Graphics/Multiplayer

Visuals

NOLF uses the LithTech engine. You might have seen this 3D engine in other games such as KISS: Psycho Circus, and Sanity. Those games don't look bad at all, but as we've seen, it's not the engine you use, but how you use it.

Visuals in NOLF are fairly good; whether we are talking about gun animation or level detail, the game looked like a lot of attention and work went into it. We were very pleased with body animations in particular. Mad props have to be sent out for the incredibly detailed movements of characters. Whenever someone is shot, the bodies react in rather interesting ways depending on the situation. Sometimes they will roll down staircases, fall off of catwalks -- even break railings as they fall to the ground. This added bit of detail goes a long way to make a game complete.

Baking? I don't think so.

Lookin good.

Performance-wise, I was not as pleased. On my computer (P3 600, GF2 GTS), the game ran horribly. Even after reducing all the detail and going to relatively ugly mode, I could still feel quite a bit of frame stuttering. Of course, I'm also the same person that can't manage to keep a stable system for more than a week. You make the call. No one else seems to be complaining. Bob on the other hand, with his lofty Gigahertz/GF2 GTS combo could play with most of the eye candy enabled.

Multiplayer

All the cool toys you saw in the single player version transfer over to the multi-player scene. In fact, they are in some cases more useful in multi-player. Most of the enemies in single player can be dispatched with a single silenced pistol shot.

Walkin the streets

Very nice

In multi-player, you will actually have a need for some of the more exotic devices such as the proximity explosives. We tried a few rounds online and found the game to be rather entertaining. The game probably won't be known for its online counterpart, but we were happy to see an in-game browser. Finding online opponents shouldn't be too difficult.

Currently there are two modes of play: deathmatch and a variant of capture the flag. Deathmatch, for those of you that don't play much FPS, basically means shoot everything in sight. Sometimes you have teams, but the goal is always to rack up the most kills. The capture the flag variation in this game involves two teams. Instead of flags, you have various files that must be photographed.

Even nicer

Boom-shaka-laka!