Video Game Retrospective - The Operative: No One Lives Forever

I've been feeling nostalgic, and have been interested in revisiting at a sadly overlooked gem from 2000; The Operative: No One Lives Forever, a first-person shooter with a strong "Swinging Sixties" aesthetic developed by Monolith Productions.

You assume the role of Cate Archer, an operative for a spy agency known as UNITY. A former cat burglar and UNITY's first female operative, Cate has been relegated to the mundane assignments. However, an apparent leak within UNITY has resulted in the systematic elimination of many field agents. Thus, Cate is reluctantly given several high profile missions, bringing her into conflict with a mysterious terrorist organisation called HARM and one of their world domination schemes.

Gameplay is your typical first-person shooter action, but there is an emphasis on stealth (on some missions this is mandatory). In fact, stealth is encouraged because it exposes the player to some finely-crafted conversations between the guards. The casual dialogue paints your enemies as "punch clock" villains who are just doing their jobs and have lives outside their professional ones. One of my favourite conversations is a guard lamenting the fact that he's missing The Man From U.N.C.L.E when he's on duty, and his friend starts a chat about their favourite contemporary thrillers on TV. Shows like Mission: Impossible, The Saint, The Avengers (the Emma Peel one, not the Marvel one), the then-recent finale of The Fugitive, and the recently-advertised The Prisoner.

It's the game's humour which made it stand out. As well as the aforementioned chats, there's optional intelligence items which further emphasise the "punch-clock" aspects of professional villainy. Or there's the code phrases disguised as bad pickup lines and Cate's snarky response, after which her contacts are always apologetic about using the phrases. A lot of the story revolves around Cate dealing with a lot of casual sexism (particularly from her handler, Mr Smith), but it's nice to see that many of UNITY's informants don't share Smith's attitude.

I love the array of characters too. Cate has a strong student-mentor relationship with Bruno Lawrie, UNITY's past-his-prime top agent who recruited her many years ago. There's also an array of colourful villains. The most memorable of these is Magnus Armstrong, a violent Glaswegian demolitions expert who captures Cate on several occasions but refuses to kill a fellow Scot without a fair fight.

The game was followed by a sequel, A Spy in HARM's Way. That's also a good game, but with a slightly different sense of humour. There was also an interquel called Contract Jack, in which you play as a freelance hitman working for HARM. I haven't played that one, but I've heard it wasn't very good and prompted Monolith to discontinue the franchise.

Writing this, I have to lament the fact that you can't get these games because of a copyright issue. Monolith was acquired by Warner Bros Interactive. The publisher, Fox Interactive, was acquired by Vivendi, which merged with Activision to form Activision Blizzard. And nobody knows who owns the rights to the game, so there's been no re-release. It's not even on Steam or Good Old Games. I think that's tragic, because it's a great game.

I hope this can be sorted soon.

Until then, happy writing.