If there is one way to describe NOLF 2 it would be it has great action, humor, with a bit of charm that not many games has matched over the past 18 years. NOLF 2 while it takes it’s self seriously with its great sense of humor, it has some great antagonists that are downright hilarious with a great Austin Poweresque humor. If you mix James Bond and Austin Powers movies you would get NOLF 2. It has great variety of levels that are colorful and manages to capture the 60s era vibe just like it’s predecessors. In between the levels you will find notes that are laid out here and there from H.A.R.M (the criminal organization you are fighting) and various other enemy characters (including the main atagonists) that are funny and notes spread out throughout the levels that are amusing to read. Speaking of H.A.R.M. the main story revolves around Cate Archer trying to uncover H.A.R.M.’s plan for their next attack. This has her jet setting all over the world in exotic locations, from Japan, to the Artic, to India, to H.A.R.M’s underwater lair and to a Mediterranean Island. The great diversity in levels is what makes this game especially great. The developers put a lot of effort into making sure the levels are diverse and well designed.
With respect to graphics. Cate Archer is rendered beautifully that is a step up from NOLF. Given that NOLF 2 came out around the 6th / 7th generation of 3D Graphics cards hitting the market, it makes full use of the technology available at the time and Cate Archer looks great along with great animations, environment and water effects. Without a doubt it was one of the best looking game of 2002 and even the early 2000’s giving Unreal Tournament 2003 a run for it’s money. The updated Lithtech engine around this time was one of the best.
With respect to Music and especially voice acting, it’s top notch. The various characters that are voicing the various protagonists are all well done. From the French Meme to the HARM’s leaders everything is well acted out.
Now the downsides are the various little bugs that are found. For example, the game wouldn’t launch sometime unless you ran it in Win XP compatibility mode with Admin rights and you had to set it up to be done on both the Lithtech and NOFL2 executable. And sometimes it required you to run it in admin mode and then go back and had to uncheck admin mode and then run the NOLF2 executable again to make the game launch. There were issues with level loading where it would freeze up once you started the game and loaded your saved game. Sometimes you would had to load a different level and then load your saved game from there to pickup from where you started. Was this worth the trouble? Most definitely! I played it with a mod that enabled 1080P and the game looked gorgeous for a 2002 game.
So, if you are looking for a fun, entertaining and often times hilarious FPS game that you hardly find these days (if any) this is definitely the one to try. Monolith’s best title!