As Cate, you’ll travel to many diverse locations. You’ll see the mountains of Russia, the villages of Japan, a trailer park in Ohio and of course, the enemy’s secret hideout, complete with exorbitant amounts of metallic siding. All of these are excellently rendered and feature objects and enemies that really fit with the locales. For instance, you’ll see tons of sweater-wearing baddies in the Russian environment and Ninjas in Japan. Enemy variety is excellent, including the aforementioned Ninjas as well as the usual stereotypical fodder (think of the bad guys in
Austin Powers) and even some crazy ones, like the incredibly hilarious gun-toting mimes.
Each of the weapons are incredibly fun to use. Most of the weapons make a return from the original and they’ve brought a few new friends. My personal favorite is the robotic kitty. It’s a proximity mine cleverly disguised as a cute little kitty. Pressing a button on its ass will reveal a retractable antenna, leave it in a spot and watch an unsuspecting villain get blown to bits. Then there is a bear trap that can be used to snare unsuspecting baddies and of course, there's the classic bananna peel. All you have to do is place it on the ground and wait for the hilarity to ensue. In addition to these weapons, you’ll have usual spy gadgets such as decoders, lock picks, stun guns and portable torches. Pistols, machine guns and a sniper rifle round out the rest of the armory.
Monolith has decided to throw some RPG elements into the fray. As you progress, you'll earn points that can be used to upgrade Cate's skills. You'll be able to increase health, stealth, ammo capacity and much much more. Points are earned by completing objectives, sub-objectives and finding small clues that are scattered throughout the environments. This is actually a pretty nice addition, though not quite on par with what Eidos did with
Deus Ex, it still adds another layer to an already pretty deep game.
This game is technically sound, proving that Lithtech's Jupiter engine is indeed ready to play with the big boys. This is a beautiful game and you’ll know it right from the onset. The beginning of the game places you by a beautifully rendered stream, complete with reflections and ripples. Then you’ll notice some intricately rendered environments, complete with shards of grass and advanced architecture. This is of course before you see the player models and realize that they have the best looking faces of any FPS. Next thing you know, it’ll hit you that this is perhaps one of the most beautiful games to ever grace a PC screen, and that’s before you’ve even played the game for five minutes.
I had a problem with some of Lithtech’s previous engines in that I felt they seemed underdeveloped. They had some nice touches but the models and player movement just seemed too un-natural for my tastes. Thankfully this new Jupiter engine has removed all of my doubts that Lithtech is infact capable of producing an engine that can rival that of
Quake III and
Unreal Tournament’s. This thing is capable of performing some truly awesome things, shooting out a light doesn’t just merely cause the light to fade. You’ll see the lamp sway and the bulb become shattered in a realistic fashion. See an enemy near a wall? Fire a dart at them and pin them to the wall. Remove the darts from them and watch their lifeless bodies tumble to the floor. Models still look a little blocky but the texturing work in
NOLF2 is so well done that you just might not notice it. The faces in particularly just look amazing, rivaling
Mafia for the best looking character faces in the industry. Animations could still use a little work though, they’re still a little too jerky and un-natural for my tastes.
Page 2 of 3
