Some of you may remember this game from when it appeared on the PC a couple years back. Cashing in on the Austin Powers 70’s craze going on this first person shooter could have been a side story out of any classic bond movie or cheezy 70’s cop drama. Not a bad thing, just kind of cliché well enough babbling the game has finally made it’s way to the PS2 and just like Deus Ex before it there is nothing like a PC port to a console to make your day a little brighter.
The visuals in NOLF are nothing shy of average, the game really shows it’s age which makes me wonder why it took so long for them to port it over to the PS2. I could understand if the game looked better, moved faster, or just had some PS2 graphical touches, but this is the same game that blared across PC screens years ago, only in lower resolution. The only thing added were a few extra levels where you can play as a young Cate Archer….whoopie. Not to sound disappointed but I really was expecting higher production value for taking this long, this game was supposed to be out on PS2 a year ago.
Playing NOLF is pretty easy for veterans of Halo, Red Faction, and the like. Moving and strafing with the left stick while aiming and turning with the other, the granddaddy of FPS control on a console controller. The game plays very nice with not much to complain about other than the auto-targeting gets on my nerves sometimes. It locks onto a target that I am not even aiming at, not cool.
The game is broken up into different scenes, which is called lazy programming, like Max Payne this game loads a lot! You could have kept on streaming mission but instead you are hitting a loading point almost every 3-4 minutes of game play. The missions are however very well laid out, one second you are sniping out bad guys on a roof and the next you are disarming bombs in a hotel so the action never gets stale. If they had fixed the loading this game would have kept my interest a little better.
For those that have played the PC version is there any incentive of buying this game on the PS2? Well that depends on how much you liked it on the PC, if a few extra levels mean that much to you and you can handle playing a FPS on a console then by all means rent it for the weekend. Otherwise you may want to stray away from shelling out 50 hard earned bucks on this one. I myself missed out on the PC version so I am enjoying the game, but I recommend renting before purchase as this may not be your slice of pie.
