Sounds

Toot toot

In a game where sneaking around is of the utmost importance, what you are able to hear makes all the difference. You'll probably spend half the game crouching behind a box waiting for the sound of footsteps to fade away, or listening for the zooming of a camera. All the sounds you hear in the game are essential, and well done.

The only problem we had was that your hearing is all too good at times. You can hear a camera outside of a building through a wall or the footsteps of a person that is a massive distance from you, with numerous walls in between. Not really a huge problem, but sometimes a bit unrealistic.

He was smoking, there are penalties

Yar!

I can say I liked listening to NOLF's music for all of five minutes. Not that it's bad or anything, but you just can't listen for enemies or moving cameras very well with the music playing. If you look closely at every spy movie ever made, you hardly ever see the hero listening to his favorite tunes through a set of headphones while he's trying to sneak around. So while the music may be entertaining, it is definitely not something you should leave on, regardless of whether you are playing the campaign or a multi-player game. The music does quiet down when you are trying to sneak, but, personally, I just felt better when there was no music at all.

Weee! 30,000 feet and no parachute

Time to yoink his

Random ramblings

By far, I'd have to say that the best parts of the game come when you have to wait somewhere in the middle of a mission. The guards you come across will always be discussing something. Sometimes they ponder the meaning of life, discuss marital problems, or just plain shoot the breeze. This is one of the things you really miss out on if you take the gung-ho style of attack. It is truly worth the wait to listen to what these philosophical guards have to say. These little nuances literally raise the game above others in the FPS category.

I told you I don't swing that way.

PJ?

When you are trying to make a campy spy game resemble a campy spy movie, you must put a lot of effort into the vocals, particularly the cheesy come-ons in various accents. It's all about hearing "If I told you that you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?" in a German accent. The key roles in the game are equally amusing. We didn't find ourselves smacking the space bar to skip through the dialog.

Of course it only helps that all the usual sound effects are done with the same attention to detail as the sound in the rest of the game. You won't be complaining about the lack of enough oomph that the AK-47 packs or about explosions sounding dull. The standard sounds are all that you would expect out of a top-notch game.