The Operative: No One Lives Forever Critic Reviews

Its refreshing setting, exemplary dialogue and acting, and downright fun game mechanics are a shock to the system.

An all-around crowd pleaser with great weapons, exotic locales, and enough mystery to keep you coming back for more.

Superb craftsmanship, inventive scripting, wonderful acting, brilliant enemy AI, and sumptuous graphics are all placed in a huge, varied, and intensely colorful 60s setting by a team clearly bestowing care and love on their work and product.

Great characters, unbelievable level design, well-executed game-engine cut scenes, outstanding voice acting and style that just won't quit, No One Lives Forever is the best game I've played in far too long.

So imaginative, colorful and funny that it serves to remind us how insufferably gloomy and witless most shooters are.

Every second drips with absolute cool and there's literally not a boring moment in the entire game, bar the over-lengthy but disposable cut-scenes.

By far one of the best games to come out this year, and is certainly the best and most original single-player FPS experience to come down the pipeline since Half-Life. If you enjoy great story, super graphics, and excellent gameplay, then this is definitely a game for you.

The First Person Shooter is back, baby -- and it's a gas!

The combination of style, wit, creativity, spycraft, cool locations, great gadgets and the overall sense of fun make this one a must have for FPS fans and a recommended game for casual gamers.

The game is definitely a contender for game of the year. If a possible AI patch would be released, then this game would be a 10+.

If you're looking for an entertaining shooter that doesn't take itself too seriously, you won't find anything better.

A first-person shooter has finally arrived that's so stylish, so ingenious, so well written, so well acted, and otherwise so great that this review won't have to include the expression "it's no Half-Life" - except for right there.

While it's not quite up to the complexity of "Deus Ex," NOLF combines a first-rate plot, grandiose explosions, superb dialogue, and plenty of trigger-happy action to make for one of the best gaming experiences we've had all year.

A shining example of bringing together a wide variety of different ideas, executing them with a ever-engaging style, and delivering a polished product that is a thrilling experience from beginning to end.

We loved everything about the game. We loved everything from the silly fez wearing guards right down to the random dissertations on the meaning of life.

The enemy AI is the most advanced enemy AI in a game yet.

Austin Powers ain't got nothing on Cate Archer, the hottest digital chick with a gun since that old hag Lara Croft.

Honestly, comparing "Half-Life" to NOLF is like comparing an Indiana Jones movie to a post-Connery Bond flick - just as fun, but not as "big".

Awesome single player game is held back by a mediocre multiplayer experience.

More a series of interlinked tale-telling vignettes than a proper blast-'em-up, the small-screen heir to Austin Powers' legacy is nonetheless one of the finest offerings in years.