I mean, NOLF was way ahead of its time. A parody that also was a really good game. Like, a parody that was not sarcastic or ironic. It is hard to describe.
Personally I would trust a fan-made work distributed through MediaFire and MEGA (and there is nothing wrong with these services!) more than some corporate re-release riddled with DRM and “““analytics””” (the word we've collectively agreed to pretend doesn't mean “spying” lol)
Tron 2.0 was great, and another game that has been lost to time. I got the Steam version working with a hack many years ago, but I doubt it would still work. That's another one that could use the same treatment as this version of NOLF!
Eh, LithTech was fairly impressive for the time, but I wouldn't necessarily call it good. It is incredibly fragile. I've been working on creating a library of games that works on modern platforms. LithTech games have taken at least 3-4 times longer because of frequent crashing.
I haven't seen a .tk domain in probably 20 years. It was super popular with young gamers during the early 00s due to the free domain. What a blast from the past!
Hilarious, hilarious game. Nightdive Studios, known for remastering old games such as System Shock, Doom 64, and Turok, tried their hardest to get the rights to the game, but apparently nobody knows who owns it! https://kotaku.com/the-sad-story-behind-a-dead-pc-game-that-...
NOLF2 was hilarious. The samurai sword fiht in a trailer park while a hurricane blows through it! The fight against French mimes toting machine guns (Ah, ze pain is unbearable)!
I own both games on disc and played part of the first one a couple of years ago on Windows 10. Absolutely stellar game, I’ve always meant to finish one of these days and get to the sequel…
IIRC it did indeed require some fiddling with config files and maybe even community patches to get a wide aspect ratio to work, and weapon viewmodels would still end up stretched.
Highly recommend giving these games a shot!
The legality of this seems questionable, though? The site itself doesn’t appear to acknowledge anything related to that.
My understanding of this is that no one will actually confess to owning the IP, so this project also serves the purpose of baiting someone to actually come forward and submit a takedown notice as that would presumably reveal who owns it
There's an issue with the rights to the No One Lives Forever games which is why it hasn't re-appeared on Steam (et al). Nightdive Studios tried to get the rights to republish it but couldn't nail down between these parties who actually had the rights to the game and could authorize this.
Kind of absurd, but I guess it might be because there are multiple rights involved, ie art and music, characters and gameplay and whatnot? It's not just one neat "NOLF IP" package?
Somebody once tried to clarify the situation with a similar stunt, but failed spectacularly. From the NOLF Wikipedia page:
In May 2014, Nightdive Studios, a publisher of classic PC titles, filed trademarks for "No One Lives Forever", "The Operative", "A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way", and "Contract J.A.C.K.", Nightdive had also been able to acquire the source code for the games, which would enable them to remaster them for modern computer systems. However, Nightdive had yet to comment on the situation regarding who owned the rights to the game. At this point, the rights to the series were unclear, as the property may have been owned solely or in part by 20th Century Fox (which owned Fox Interactive at the time of the game's release), Activision (which acquired and merged with Vivendi Games, which in turn was the parent to Sierra Entertainment, the publisher of No One Lives Forever 2, and had acquired Fox Interactive in 2003), and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment (which acquired Monolith Productions). Warner Bros. did file opposition to Nightdive's trademark, leading Nightdive to try to seek a license arrangement. However, Warner Bros. representatives were concerned that if either Fox or Activision had a part of the ownership, that they would also need their approval. Nightdive attempted to work with Fox and Activision to search their archives, but as these transitions pre-dated computerized records, neither company wanted to do so. Nightdive's efforts were further stalled when they were told by Warner Bros. that they had no interest in partnering or licensing the IP, leading Nightdive to abandon their efforts to acquire the rights.
If the owner of the IP doesn't enforce their ownership of the IP then there isn't much to do about it. This is pretty common in the "abandonware" gaming community. Lots of old games are technically piracy but nobody cares.
What a great game series. This really shows what an innovative and campy gaming industry we used to have. You don't see games like this anymore, especially not from big studios. Maybe in the indie scene - but mostly not in the same scope.
Underneath the campy humor and old spy movie/TV series references, there was a number of elements on spying, about manipulating and using people, attitudes to women, the dull work spying is for the non-super spies. and so on. If someone was to make a follow-up, I don't think a NOLF copy/paste would do so well beyond pure nostalgia (and I don't think NOLF ever set the world on fire with its sales), but there's enough substance there where they could make something interesting playing it straight.
Wow I remember when this came out. Finding the different clues on the ground was pretty amazing back then. I played that PC Gamer demo over and over and over.
- https://web.archive.org/web/20020217233624/http://pc.ign.com...
- https://web.archive.org/web/20010720053220/http://noonelives...
- https://github.com/osgcc/no-one-lives-forever
- https://github.com/haekb/nolf1-modernizer
Please be careful using a release distributed on a site without TLS and links to other certain well-known file sharing sites.
Personally I would trust a fan-made work distributed through MediaFire and MEGA (and there is nothing wrong with these services!) more than some corporate re-release riddled with DRM and “““analytics””” (the word we've collectively agreed to pretend doesn't mean “spying” lol)
It started with Shogo, but also No One Lives Forever, Tron 2.0 and F.E.A.R. left deep impressions.
What stood out was the combination of their well-done 3D engine with world building and art direction.
It wasn't the same from game to game, each game had their very distinct feel, and always interesting.
And I think few shooters have as good enemy AI as the goal-oriented[1] ones in F.E.A.R. (sadly not used in the sequels)
Good times, good times...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolith_Productions
[2]: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/building-the-ai-of-f-e-...
I played it again some years ago but it was flaky, so yeah some TLC would be great.
Also a blast from the past, the OMM review of NOLF: https://www.oldmanmurray.com/longreviews/751.html
https://www.gog.com/dreamlist/game/the-operative-no-one-live...
IIRC it did indeed require some fiddling with config files and maybe even community patches to get a wide aspect ratio to work, and weapon viewmodels would still end up stretched.
Highly recommend giving these games a shot!
The legality of this seems questionable, though? The site itself doesn’t appear to acknowledge anything related to that.
I hope that whoever set this site up has protected their identity...
In May 2014, Nightdive Studios, a publisher of classic PC titles, filed trademarks for "No One Lives Forever", "The Operative", "A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way", and "Contract J.A.C.K.", Nightdive had also been able to acquire the source code for the games, which would enable them to remaster them for modern computer systems. However, Nightdive had yet to comment on the situation regarding who owned the rights to the game. At this point, the rights to the series were unclear, as the property may have been owned solely or in part by 20th Century Fox (which owned Fox Interactive at the time of the game's release), Activision (which acquired and merged with Vivendi Games, which in turn was the parent to Sierra Entertainment, the publisher of No One Lives Forever 2, and had acquired Fox Interactive in 2003), and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment (which acquired Monolith Productions). Warner Bros. did file opposition to Nightdive's trademark, leading Nightdive to try to seek a license arrangement. However, Warner Bros. representatives were concerned that if either Fox or Activision had a part of the ownership, that they would also need their approval. Nightdive attempted to work with Fox and Activision to search their archives, but as these transitions pre-dated computerized records, neither company wanted to do so. Nightdive's efforts were further stalled when they were told by Warner Bros. that they had no interest in partnering or licensing the IP, leading Nightdive to abandon their efforts to acquire the rights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wry0IKvcjF4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22CbAsfAV6M