Given that, I pulled No One Lives Forever 2 back out, and finished it off tonight. I was in the underwater base (the rescue scene) when last I left; the reason I'd stopped at that point was because there was a really irritating boss battle there. So I said the hell with it, and cheated myself extra armor to get through it.

I can see why people have said (including in the comments in my earlier missives on this topic) that the ending felt kind of weak; for some reason I wasn't as compelled by the stuff I played through tonight. The climax in the final level didn't feel paced quite right, and I spent ten minutes trying to find the explosives I needed before I could even get to that final battle. But I still loved the game, and had a blast playing through it.

I picked up Hitman 2 over the weekend (another reason I got distracted from NOLF2) and played the first several missions in it. It's some grim, sociopathic stuff, but it's a lot of fun to play. The environments are pretty freaking detailed, and you have a lot of different options for accomplishing your goal (which vary from the surgical to the bloody). My main reason for avoiding the previous one was that you reportedly couldn't save mid-mission -- this design flaw has now been corrected. You still have a limited number of saves (I'm playing on "easy", and I get seven -- I don't know if this goes down for the higher difficulties).

Time is very much a factor in some of these missions; you don't always have all the time you want to sneak into the perfect place, and that adds some nice tension. And you have a variety of tools, including the ability to steal the clothes of other people. It's pretty darn tasty.  10:22:36 PM  (comments [])