The character models look pretty good and have fluid motion. I will say that Monolith really got the faces of the characters to start moving realistically. Blood and particle effects really look good in this game. When you hit something with a bullet, it reacts with splintering and/or splattering. It comes off quite nicely and looks physically correct when it occurs. Environments are not really detailed, and take away from what was done with the character models. One level does stand out in particular due to its uniqueness; nothing sticks out and strikes you as bold or daring. It is mostly cookie-cutter design that is decent, but never captures your attention.
Sound is the shining example of what is right in this game. Voice work is pretty good. The voice work is probably good; because you never really see any of the people you are suppose to interact with for any period of time. You see Volkov at the beginning of the game and the end, but the rest of the time, it is all voice and no physical presence. It hurts the game in my opinion, because interaction was a big key to the first two games in the NOLF series. The voice work is professional and works with what they have here, and it is solid work. Gun sounds are also full and throaty. When you fire off an AK-47, you will probably be reaching for the speaker volume. The weapons are loud, but have a crisp sound.
There is a multiplayer mode in the game, but it lacks design and focus. There is no real news here in regards to different types of multiplayer, etc. it is rather generic, again never straying from what works. And when you try to play, you will be more response from your echo than other players, because no one is there to play with at all. Just a case of Me, Myself and I to quote De La Soul.
So far everything sounds okay, but not great. But here is the kicker…you will finish the game in less time that it takes to read this review. That is almost a true statement. (Editorial note, I finished the game in just over three hours). This is due to the design of the game. Short levels with run and gun mentality will not last long no matter how much story you try to put into it. And since the game is light on story elements, it just withers and dies without any sense of sorrow. Upon finishing the game, you will just sit there wondering where the rest of the game is at. Maybe you missed an install CD, but sadly, that is all there is and you are not missing anything.
So Contract JACK tries to branch the No One Lives Forever into a different direction, but in the process seems to lose everything that defines the series. Things blow up pretty good and they sound even better. But in the end, all you get is a below average game without any of the joy or wit that Cate Archer brought to the series. In the end the game does more to alienate you, then to bring you in.